Reappraising India's Look East Policy: Time for a Human Security Oriented Agenda

Shantanu Chakrabarti

India’s expanding links with the countries located in Southeast Asia and East Asia along with her burgeoning influence in the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean zones since the 1990s have come under the collective analytical framework of ‘Look East Policy,’ and have been scrutinized and analyzed from every possible scholarly dimension over the years. The purpose of this paper is to attempt a reappraisal of India’s Look East as it has evolved through these various twists and turns trying to find out whether it has developed a degree of strategic coherence and whether it would be appropriate to recast and project it within an alternative ‘human security’ oriented paradigm.

Shantanu Chakrabarti Dr. Shantanu Chakrabarti is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of History, University of Calcutta. He is also the Convenor, Academic Committee, in the Institute of Foreign Policy Studies, University of Calcutta. He was formerly a Research Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi. His recent publications include: Privatisation of Security in the Post- Cold War Period: An Overview of its Nature and Implications, IDSA Monograph Series No.2, (New Delhi: Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) & Magnum, 2009; Cooperation in South Asia: the Indian Perspective (Kolkata: KP Bagchi, 2008); (Jointly edited with S. Chakraborty & K. Chatterjee) The Politics of Sport in South Asia (UK & USA: Routledge, 2010); (Jointly edited with S.Das) Challenges of Nation-Building in Developing Societies: Vignettes from West and South Asia (Kolkata: KP Bagchi, 2009) along with numerous book chapters and research articles.