Look East Policy
"Look East" Policy, which was initiated in 1991, marked a strategic shift in India’s perspective of the world. It was developed and enacted during the government of Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and rigorously pursued by the successive governments of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh.
According to Sunanda K. Datta-Ray, the author of the only book-length study of this policy, Looking East to Look West: Lee Kuan Yew's Mission India, Rao devised the policy as only the first stage of a strategy to foster economic and security cooperation with the United States. However Looking East became an end in itself as India began to focus on developing economic relations with Singapore, largely because of Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew. This is in keeping with the philosophy of the Look East policy of India finding its destiny by linking itself more and more with its Asian partners to engage the rest of the world, and that India’s future and economic interests are best served by greater integration with East and Southeast Asia. Hence, Look East policy is an attempt to forge closer and deeper economic integration with its eastern neighbours as a part of the new realpolitik in evidence in India’s foreign policy, and the engagement with Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a part of the recognition on the part of India’s elite of the strategic and economic importance of the region to the country’s national interests. As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, the Look East policy is not merely an external economic policy; it is also a strategic shift in India’s vision of the world and India’s place in the evolving global economy.
Read more about Look East Policy: Background, Relations With East Asian Nations, Relations With China, Participation in Organisations, Assessment
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