Abstract:
The Look East Policy was one of the major components of India’s post-liberalization
foreign policy. With successive Indian governments having supported and advanced
the policy, it evolved from an economic engagement with South East Asia to a broader
economic and strategic engagement with the larger Indo-Pacific region. A change in
government in 2014, led to the Look East Policy transforming into the Act East Policy,
talking of a deeper and more intense engagement with the Indo-Pacific region and at
the same time maintaining ASEAN’s centrality to the engagement. While the
circumstances and actors (including India) in 2014 were starkly different from that of
1992, is the “change” in policy real or just a nomenclature change? Has it turned out to
be a case of “old wine in a new bottle”? This dissertation examines this transition of
India’s South East Asia policy and attempts to discern the dimensions and challenges
of the Act East Policy that mark it different from its predecessor.
