ASEAN and India: Look East to Act East, Strategic Partnership and Indo-Pacific

ASEAN and India have built one of the most consequential regional relationships in contemporary Asia. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations was founded in Bangkok on 8 August 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, and grew to ten members with the inclusion of Brunei (1984), Vietnam (1995), Laos and Myanmar (1997) and Cambodia (1999). India, by contrast, was for much of the Cold War a peripheral player in Southeast Asia. The relationship took shape only after 1991, when India launched the Look East Policy under Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao as part of the broader economic opening. Three decades later, ASEAN and India are linked by a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, a free trade agreement under review, and a shared interest in a rules-based Indo-Pacific.

For the UPSC International Relations syllabus, ASEAN and India is a foundational topic because it illustrates how India translates regional diplomacy into economic, security and connectivity outcomes, and how the Act East Policy operates as the eastern wing of India’s wider Indo-Pacific orientation alongside the Quad Summit 2025 and India’s Indo-Pacific strategy.

From Look East to Act East

India’s engagement with ASEAN evolved in distinct stages. The Look East Policy of 1991 reoriented Indian foreign policy after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, India’s traditional partner. The first stage was about trade and economic engagement. The second, from the late 1990s, was about institutional integration. The third, from 2014, was an upgrade in strategic ambition under the Act East Policy.

1992: Sectoral Dialogue Partner

ASEAN granted India sectoral dialogue partner status in 1992, covering trade, investment and tourism. This was India’s formal entry into the ASEAN framework after years of cold relations driven by India’s Soviet-leaning non-alignment.

1995: Full Dialogue Partner

In December 1995 India was elevated to full dialogue partner status at the fifth ASEAN summit in Bangkok, giving it access to the full range of ministerial-level dialogues with ASEAN.

1996: ARF Membership

India joined the ASEAN Regional Forum in 1996, gaining a seat at the only Asia-wide security dialogue at the time.

2002: Summit-Level Partner

At the eighth ASEAN summit in Phnom Penh in November 2002, the first ASEAN-India summit was held, upgrading the relationship to summit level — an annual heads-of-state meeting that has continued every year since.

2012: Strategic Partnership

At the ASEAN-India Commemorative Summit in New Delhi in December 2012, marking 20 years of dialogue partnership, the relationship was elevated to a Strategic Partnership and a vision statement was issued.

2014: Act East Policy

In November 2014, at the 12th ASEAN-India summit and the East Asia Summit in Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi formally upgraded Look East into the Act East Policy. The shift signalled greater emphasis on connectivity, infrastructure, defence cooperation and security, and on extending engagement beyond ASEAN to the broader Indo-Pacific.

2022: Comprehensive Strategic Partnership

At the 19th ASEAN-India summit in Phnom Penh in November 2022, marking 30 years of dialogue partnership, ASEAN and India elevated the relationship to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. The joint statement set out cooperation across political-security, economic, socio-cultural and connectivity pillars.

ASEAN: Architecture and Members

ASEAN today has ten member states — Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Timor-Leste has been admitted in principle as the eleventh member, with formal accession in progress. The ASEAN Secretariat is in Jakarta. The grouping operates by consensus, the so-called ASEAN Way, and around the principle of ASEAN centrality in regional architecture.

ASEAN sits at the centre of a web of forums that India is part of — the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF, 27 members), the East Asia Summit (EAS, 18 members including India, China, the US, Russia, Japan, Australia and the Republic of Korea), the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM-Plus, eight dialogue partners plus the ten ASEAN states) and ASEAN Plus Three with China, Japan and the Republic of Korea.

Economic Pillar

The economic relationship is anchored in the ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement (AITIGA), signed in Bangkok in August 2009 and operational from January 2010. AITIGA covered trade in goods between India and ASEAN with a phased tariff-reduction schedule. A services agreement and an investment agreement were signed in 2014.

AITIGA Review

Bilateral trade in goods grew from about USD 13 billion in 2003–04 to over USD 100 billion in recent years, but India runs a persistent trade deficit with ASEAN — estimated at USD 38–43 billion in the recent fiscal cycle — driven by imports of electronics, palm oil and crude products. Indian industry has long argued that AITIGA’s rules of origin and tariff lines disadvantage Indian manufacturers, especially when third-country goods enter via ASEAN re-routing. In 2023 ASEAN and India agreed to undertake a comprehensive review of AITIGA, the first such review since the agreement entered force, with the objective of completing it by 2025. The review covers rules of origin, customs procedures, tariff lines and an upgrade of disciplines on standards and non-tariff measures.

RCEP Exit

In November 2019, at the ASEAN summit in Bangkok, India announced that it would not join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a 15-country trade agreement covering the ten ASEAN states plus China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia and New Zealand. The Indian decision was driven by concerns about an inadequate auto-trigger mechanism for import surges, the base year for tariff reductions, ratchet obligations, and the prospect of large trade deficits — particularly with China — being locked in. RCEP came into force in January 2022 without India. The exit has shaped subsequent Indian trade policy: bilateral agreements (with Australia, the UAE, EFTA) and a sharper insistence on rules of origin and trade-deficit safeguards in any AITIGA review.

Political and Security Pillar

ASEAN and India work together in three principal security forums. The ASEAN Regional Forum brings 27 members together at foreign ministerial level for confidence-building, preventive diplomacy and approaches to conflict. The East Asia Summit is the premier strategic forum, where India has used the platform to articulate the SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region) vision and the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative (IPOI), launched at the 2019 EAS in Bangkok. The ADMM-Plus is the defence-minister-level forum where India co-chairs experts’ working groups on maritime security, counter-terrorism, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, peacekeeping and military medicine.

Naval cooperation has deepened markedly. India holds regular bilateral exercises with Singapore (SIMBEX, since 1994), Indonesia (Samudra Shakti), Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam. The first ASEAN-India Maritime Exercise was held in May 2023 off Singapore and the South China Sea, with eight ASEAN navies and the Indian Navy participating. India and the Philippines concluded a contract for the supply of BrahMos cruise missiles in 2022, the first export of the system. India and Vietnam have a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership signed in 2016.

Connectivity and the Indo-Pacific

Connectivity is the third pillar. The India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway, partly under construction and partly operational, is intended to link Moreh in Manipur with Mae Sot in Thailand via Myanmar. The Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project connects Kolkata to Sittwe port in Myanmar and onward via inland waterway and road to Mizoram. Both projects have been slowed by the political crisis in Myanmar since 2021 but remain anchor projects in India’s eastern connectivity strategy.

The ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP), adopted by ASEAN foreign ministers in 2019, provides a meeting point with India’s Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative, with four common areas of cooperation — maritime, connectivity, sustainable development and economic cooperation. The 2022 Comprehensive Strategic Partnership built directly on the IPOI-AOIP convergence.

ASEAN and India: Outlook

The trajectory is one of deepening engagement but uneven delivery. Strategic alignment on a rules-based Indo-Pacific has clearly grown. Defence cooperation has matured into joint exercises, defence-equipment sales and capacity-building. The connectivity agenda has lagged because of the Myanmar crisis. The economic pillar is mid-restructuring because of the AITIGA review and the legacy of the RCEP exit. The challenge for Indian diplomacy is to translate the upgraded Comprehensive Strategic Partnership into delivery on these fronts, while preserving ASEAN centrality at a time when great-power competition is sharpening pressure on Southeast Asia.

For students of the UPSC syllabus, ASEAN and India sits at the intersection of regional cooperation, trade policy and Indo-Pacific strategy, and contrasts instructively with SAARC and India and BIMSTEC as models of regionalism, and with WTO and India on the multilateral trade front. The SCO Summit 2025 provides a parallel reference point for regional groupings where India operates.

Frequently Asked Questions