India-ASEAN Relations: The Voyage of Eco-Political Multilateralism ?

The intensification of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and India's cooperation has already been shaped upshot with the implementation of the ASEANIndia free trade area. However, Eco-political relations have not been fully examined specially if there are possibilities of potential conflicting policy directions. This paper aims to describe in brief about ASEAN and India's political and meteoric economic relations through the look east policy paradigm. ASEAN was formed in 1967 by the ten countries of South East Asia. It began with Five South East Asian nations (Indonesia, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore and Thailand) and later on Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam joined. Coupled with a number of virtues like enormous size, huge population, convenient geo-strategic location progressive military might, meteoric economic growth inspired various states together with South-east Asian States to devise collaborative ties with India. India-ASEAN relations are reflection of the complementariness of interests between the two entities. As India chooses embark on a benign projection of its rising power, it has become vital to chart a foreign policy commensurate with its ambitions in Asia and the world per se.