Vibhanshu Shekhar

India’s Republic Day celebrations this year had quite the guest list: rather than the customary one head of state, India chose to invite leaders from all ten ASEAN member countries to be “chief guest” at the Republic Day parade. The heads of state and government convened in New Delhi on January 25 for the “ASEAN-India Commemorative Summit” before attending the Republic Day festivities on January 26. Officially, the Republic Day invitations were a recognition of the 25th anniversary of the India-ASEAN partnership. However, more than the mere passage of time, the decision highlights the growing emphasis on India’s relationship with ASEAN and the individual member countries.

Ahead of the summit, The Diplomat’s Prashanth Parameswaran interviewed Vibhanshu Shekhar, Scholar in Residence at the ASEAN Studies Center, School of International Service at American University, about India’s diplomacy in Southeast Asia, including where the Modi administration’s vaunted “Act East” policy has made a concrete impact – and where it has fallen short of lofty rhetoric.

India’s approach to Southeast Asia is often framed in different ways in relation to its wider domestic politics and foreign policy, whether it be the development of its northeast at home or its thinking about regionalism, connectivity, or major power competition abroad. How should one understand Southeast Asia’s place in the broader context of how India thinks about itself and the world?

Both India and the Asia-Pacific region have changed fundamentally during the last 25 years (since the launch of India’s Look East policy in 1992). India has moved on from being an inward-looking player stuck in the moribund SAARC [South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation] framework to a rising great power and the third largest economy (in purchasing power parity) in the world. On the other hand, the Indo-Pacific region has emerged as one of the most dynamic regions marked by rising powers, greater economic integration, rising scale of great power rivalries and hostilities, growing disunity within ASEAN ranks, and considerable scale of uncertainty in the regional order.

It is difficult to confine India’s multi-faceted engagement with Southeast Asia within a single frame of reference, given the growing complexity of foreign policy and diplomacy, India’s rise, and changes in the regional environment. India’s engagement with Southeast Asia in the 21st century is defined by multiple frames of reference, such as economic integration, market access, energy access, great power aspirations, the China factor, and maritime security, development of India’s landlocked northeast region, Global South solidarity, non-alignment, religio-cultural linkages, diasporic linkages, and people-to-people and business-to-business interactions. Each of these elements continues to shape in varying degrees India’s engagement with Southeast Asia.

The idea of multiple frames of reference underlines two issues. First, India’s relations with Southeast Asia have both expanded and deepened during the last 25 years. At any given time, India’s engagement with Southeast Asia can be country-specific, issue-specific, interest-specific, geography-specific, or threat-specific. It is a matter of pick and choose. My own preference is to examine India’s relations with Southeast Asia with a two-pronged approach – the ASEAN-centric multilateral engagement and country-specific bilateral engagement. The first approach has focused on ejecting India from the troubled South Asian setting and injecting it into the pan-Asia-Pacific framework of regionalism, and projecting India as an Asia-Pacific player. The bilateral approach has revolved around the bilateral dynamic of India’s relations with a specific ASEAN country.

Second, is there a specific agenda of the Look East/Act East policy or a specific methodology through which India conducts its Look East/Act East policy? The answer is probably no. Its priorities keep changing. It is not clear if Southeast Asia continues to figure as prominently as it did during the early 1990s or during the first decade of the 21st century. One can argue that India’s Look East/Act East policy, which undergirds India’s relations with Southeast Asia, includes almost every aspect of foreign relations only with heightened attention.

How should one understand the Modi administration’s new “Act East” approach, and to what extent is this really different from what India has done before?

The Act East policy is a pan-Indo-Pacific approach that aims at consolidating New Delhi’s strategic presence in the region and supporting a regional power structure that accommodates New Delhi’s rising power status and ambitions. The shift from Look East to Act East policy has been largely in terms of posture. One can identify four key changes in this regard. First, the geostrategic context of the Act East policy has shifted from the Asia-Pacific to the Indo-Pacific region as India’s engagement in the Indo-Pacific is conducted under the auspices of the Look East policy. The Indian Foreign Ministry treats the “Act East policy as the cornerstone of India’s engagement in the Indo-Pacific region.” However, it does not change much on the ground as the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea have continued to figure in India’s Look East deliberations. In this sense, the Look East policy also had a pan-Indo-Pacific focus.

Second, maritime activism can be identified as another feature of India’s Act East policy. India has sought to project itself as a “net security provider” in its maritime neighborhood that would include Indian Ocean littorals and some countries of Southeast Asia. The scope of net security provider primarily includes non-traditional security issues, such as anti-piracy, maritime security, Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) and Non-Combatant Evacuation Operations (NEO).

The Act East policy has introduced a new element in India’s engagement with Southeast Asia – joining hands with other great powers, such as Japan and the United States to bolster its relations with the ASEAN countries. The 2015 India-U.S. Vision Statement for the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean and India-Japan Joint Statement have asserted the need for combining efforts to strengthen their presence in Southeast Asia. This is driven partly be Beijing’s growing influence in the region.

Finally, the Act East policy has coincided with growing emphasis in New Delhi on developing bilateral partnerships. One can attribute this trend toward bilateralism to India’s preference for dealing with countries bilaterally, challenges facing the ASEAN multilateralism, and a global trend toward forging bilateral strategic partnerships. Though bilateralism is not directly due to the Act East shift, the former has an impact on some of its aspects. It is not clear whether this is an expression of the Act East mandate or due to other factors.

What are some of the key manifestations of progress with respect to Narendra Modi’s “Act East” policy thus far, whether it be regionally, subregionally, or bilaterally with individual Southeast Asian nations?

The Act East policy is guided by a new set of agendas as identified in the India-ASEAN Plan of Action (2016-2020). However, most of the activities are a carry-over from the previous plans as many of those objectives are yet to be achieved. Some of the initiatives are mentioned below:

The India-ASEAN Fund has been raised from $5 million to $50 million.

India-Myanmar ties have registered considerable progress, especially in the defense sector. India and Myanmar conducted, for the first time, joint military exercises in December 2017.

India and Japan have set up an Act East Forum that is going to facilitate the development of India’s Northeastern region that borders Myanmar and Bangladesh.

The Modi government has launched two important maritime initiatives in the Indian Ocean region – Project Mausim and SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region). Their mandate covers the entire Indian Ocean region, including various Southeast Asian countries.

2018 has been framed as a key year for ASEAN-India relations, with key events including New Delhi’s invitation extended to all ten ASEAN countries as chief guests for Republic Day. What can we expect for ASEAN-India relations this year?

[Editor’s note: This interview took place before the Republic Day celebrations.] India’s 2018 Republic Day Parade is going to be fundamentally different from the previous ones in one key respect. New Delhi, for the first time since independence, will be celebrating its 2018 Republic Day ceremony with ten heads of ASEAN states to commemorate a silver jubilee (25 years) of the India-ASEAN relationship. Traditionally, New Delhi has invited a single head of state to its Republic Day celebrations. It is an important symbolic gesture to highlight the importance India attaches to Southeast Asia in its foreign policy in general and Act East policy in particular. The Indian media has called it an assertive step, a major step, and “the most significant exposition” of India’s Act East policy.

The India-ASEAN Plan of Action (PoA) is still valid until 2020. One might expect completion of some of the agenda items from the PoA.

Singapore has been one of India’s strongest partners in Southeast Asia, and last year marked 25 years of India-Singapore partnership. With Singapore chairing ASEAN this year and Modi set to give a keynote address at the Shangri-La Dialogue later this year, what can we expect for India-Singapore ties in particular this year?

Singapore, as pointed out by its defense minister, Ng Eng Hen, is the birthplace of India’s Look East policy. It was first articulated by then-Indian Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao during a speech at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore in 1994. Since then, Singapore has remained a key catalyst in India’s engagement with Southeast Asia. It is India’s largest trading partner and investor from the ASEAN region. Singapore remains probably the most important launch pad for Indian businesses operating in Southeast Asia. Also, the bulk of India’s sea-borne trade is cleared and sorted in Singapore before reaching Indian ports. Singapore is the only ASEAN country to have participated in the Malabar exercises (in September 2007) that India conducts with the United States. As the dust settles, one can see greater clarity on the bilateral agreement signed in November 2017 between the navies of the two countries.

The Shangri-La dialogue and Singapore Chair of ASEAN have two different set of agendas. Prime Minister Modi’s speech at the Shangri-La dialogue is likely to have a pan-Indo-Pacific focus. His ASEAN participation would have both bilateral and regional focus. However, it is too early to identify issue areas for the India-ASEAN Summit.

What are some of the top lingering challenges that India will need to address in order to fully realize the potential of its ties with Southeast Asian states and ASEAN?

The most important challenge for India in Southeast Asia is to bridge the widening gap between posture and reality. This gap is most pronounced in strengthening physical connectivity, especially land connectivity between India and Southeast Asia. Notwithstanding the announcement of various ambitious projects, such as the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway, Delhi-Hanoi rail link, or the Kaladan Multi-Modal Project in Myanmar, the only tangible outcome during the last 25 years has been the India-Myanmar Friendship Road. The India-Myanmar Thailand Trilateral project was announced in 2003. Though some progress has been achieved on the Kaladan Multi-Modal Project, it is yet to be completed. Its revised deadline is 2018. Perhaps, this might be India’s big-ticket announcement in 2018 as a part of India’s Act East policy.

Second, India remains the most protected economy and the most conservative negotiator at the RCEP [Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership]. New Delhi should aim to fast-pace the RCEP negotiation in goods and services. However, given the current global trend towards protectionism, especially the Trump administration’s “America First” approach, India’s protectionist policy makers may not be willing to oblige unless they receive reciprocal concessions in the negotiations over trade in services.

If India wants to enhance its presence in the region, it should raise the limit of the India-ASEAN Fund to $1 billion. The present $50 million is a paltry sum and hardly noticeable.

Finally, India should begin specifying ASEAN-related agendas in its engagement with other great powers. For example, the India-Japan Act East Forum that seeks to develop India’s Northeast should lend additional support to India’s connectivity projects in mainland Southeast Asia.