Go East

Until recently, New Delhi’s emphasis has been on simply “being there” and put an end to India’s prolonged isolation from Asia. With the exception of APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation organisation), India is now part of all the Asian regional mechanisms.

Aware of its own growing weight on the Asian stage, New Delhi senses the urgency of looking beyond mere membership of the regional forums towards shaping the structure and direction of Asian regionalism.

That demands a simultaneous expansion of the bases of support at home for the Look East policy, acceleration of cooperation with the region, and above all, a strategy to maximise India’s impact in Asia.

The effort to raise internal political consciousness on Asia should not be limited to the North East. It needs to encompass the entire eastern region of India. While the foreign minister of Singapore, George Yeo often reminds his audiences that Singapore was ruled from Kolkata until 1865, India’s mainstream East is yet to reclaim its historic connectivities with Southeast Asia.

During his visit to Singapore, Mukherjee will release a book on Subhas Chandra Bose’s speeches in the region during the early 1940s. If the Indian National Army is a reminder of the more recent links between India and Southeast Asia, the plans to build an international university at the ancient seat of learning Nalanda are about discovering deeper civilisational bonds between India and Asia.

This year, Indian tourist arrivals in Singapore is likely to touch one million. India now needs to leverage this impressive flows to deepen contact with the ten member ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) as a whole.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent offer to negotiate an “open skies” agreement with the ASEAN needs to be quickly translated into a reality. Equally important is to get states like UP, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh to improve their basic infrastructure and make it easier for Asian tourists to come to the many Buddhist sites...