Volume 17, No. 1, 2020
India’s Trade Relation With ASEAN Countries: Recent Trends And Prospects
Bikash Mazumdar , Niranjan Saikia
Abstract
During the pre-British period, India’s foreign trades with different countries were wonderful. India was quite famous for her exporting goods specially textile handicrafts. However, that bright image, somehow, was erased during the British rule for dual exploitation of economic resources, as already explained by Dadabhai Naoroji (The Drain Theory). In the post-independence era also, India, could export her agricultural and agro based products to most of the western countries. In the recent trend, ie, after economic reforms, when a new trade policy has been prescribed and implemented by Narsimha Rao’s government, the trade direction altered from west to East. That revolutionary policy was the Look East policy, which was implemented for making the base of foreign relationship with the eastern countries like Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia Vietnam etc. Though the outlook of that policy was to strengthening the economic relation with these countries, yet some internal causes were also come to light that was to break the vicious chain of China that has been constructing along the boundary countries of India. It is worth mentioning that the look east policy became the Act East policy in 2014 by Present Prime Minister of India, Shree Narendra Modi that extend the view of the look east policy to economic as well as cultural unite with the eastern countries. In this paper, the recent trend of India’s trade with the ASEAN member countries and the prospects of building greater trading relation are highlighted.
Pages: 405-413
Keywords: Look-East, Policy, ASEAN, Trade.