Earlier this month, India hosted the second BIMSTEC Foreign Ministers Retreat, underscoring its interest in strengthening the regional organisation. India’s neighbourhood is the world’s least integrated region, which continues to face long-standing structural and political issues. While bilateral differences and politics have placed the regional organisations like SAARC in a dormant state, there have also been some offshoots of progress. For India, in the last decade or so, the focus has shifted towards the east. New Delhi has begun to look at alternative approaches through bilateral initiatives, leveraging the platform provided by BIMSTEC and also capitalizing on the potential of sub-regional initiatives like BBIN. Promoting regional connectivity and regionalism has become crucial for India to promote economic growth and counter extra-regional powers like China, especially at a time when its neighbourhood is growing geo-strategically important.
Why has connectivity and regionalism become important for India? How do you perceive the current status quo in the connectivity projects in the region? Is India still prioritizing its bilateral connectivity efforts over regional initiatives? How effective has sub-regional connectivity been in expanding connectivity in the region? Why are some neighbours keen to revive SAARC despite all its limitations? How can BIMSTEC be effectively used to expand cooperation in the Bay of Bengal region? How have the connectivity linkages with Thailand fared in the aftermath of the crisis in Myanmar? How will it impact India's broader connectivity aspirations with the ASEAN countries? How has India’s outreach to its western neighbourhood fared in the past decade and what are the future prospects?
This is an in-person event.
