From Look East to Act East: India’s Strategic Transformation

When India faced a crippling balance of payments crisis in 1991, the response was not just an economic overhaul but a complete rethink of how the country engaged with the world. Out of this churn emerged the Look East Policy, a deliberate turn towards the dynamic economies of Southeast and East Asia. What began as a modest attempt to find new markets eventually grew into a strategic doctrine that repositioned India within the Asia-Pacific. Understanding this journey-from cautious economic outreach to confident strategic engagement-helps explain how India came to play a central role in one of the world’s most contested regions.

Why India decided to look east 🔗

The early 1990s presented a perfect storm of pressures and opportunities. The collapse of the Soviet Union meant India had lost its most valued economic and strategic partner almost overnight. At the same time, the end of the Cold War forced most Asian countries to adapt their economic and security policies to a new global order. India, having long pursued an inward-looking and non-aligned posture, suddenly needed fresh partnerships and new sources of trade, capital, and technology.

The Look East Policy was formally launched in 1991 under Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao as a direct response to the challenges that followed the collapse of Cold War structures. Its logic was straightforward. East Asia was booming. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the ASEAN economies had become global powerhouses through rapid industrialisation and integration into world supply chains. India recognised that its own economic future was tied to this dynamic neighbourhood and decided to engage with it directly.

The economic engine behind the policy 🔗

The Look East Policy was inseparable from the broader programme of liberalisation, privatisation, and globalisation that India launched in 1991. The twin goals were clear: integrate the Indian economy with the fast-growing economies of Southeast Asia, and break free from a Western-centred foreign policy by diversifying India’s international relationships. By engaging with the region, India hoped to attract investment and gain access to the markets that were powering Asian growth.

A slow and uncertain start 🔗

The early years of the Look East Policy were marked more by ambition than achievement. India’s economic reforms were slow to gain momentum, and the country lacked the institutional frameworks needed to deepen engagement with East Asia quickly. Bureaucratic processes, infrastructure limitations, and unfamiliarity with East Asian business practices all created obstacles to rapid progress.

Regional skepticism about India’s intentions 🔗

There was also genuine doubt in the region about whether India was serious. Many East Asian countries were uncertain about India’s commitment to reform and remained wary of its long history of non-alignment. They were preoccupied with their own regional concerns and unconvinced that India was relevant to their economic growth. While trade with Japan and South Korea expanded gradually, India did not yet occupy a central place in the region’s economic or security calculations.

This skepticism had some basis. A scholarly assessment of the policy notes that while India had implemented first-generation reforms that reduced import duties and permitted currency convertibility, the second wave of liberalisation addressing structural issues remained slow-moving. Persistent infrastructure deficiencies, a difficult regulatory climate, and stalled labour and land reforms held the economy back. A string of short-lived governments in the mid-1990s raised further questions about whether India’s reform drive was losing steam.

The blow of the Asian Financial Crisis 🔗

India’s standing in the region suffered another setback during the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-99, which slowed the country’s economic engagement with the region. Just as India was beginning to find its footing, the very economies it sought to partner with were thrown into turmoil. The crisis tempered expectations and delayed the deeper integration the policy had envisioned.

Building institutional bridges with ASEAN 🔗

Despite the slow start, India steadily worked its way into the architecture of Asian regionalism. This institutional climb is perhaps the clearest measure of the Look East Policy’s gradual success. India began formal engagement with ASEAN in 1992 as a Sectoral Dialogue Partner, focusing on trade, investment, tourism, and science and technology. This was the first formal step in a relationship that would become a cornerstone of Indian foreign policy.

The relationship was then steadily upgraded. India became a full Dialogue Partner of ASEAN in 1996, and annual summits with ASEAN began in 2002. In 1996, India also joined the ASEAN Regional Forum, which gave it a seat at the table on regional security matters for the first time. The progression from sectoral partner to summit-level partner reflected the region’s growing acceptance of India as a serious player.

A widening web of forums 🔗

Over time, India embedded itself across the full range of regional mechanisms. Beyond the ASEAN Regional Forum, India is now an active participant in the East Asia Summit, the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus, and the Expanded ASEAN Maritime Forum. According to India’s mission to ASEAN, there are in total around 30 dialogue mechanisms between India and ASEAN, cutting across various sectors. This dense network of engagement transformed India from an outsider into a regular and expected presence in the region’s deliberations.

The relationship deepened further in the following decades. India and ASEAN upgraded their ties to a Strategic Partnership at the Commemorative Summit held in New Delhi in 2012, marking two decades of steady progress.

The power vacuum that India helped fill 🔗

While the economic story of the Look East Policy was one of slow growth, the strategic story was shaped by a dramatic shift in the regional balance of power. The catalyst was the departure of the United States from its long-standing military bases in the Philippines.

The closure of US bases in the Philippines 🔗

For nearly a century, the US Naval Base at Subic Bay and the nearby Clark Air Base had anchored American power across the Pacific and Indian Oceans. But after the Cold War, rising Filipino nationalism and the catastrophic eruption of Mount Pinatubo changed the calculus. In 1991, the Philippine Senate voted to terminate the lease that had allowed American forces on its soil. By late 1992, the American flag was lowered at Subic Bay for the final time, ending nearly a century of US military presence.

The strategic consequences were immediate. As one US naval analysis observed, the departure of American forces created a power vacuum in Southeast Asia that China would soon move to fill. The security umbrella that had deterred regional hegemony for decades was suddenly gone.

China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea 🔗

Beijing wasted little time. In February 1992, the Chinese government passed a law asserting its claims over a vast swathe of the South China Sea, and two years later occupied Mischief Reef in the disputed Spratly Islands. China began constructing structures on contested reefs despite objections from neighbouring claimants. The maritime contestation that defines the region today traces directly back to this period.

This growing assertiveness created both anxiety and opportunity. Southeast Asian states grew wary of being dominated by a single rising power and increasingly welcomed other actors who could provide a measure of balance. India, already engaging the region through ASEAN dialogues and security forums, found itself well-positioned to step into this strategic space. Its participation in mechanisms like the ASEAN Regional Forum allowed it to contribute to regional security conversations at precisely the moment when the region was looking for alternatives.

From looking to acting 🔗

By the turn of the century, India’s circumstances had changed dramatically. A faster-growing economy, greater global standing, and a more favourable external environment meant the cautious outreach of the 1990s could give way to something bolder. The policy entered a second phase that expanded its geographical scope from Australia to East Asia, with ASEAN at its core, and shifted the focus from trade alone to wider economic and security cooperation, political partnerships, and physical connectivity.

The launch of the Act East Policy 🔗

The most visible marker of this transformation came in 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi set the Act East Policy in motion at the East Asia Summit in Myanmar. The new framework was built around the priorities of connectivity, commerce, and culture, later expanded to include capacity building. It signalled a more proactive and action-oriented stance that went well beyond the largely economic focus of its predecessor.

Analysts caution against dismissing this as a mere change of name. As one assessment notes, the Act East Policy went beyond the economic focus of the Look East Policy and made progress on connectivity and defence collaboration. Relations with ASEAN broadened to include security, strategic, political, and counter-terrorism cooperation. India also began treating its North-Eastern states as a land bridge to Southeast Asia, with projects like the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway and the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project designed to turn the region into a gateway rather than a periphery.

India in China’s shadow 🔗

The transformation has been real but not without limits. India’s relative weight in the region has grown, yet it has done so under China’s shadow, with Beijing’s economic and military size making it difficult for India to carve out an effective regional role. India has compensated by working closely with the United States and Asian partners like Japan and Australia. Its comprehensive power ranking in the region has steadily risen, placing it third after the United States and China.

This is the essential character of India’s eastward journey. It is not a story of dominance but of patient positioning, of converting an early economic experiment into a durable strategic presence in a region that has become central to global power politics.

The bigger picture 🔗

The arc from Look East to Act East captures a broader transformation in how India sees itself and its place in Asia. What started as a response to economic crisis and the loss of a superpower ally evolved into a confident assertion of regional engagement. The slow reforms and skepticism of the early years gave way to institutional integration, and the strategic vacuum left by shifting great-power dynamics gave India room to grow into a more consequential role. The journey remains unfinished, shaped continually by the rise of China, the principle of ASEAN centrality, and the need for India’s domestic reforms to match its global ambitions.

What do you think? Has the shift from a cautious “Look East” approach to a more assertive “Act East” strategy genuinely strengthened India’s strategic position in the Asia-Pacific, or does China’s overwhelming presence still limit how far India can go? And how much of the policy’s eventual success depended on external events like the US withdrawal from the Philippines rather than India’s own efforts?

References

1. https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/indias-act-east-policy-and-regional-cooperation-61375
2. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09512748.2022.2110609
3. https://indmissionasean.gov.in/pages/MjU,
4. https://www.indiaasean.org/node/46
5. https://aistic.gov.in/ASEAN/aseanIndia
6. https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/reopening-subic-renewing-us-strategy-in-southeast-asia
7. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2024/may/there-and-back-and-there-again-us-military-bases-philippines
8. https://thediplomat.com/2020/09/former-us-bases-in-the-philippines-prompt-mixed-feelings/
9. https://www.gatewayhouse.in/indias-act-east-policy-far-beyond/
10. https://www.belfercenter.org/research-analysis/india-leaning-one-side-cautiously