Arun Umrao - India's Look East policy.

India's Look East policy.

India has happy experiences with most of the regional organisations, like Commonwealth. India has played active role in helping the Commonwealth play positive role among its member countries and played crucial role in ending of coups against democratic governments in countries like Fiji, Nigeria and Pakistan. In the sixtees and seventees india suffers two major wars with pakistan the slightly tilted towards USSR for military and technological aid. After globalization, indian economy expanded and for trade and commerce, india started exploration of new trade partners apart from its traditional trade partners, like American and European Countries. In late nintees, the ASEAN countries flourished in industrial output, and India make drastic change in its foreing policy and started exploring relation with Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries. India's political and commercial relations (joint venture with Vietnam for oil exploration in South China Sea) with ASEAN nations improved, especially after India embraced the "Look East Policy" to counter the influence of Chinese expansion in Indian Ocean region. To increase the strategic relations between India and ASEAN, the state head of 10 ASEAN member's were invited as chief guests of 69th Republic Day of India. India is a full dialogue partner of ASEAN and is a member of the ASEAN Regional Forum. India's trade has been increased from 65 billion dollars to 70 billion dollars with ASEAN countries from 2015-16 to 2016-17.

India has also established strong commercial, cultural and military ties with the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam and Cambodia. India signed free trade agreements as well as military cooperation with Sri Lanka and Thailand. It has numerous free trade agreements with East Asian economies, including Singapore, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, and ASEAN. Ties have been strengthened with Taiwan, Japan and South Korea over common emphasis on democracy, human rights and strategic interests. South Korea and Japan remain amongst the major sources of foreign investment in India.