Look East to Act East Policy

This volume captures the success of India’s Look East Policy (LEP) in promoting economic engagement with neighbouring countries in Asia and simultaneously its limitations in propelling growth in the bordering North Eastern Region — India’s bridge head to South East Asia. It analyses the instrumental role of LEP in bringing a tectonic shift in India’s foreign trade by redirecting the focus from the West to the East, thus leading to a fundamental change in the nature of India’s economic interdependence. Besides discussing foreign trade, it expounds as to how LEP made India play an important role in the emerging Asian security architecture and liberated Indian foreign policy from being centred on South Asia. The essays also enumerate the reasons for LEP’s failure in the North Eastern Region and chart out actionable programmes for course correction that might be factored into its latest edition — the Act East Policy.

This book will interest scholars and researchers of international relations, international trade and economics, politics, and particularly those concerned with Northeast India.

“"Overall, however, the volume does portray with full energy the current challenges facing one of the most neglected regions of India and which is now increasingly confronted by forces of globalization in Asia." Ulises Granados, Asia Pacific Studies Program, Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico (ITAM), Asian Politics & Policy (APP)”

"Overall, however, the volume does portray with full energy the current challenges facing one of the most neglected regions of India and which is now increasingly confronted by forces of globalization in Asia."

Ulises Granados, Asia Pacific Studies Program, Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico (ITAM), Asian Politics & Policy (APP)

Gurudas Das is currently a faculty member at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology Silchar, Assam, India. He has served as Reader at the Department of Economics, North-Eastern Hill University, as Fellow at the Omeo Kumar Das Institute of Social Change and Development and as Lecturer at St Anthony’s College, Shillong. He has also published widely.

C. Joshua Thomas is Deputy Director at the Indian Council of Social Science Research, North Eastern Regional Centre (ICSSR-NERC), Shillong, Meghalaya, India. Previously, he has worked at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Madras Christian College (Autonomous), Chennai; Wangkhao College, Mon, Nagaland and Union Christian College, Barapani, Meghalaya. He has authored, co-authored and edited several books on Northeast India and has contributed research papers in journals. He is the Managing Editor of Man and Society: A Journal of North-East Studies for the last twelve years.

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