Basics of Indian Foreign Policy: Tools of foreign policy

The ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute's record of its lecture series lists the 13th Singapore Lecture, delivered by Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao in Singapore on 8 September 1994, under the title 'India and the Asia-Pacific: Forging a New Relationship'. The lecture set out India's economic reforms and its wish to join the dynamic economies of the region as a partner, and scholars treat it as one of the clearest early statements of the Look East policy launched after the 1991 crisis. Its choice of the wider 'Asia-Pacific', rather than South-East Asia alone, also foreshadowed the later widening of the policy's geography. The other titles are invented for this question.

The Prime Minister's opening statement at the 12th India-ASEAN Summit in Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar, on 12 November 2014 announced that the Look East policy had become the Act East Policy, and India's ASEAN-India S&T portal also records that the policy was formally enunciated there. The change of verb signalled a more action-oriented approach, with stress on connectivity, commerce and culture and on security cooperation with countries of the wider Asia-Pacific. The MEA has since said in Parliament that ASEAN is at the core of the policy. The 2015 Kuala Lumpur summit came a year later; the 2018 Commemorative Summit marked 25 years of dialogue relations; and the 2018 Shangri-La address set out India's Indo-Pacific vision rather than launching Act East.

Pair 1 is correct: the MEA reply of 23 December 2015 said the Act East Policy focuses on the extended neighbourhood in the Asia-Pacific. Pair 2 is correct: the Prime Minister announced the 'Act Far East' policy at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok on 5 September 2019, to deepen engagement with Russia's Far East. Pair 3 is correct: Connect Central Asia, announced at Bishkek in June 2012, is aimed at Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Pair 4 is wrong: the Look West policy launched on 27 July 2005 was about the Gulf, which the Prime Minister called part of India's 'natural economic hinterland', and it began with talks on an India-GCC free trade agreement. So three pairs are correctly matched.

The MEA reply summarised by PIB on 23 December 2015 said that India had upgraded its relations to a strategic partnership with Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia, Singapore and ASEAN, and had forged close ties with all countries of the Asia-Pacific. So Indonesia and Vietnam were named, and the answer is two. The Philippines was not in the 2015 list; its ties with India were raised to a strategic partnership only much later, which is why the question is anchored to the 2015 reply. Myanmar was not in the list either, although it is India's land bridge to South-East Asia and is central to the policy's connectivity projects. The question rewards reading the official list rather than guessing from importance.

Both statements are taken from the MEA's reply summarised by PIB on 23 December 2015. Statement-I is correct: the reply said the Act East Policy, 'originally conceived as an economic initiative, has gained political, strategic and cultural dimensions', including institutional mechanisms for dialogue and cooperation. Statement-II is also correct: it said the objective is to promote economic cooperation, cultural ties and a strategic relationship with countries of the Asia-Pacific through continuous engagement, 'thereby providing enhanced connectivity to the States of North Eastern Region including Arunachal Pradesh'. But Statement-II does not explain Statement-I: the North-East connectivity goal is one of the policy's aims, while the widening into political, strategic and cultural fields reflects India's broader interests in the region. Hence option (b).

The ceremony of 28 June 2014 in Beijing was attended by Chinese President Xi Jinping, Myanmar President U Thein Sein and Indian Vice President Hamid Ansari, who delivered India's statement. The MEA published that statement the same day.

Statement-I is correct: towards the end of the lecture of 14 November 2019, the EAM said, 'Taking off from non-alignment, we could perhaps speak today of multi-alignment', describing a world of plurilateral arrangements in which India works with different partners on different issues, for example through RIC and JAI. Statement-II is wrong because it reverses his words: he argued that, although some see such diverse engagement as opportunism, 'India is really seeking strategic convergence rather than tactical convenience.' So the first statement is accurate and the second is a deliberate inversion. The idea links the older goal of strategic autonomy to a more active practice of engaging several powers at once.

The reply summarised by PIB on 23 December 2015 stated that, in addition to ASEAN, the ARF and the EAS, India had also been engaging actively in regional fora such as BIMSTEC, the Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD), the Mekong Ganga Cooperation (MGC) and the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA). These are the bodies that carry Act East into the Bay of Bengal, the Mekong basin and the Indian Ocean littoral. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation was not named: it is a Eurasian body centred on Russia, China and Central Asia, India was then only an observer and became a full member in 2017, and its engagement is usually discussed under Central Asia policy rather than Act East.