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India's 'Look East' policy pays
off
By Sultan Shahin
NEW
DELHI - Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's
Southeast Asian tour this week to participate in the
Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) summit in
Bali, Indonesia marks the success of a decade-long shift
in Indian foreign policy - known as the "Look East"
strategy - initiated by former prime minister Narasimha
Rao in the early 1990s.
The political consensus
that had then emerged, partly as a response to the end
of Cold War, to liberalize the economy and participate
in the new trend of globalization, is apparently
continuing to win India new business partners and
friends in its continuing war against militancy in the
Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Two broad
agreements, for comprehensive economic cooperation and
combating terrorism, have been signed. India has also
consented to the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation.
Vajpayee went a step further to offer a unilateral "open
skies" policy to specified Southeast Asian airlines,
which will be free to operate daily flights to the
Indian metropolitan centers, outside any bilateral
aviation pact.
Laying stress on better
connectivity between India and ASEAN, Vajpayee said, "We
could see how close we can get with an open skies
arrangement." In this context he announced India's
unilateral decision to connect all 10 ASEAN capitals
with four metropolises in India through daily flights
without further bilateral discussions.
Apart
from laying emphasis on the need for road links between
the geographically contiguous India and ASEAN countries,
Vajpayee also suggested the holding of an India-ASEAN
motor rally. The framework agreement spells out a
program for free trade agreements in goods, services,
investment, areas of economic cooperation and an early
harvest program. Negotiations on free trade agreements
in goods will take due account of the economic
sensitivities of the less developed economies of
Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam and the Philippines.
And on Thursday, India and Thailand signed five
agreements covering a wide range of issues, including a
landmark free trade agreement following a one-to-one
meeting between Vajpayee and Thai premier Thaksin
Shinawatra in Bangkok. The agreement will allow for free
trade on all goods by 2010.
The two countries
will also slash tariffs by 50 percent on 84 products
under an early harvest scheme to go into effect March 1
of next year. In addition, ways to combat terrorism and
intelligence sharing were also discussed, with India
offering to sell defense equipment to Thailand.
Taken together, these steps promise considerable
improvement in economic and political cooperation
between India and its Southeast Asian neighbors -
extending from Myanmar to the Philippines.
India
is glad to have been present, thanks to its ASEAN
associate membership, when the members agreed to create
the eastern equivalent of the European Union in two
decades. The Bali Concord II envisions a single
Southeast Asian market, covering 500 million people and
with annual trade that already touches US$720 billion.
The concord calls for the creation of an ASEAN Economic
Community modeled on the EU by 2020. If ASEAN evolves a
free trade arrangement with China on similar terms - the
abolition of all tariffs and trade barriers - the result
will be the world's largest free trade zone.
India has already been able to take a small step
towards taking advantage of this historic development.
The early harvest program New Delhi has signed with
ASEAN lays out a timetable for mutual trade concessions
up to 2007. Skeptical Indian observers are hoping that
it will lead to an across-the-board lowering of trade
barriers, despite India's traditional reluctance in
giving such concessions, and that the story of so-called
free trade agreements with Sri Lanka and Singapore will
not be repeated.
In the case of Sri Lanka, India
placed curbs on tea, textiles and rubber - the very
items Sri Lanka could sell in the Indian market. As for
Singapore, more than two years after agreeing to work
out a free trade treaty, it has just been announced that
the city-state will only now "study" the issue.
The slow pace of economic reforms and lack of
better integration of its foreign and trade policies has
made many analysts skeptical whether India will be able
to effectively sustain its "Look East" policy, despite
all the hype associated with the prime minister's annual
trips to the region. External Affairs minister Yashwant
Sinha is, however, adamant that India has embarked on
the second phase of its "Look East" strategy.
In
a speech at Harvard University last month, Sinha pointed
to a remarkable transformation in India's attitude
towards Asia: "In the past, India's engagement with much
of Asia, including Southeast and East Asia, was built on
an idealistic conception of Asian brotherhood, based on
shared experiences of colonialism and of cultural ties.
The rhythm of the region today is determined, however,
as much by trade, investment and production as by
history and culture. That is what motivates our
decade-old 'Look East' policy. Already, this region
accounts for 45 percent of our external trade."
Vajpayee's address at the ASEAN business summit
struck the right chord by focusing on the country's
areas of strengths and inviting ASEAN investors to take
a fresh look at "India of the 21st Century ... [a]
country on the move." He has set an ambitious target for
India-ASEAN trade: it is to grow from $12.5 billion now
to $30 billion in 2007.
Addressing the meet on
Tuesday, Vajpayee, seeking to partner ASEAN in the era
of globalization, listed six strong points of the Indian
economy, including a rich pool of English-speaking
people, as well as the information technology revolution
for enhancing India-ASEAN trade and investment.
The prime minister said, "India is conscious of
the new ASEAN members. We are offering unilateral tariff
concessions on items of export interest to Cambodia,
Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam [lesser developed and newer
entrants to ASEAN]. We are also seeking to incorporate
an early harvest scheme to provide the incentive for a
long-term engagement. If we proceed along this course,
we can target a trade turnover of US$30 billion by 2007
and a free trade area within 10 years."
Observing that India's trade and economic
interaction with the ASEAN countries has been growing
steadily, but not fast enough, Vajpayee said trade of
less than $10 billion between the two did not do justice
to the combined population of 1.5 billion people,
producing $1.5 trillion worth of goods and services
annually. Recalling his speech at the first India-ASEAN
business summit a year ago for boosting business, he
said, "Our trade has since grown by about 25 percent,
but my comments remain valid."
The business
summit was also addressed by Chinese and Japanese Prime
Ministers Wen Jiabao and Junichiro Koizumi and South
Korean President Roh Moo-hyun. The powerful ASEAN
comprises Indonesia, its current chairman, Singapore,
the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos,
Vietnam and Myanmar and Brunei. Vajpayee said in spite
of the recent stalemate at the Cancun World Trade
Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference, a rule-based
and fair multilateral trading system should remain the
goal. "But while we search for this ideal, regional
trading arrangements offer immediate advantages,
particularly for geographical contiguous regions. They
can provide our domestic industry and agriculture with a
valuable learning period, before being exposed to the
far greater competition of global free trade," he said.
Observing that non-Asians viewed Asia as the
principal market of the future, the prime minister said
it would emerge as a manufacturing hub and a global
provider of services. "Asian countries should work
towards strengthening their mutual synergies, so that
they are strategically placed to derive maximum benefit
from the emerging opportunities. The India-ASEAN
partnership should energize this process to move us
closer to our shared goal of making this truly the Asian
century," Vajpayee said.
Of special significance
for India was the agreement to fight terrorism
cooperatively. It has been facilitated by the fact that
several ASEAN countries are facing the threat of
terrorism. The Philippines, Indonesia and even Singapore
have felt the impact of international terrorism. The
Jemmah Islamiyah outfit is active in Indonesia, the
Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia. Indonesia in the
past year has witnessed two major terror attacks in Bali
and Jakarta. The ASEAN countries have, therefore, become
serious about dealing with terrorism and related crimes
like money laundering and drug trafficking. They are
looking to India for support to meet the challenges on
this front.
The ASEAN Regional Forum will remain
the platform for a security dialogue in the region and
it includes the US and the European Union. The
declaration adopted at Bali provides for cooperation on
information exchange, legal matters, and enforcement
matters apart from institution building and training.
Speaking on the subject in an address to the
Institute of Diplomatic and Foreign Relations in Kuala
Lumpur on May 16, 2001, Vajpayee had articulated his
vision of a new Southeast Asian security structure and
India's role in it.
"We are conscious of the
striving for a new security structure in the world,
moving away from obsolete Cold War constructs," said
Vajpayee. "We are engaged in a process of dialogue and
consultation with our friends and partners to help shape
a new security environment free of confrontation and
tension. Our security dialogue with ASEAN can also
include this theme. The nature of the global village has
made it necessary to tackle even non-military issues of
security in a comprehensive manner. Our region lies
along side sea lanes of great strategic importance,
which need to be protected. Poverty and shortages of
food and energy threaten the stability of societies.
Population growth and the spread of diseases like AIDS
and TB are factors of deep concern. Environmental
degradation and cyber crime are relatively newer
concerns.
"There can be no effective solution to
these problems within national boundaries. They have to
be tackled through a cooperative approach, holistically
and regionally. The security dialogue between India and
ASEAN is, therefore, of utmost importance. Threats like
religious extremism, drug trafficking, money laundering
and terrorism have cast a dark shadow over our region.
India has been a victim of state-sponsored and
cross-border terrorism seeking to redraw national
boundaries. Such violence in the name of holy war is a
grave menace especially to pluralistic societies and
endangers a peaceful and civilized global order."
India's growing relations with the countries
belonging to ASEAN and the BIMSTEC forum comprising
Bangladesh, India, Myanmar Sri Lanka and Thailand is
beginning to free it from the straitjacket imposed by
the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation
(SAARC). The latter is now largely moribund due to a
standoff between India and Pakistan.
Incidentally, India is not alone in its desire
to run away from South Asia. While India has been
looking east in its desire to get away from its
geographical location, Pakistan has been looking west
since even before India initiated its "Look East"
policy. It has also been seeking to enter into ASEAN.
While Indian efforts appear to be meeting with success,
however, the same cannot be said about Pakistan.
India-Pakistan animosity has created irritations
for ASEAN as well. But its spill-over effects in
India-ASEAN relations have been contained. Though some
of Pakistan's friends in ASEAN have been trying to
upgrade its status, perhaps in the name of Muslim
solidarity, India and its friends have managed to keep
it out. ASEAN is obviously trying to avoid becoming
another arena for the two South Asian neighbors obsessed
with each other to vent their hostility, make wild
accusations and create ever-new controversies.
It seems that at last India's "Look East" policy
has started paying dividends. ASEAN and India appear to
have developed a clearer vision of the future of their
relationship. They have set realistic targets for
development of trade and investment at the Bali summit.
Southeast Asian leaders have also identified areas of
cooperation and collaboration on global issues,
including those related to the and the future of the
United Nations. ASEAN has also been trying to balance
its trade and overall ties between its two giant
neighbors - China and India.
Things have been
moving forward for India since 1997, when it began its
formal interaction with ASEAN as a full dialogue
partner. It is up to New Delhi to maintain the momentum
this relationship has been developing. ASEAN will
naturally look for concrete follow-up measures on the
agreements signed. The negotiations for a free trade
agreement will begin in January 2004, on goods, and take
up services in 2005 so that the whole framework is in
place by 2007. India is committed to lowering its peak
tariffs to East Asian levels by 2005.
India
cannot afford to be niggardly about tariff concessions,
if it doesn't want the new ASEAN to automatically
gravitate towards China. Meeting goals being set now
will be the test of the relationship and its measure of
success. Taking stock of the substantive agenda spelt
out at the first India-ASEAN summit in Cambodia last
November, Vajpayee admitted that there have been doubts
about the pace of implementation of certain proposals,
but in his view progress has nevertheless been much more
rapid than anticipated. As a mark of this forward
movement, the India-ASEAN Vision 2020 would be adopted
at the third summit in Laos next year.
Vajpayee
has spoken of his vision of a future where ASEAN
countries and India would stand together as a single
economic community. The implementation of this idea, he
said, would depend on the comfort level of member
countries.
But if this vision is to be realized,
India will have to be more pro-active than it has been
so far. Experts believe that a united ASEAN will be both
an export market and an economic rival to India. India
has no reason to drag its heels on trade agreements as
is its wont. It normally keeps looking for strategic
incentives to make up its mind. According to one expert
it should be incentive enough for India that ASEAN plus
China will be Asia's largest economic zone and Asia's
fulcrum for decades.
Not everybody in India is,
however, enthused by Vajpayee and Sinha's exertions in
bringing India close to ASEAN, or their rhetoric about
making the 21st an Asian century. In a scathing
editorial view, India's largest circulated newspaper,
The Times of India, wrote on Wednesday: "New Delhi's
record in any regional or international arrangement is
dismal, and driven by its obsession with Pakistan. As
the big boy in the South Asian bloc, India could have
played a key role. Instead it has held SAARC hostage to
its problems with Pakistan. In the Commonwealth, too,
New Delhi's sole concern is how to target Pakistan by
isolating it from the international community. Again, at
the recent UN General Assembly session, New Delhi's
exertions were solely with reference to Pakistan.
"While no one would deny that Pakistan is waging
a proxy war against India through terrorism, to be a
prisoner of this in diplomacy makes New Delhi seem as if
it has no other item on its agenda. This time, too,
terrorism is high on the prime minister's agenda. And,
even as he was setting out for Bali, Mr Vajpayee could
not restrain himself from speaking, at some length, of
Pakistan's terrorist training camps. Unless Indian
diplomacy can extricate itself from this trap, it is
unlikely to succeed in its pursuit of a larger, global
vision."
But, paradoxically, Indian foreign
policy successes are gaining a growing number of
admirers in Pakistan. Shireen M Mazari, a respected
strategic affairs analyst and director general,
Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad, commented in
a recent writeup in The News: "Pakistan should be
prepared to see India pushing its way into the
Organization of Islamic Countries. Already, India is
expanding its influence in the Gulf and has become a
full dialogue partner in the Gulf Cooperation Council,
alongside the US and Japan. And India is already active
in Afghanistan, Central Asia and increasingly in Iran
also. In Southeast Asia, India is increasing its
interaction with ASEAN while ensuring that Pakistan is
kept out.
"Indian pro-activism is in sharp
contrast to Pakistan, which continues to focus almost
solely on the US. Opportunities in the neighborhood go
unnoticed or ignored as we look to keep the US appeased
even as its officials launch into diatribes against
Pakistan - retracting some of them much later when the
damage has already been done, or when they finally feel
that Pakistan has had enough and will not tolerate more
abuse. Even at the micro level, individual Pakistanis
continue to be harassed and abused by US officials, with
no reciprocity in such treatment being meted out to
Americans visiting Pakistan."
Clearly, Vajpayee
will feel as much at home in Islamabad as he did in Bali
when, or perhaps one should still say if, he goes to
Islamabad next January to attend a SAARC summit
conference. His pro-active and successful foreign policy
has no dearth of admirers in the enemy camp. The
momentum built up at the ASEAN summit will, however,
have to be kept up for a real transformation of Indian
relationship with its Southeast Asian neighbors.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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