INDIA’S NORTHEAST REGION AND ASEAN: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

North Eastern Region (NER) comprises of eight states namely Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura. It is bounded by Bhutan in the north and China in the north and north east while Myanmar in the east and Bangladesh in the west and south. NER is endowed with immense natural resources and shares ethnic relation with most of the south East Asian countries. Since, the Government of India initiated its multilateral trade and investment relation with most of the South East Asian countries under Look East policy (LEP). It is expected that NER would play the pivotal role for making the Look East Policy a grand success. NER is endowed with various resources like water, forest, horticulture, mineral resources etc., but these resources remain untapped. Hence it is expected that opening multilateral trade with South East Asian countries NER could develop itself. But the experiences under LEP is not encouraging. This happened due to underdeveloped socio- economic conditions prevailing in the NER. Both NER and ASEAN might benefit from the India's Look East Policy depending upon its absorptive capacity.