♤ Factors responsible for India’s Look East Policy:

o Collapse of Soviet Union- the collapse of India’s long term ally left India isolated on the International arena. Moreover, the gulf crisis, the spike in oil prices, the collapse of rupee-rubal agreement, all left India on its own, without an ally on the international scene. This made search for new partners imperative.

o Balance of Payment crisis- The BoP crisis & the conditions imposed upon it for obtaining loans from IMF resulted in India opening up its market by reducing tariffs to the world. Thus providing a ready market for goods.

♤ During this initial phase the focus was on establishing trade & economic linkages with East Asian countries & for achieving this aim, it went ahead to foster greater trade & economic linkages with ASEAN group of countries.

♤ In this period India became a sectoral dialogue partner of ASEAN in 1992 and then becoming a Summit level partner in 2002.

♤ Trade between India and ASEAN multiplied fourfold — from $ 3.1 billion in 1991 to about