India's Look East Policy

India's Look East Policy of 1991 was inclined towards improving and strengthening her relations with neighbouring South East Asian countries which had been neglected for a long time and explore the economic opportunities in the region by access to its growing markets where China had already penetrated. It was developed and enacted during the Prime Minister P.V.Narasimha Rao and rigorously pursued by the successive administrations of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh.

The policy came specifically at the time of economic liberalization reforms and the post cold war phase of non-existent rival political alliances. It was the first time when India took recourse to improving her relations with the neighboring South East Asian countries of Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia and making a place in the emerging global economy by going beyond the confines of SAARC.

In her bid to improve the bilateral and multilateral relations with the South East Asian region, it was conducive and pertinent for India to forge strong ties and co-operation with the biggest association and Bloc of the South East Asian countries i.e. the ASEAN (Association of South East Asian countries) formed in 1967 for geopolitical and economic organization. Some of the major areas where India and ASEAN proposed and worked together have been Political and security Issues with forums such as India and ASEAN Regional Forum(ARF) Of 1996, Mekong Ganga Project(MGC) of 1997, Free Trade Agreement(FTA) of 2008 as the first multilateral Trade agreement by India for co-operation in Information Technology, ASEAN India business summits of 2002 and 2009 which addressed the six key areas of economic integration, people to people contacts, agriculture, human resource development, education, science and technology and information and communication technology, Bay of Bengal initiative for Multi Sectoral technical cooperation (BIMSTEC) of 2008 and East Asia Summit (EAS) of 2009.