National Seminar on ‘India’s Look East Policy & the Response of the North-Eastern States’

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Date: 4th October to 5th October, 2013,
Place: St. Joseph’s College, ]
Jakhama, Nagaland.
Convenor: Mr. Dihe Mao,
HoD Political Science.
Co-Convenor: Ms. Lilly Humtsoe

Concept Note
India’s Look East policy represents India’s efforts to cultivate extensive economic and strategic relations with the nations of Southeast Asia in order to bolster her standing as a regional power and a counterweight to the strategic influence of the People’s Republic of China. Initiated in 1991, it marked a strategic shift in India’s perspective of the world. It was developed and enacted during the government of Prime Minister P.V. NarasimhaRao, and rigorously pursued by the successive administrations of AtalBehari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh.

The Look East Policy (LEP) touted as the harbinger of change and prosperity to the North-Eastern Region (NER) of India, for all purpose and intent remains more on papers.   The significance of Northeast India as a bridgehead between India and Southeast Asia is being increasingly realized by the policy makers in New Delhi. For a long time since independence, the security dimension dominated Indian thinking. As a result, Northeast India was perceived as aliability and a burden. However, in the context of the importance attached to “Look East Policy”, there is an increasing realization that if infra-structure development takes place, North East India could become a point of convergence among the dynamic economies of Southeast Asia, Southern China and India.

The seminar intends to study the composition of India-ASEAN trade in order to suggest the policy measures that will facilitate the changes in the production structure of the North Eastern Region in conformity with the demand structure of ASEAN which will lay a strong basis for trade between the region and the ASEAN.

 The proposed seminar also seeks to assess the views of the ASEAN economic agents in relation to their prospects of economic engagement with the North Eastern Region.

It also aspires to investigate the nature of incentives that the federal and the state governments can device in order to transform the North- Eastern Region growth in the region.

This seminar also seeks to find out how the new policy thinking, the ‘Look East’ apparently intended to deliver India’s Northeast from its presently landlocked and peripheral status produces new geopolitical imaginaries that are not necessarily bound by the limits set forth by it.

Teachers and students from universities and colleges are most welcome.