The last few years have seen the growing importance of the Gulf region, leading to speculation that South East Asia has fallen off India’s political radar. But Jaishankar has made it clear that both the Gulf and South East Asia are of vital importance to India.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Singapore this week marks a major attempt to reboot one of India’s most valuable partnerships in Asia and the world. It is also about giving a fresh impetus to India’s engagement with South East Asia and more broadly the vast Pacific region. Before the PM’s visit to Brunei — the first bilateral visit to this small petroleum-rich nation and Singapore this week — Delhi had hosted the prime ministers of Malaysia and Vietnam. President Droupadi Murmu travelled to Fiji and New Zealand last month. External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar met several foreign ministers in the region and received them in Delhi. These engagements have once again demonstrated the extraordinary goodwill for Delhi in the region and the high expectations from India. The intensity of this Asian diplomatic activity at the beginning of Modi’s third term will hopefully translate into concrete outcomes when the PM heads to Laos next month to attend the annual summit meetings with ASEAN and East Asian leaders.
The last few years have seen the growing importance of the Gulf region, leading to speculation that South East Asia has fallen off India’s political radar. But Jaishankar has made it clear that both the Gulf and South East Asia are of vital importance to India. The fact, though, is that there has been a shadow over the salience of India’s South East Asia policy in recent years. When he took charge in 2014, Modi rebranded India’s Look East Policy unveiled by Delhi in the early 1990s as “Act East Policy”. At the diplomatic level, this culminated in the presence of ASEAN leaders as honoured guests at the Republic Day celebrations in January 2018. At the geopolitical level, the regional environment had become more complex with the sharpening US-China conflict and Delhi’s own deepening troubles with Beijing. India’s membership of the newly revived Quad, too, raised concerns in the region. In Singapore this week, the PM made it clear that India and the Quad stand squarely behind ASEAN and its central role in the regional security architecture. Delhi’s efforts at reassuring ASEAN have shown a measure of success as the region opens up to more defence and security cooperation with India.
It is in the trade domain, though, that significant questions remain about India’s commitment in the region. Delhi’s decision to walk out of the regional negotiations on trade liberalisation (RCEP) at the eleventh hour had deeply disappointed many, especially Singapore that had championed India’s Look East Policy since the early 1990s. Despite recent calls from the region and the World Bank, Delhi is unlikely to reconsider its rejection of RCEP. It understands the importance of plugging this loophole and is looking to strengthen bilateral trade and investment arrangements with all major economies in the region. Delhi is also looking at new areas such as digitalisation, health, space technology and advanced manufacturing to strengthen regional ties. This new Indian approach has been highlighted by India’s “semiconductor diplomacy” with Malaysia and Singapore, both of which have significant capabilities in semiconductor production. It is up to Delhi’s economic ministries now to translate the agreements for semiconductor collaboration into ground reality.
