India and ASEAN: Partners at Summit

This book is an exercise, by regional specialists, in assessing the different dimensions of India-ASEAN relations. As the Asia-Pacific has become the foci of great power involvement, one cannot ignore the relevance of such involvement to India-ASEAN relations. Dealing with ASEAN means engaging its individual member countries as well as those other powers and forums affiliated with that organization. Hence, India's relations with the individual countries, ASEAN's affiliated bodies as well as the impact on India of great power relations, say China, with ASEAN are broadly debated. Just as India's rapid engagement with ASEAN is a matter of concern to the regional power, New Delhi too would have equal reason to take cognizance of the role and relevance of other powers in ASEAN. This book attempts to deviate from an economic-centric treatment of the India-ASEAN engagement. Much of the existing literature overemphasized the economic content of the mutual intercourse. While trade and investment no doubt had been a core objective of the Look East drive into Southeast Asia, the strategic dimension was not a secondary objective. Geopolitics, like geoeconomics, as much was the driving force behind India's Eastern drive. Hence, bilateral and regional geopolitical aspects of the burgeoning Indian involvement in the Asia-Pacific are debated at length. It is a serious attempt to view the Indian engagement with ASEAN from the perspective of academia, diplomats, policymakers, regional and country specialists. The critical essays carried by this book offer valuable inputs to scholars interested in looking at India's Look East policy from either side of the Strait of Malacca.