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What's the article about?
- It talks about the inclusion of stakeholders from India's Northeast and East in the country's Indo-Pacific strategy.
Relevance:
- GS2: India and its Neighborhood- Relations; Effect of Policies and Politics of Developed and Developing Countries on India’s interests, Indian Diaspora.
What's the crux of the article?
- Writer argues that while framing and implementing India's Indo-Pacific strategy, voices from the Northeast and the eastern parts of the country must be heard.
- India and neighbouring countries should move beyond geopolitics and geo-economics and should focus on “the geo-cultural dimension” of the Indo-Pacific.
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What is the Indo-Pacific?
What is meant by geopolitics?
What is meant by geo-economics?
North-Eastern Region of India:
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Why must India consider voices from the Northeast and the eastern parts?
- Since 2018, India’s ‘Look East’ and ‘Act East’ policies have moved into the phase of Indo-Pacific policy and strategy. But these regions themselves have numerous issues (security, development & relation with SE Asia) which must be dealt with urgently. Thus to have a ‘free, open, inclusive, peaceful and prosperous’ Indo-Pacific, we must resolve these issues first.
- By absorbing and factoring in the perspectives of stakeholders at the ground level, the Indo-Pacific policy can deliver better results.
- Cultural Dimension: At Kolkata, intellectuals and performers in the cultural domain from India, the US.,Japan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh reflected on the Indo-Pacific construct’s cultural dimensions.
- An ambitious endeavour by 75 artists from nine countries highlighted the region’s ‘unity in diversity’ through music, dance, drama, and cuisine. Clearly, expanding the reach of cultural diplomacy and people-to-people cooperation through greater educational exchanges, tourism, and trade is desirable.
Way Forward: Two common threads have emerged from recent exchanges.
- First, the growing significance of the Bay of Bengal region permeates the thinking of scholars.
- The concept of the Indo-Pacific seems distant, but the moment it is perceived as the outer circle of the Bay of Bengal and its littorals, it comes closer to home.
- Therefore, member-states need to invest more in the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) to enhance its effectiveness.
- Second, in implementing India’s Indo-Pacific strategy, voices from Northeast and eastern India must be heard. Thus, beyond ‘Look East’ and ‘Act East’ lies ‘Think and Relate East’, especially within our own country.
