ASEAN-India Summit 2022 UPSC Relevance
- 19th ASEAN-India Summit 2022: India-ASEAN Summit 2022 is being held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. ASEAN-India Summit is important for UPSC Prelims Exam (International Organizations) and UPSC Mains Exam ( International Relations- India and its association with regional groupings).
ASEAN-India Summit 2022 in News
- The Vice President, Shri Jagdeep Dhankhar led the Indian delegation, including the External Affairs Minister, Dr S. Jaishankar, at the 19th ASEAN-India Summit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
- At ASEAN-India Summit 2022, both parties adopted ASEAN-India Joint Statement, key features the joint statement are listed below.
ASEAN-India Summit 2022 Joint Statement
- At the 19th ASEAN-India summit, ASEAN and India adopted a joint statement announcing the elevation of the existing Strategic Partnership to Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.
- Both sides reaffirmed the importance of maintaining and promoting peace, stability, maritime safety and security, freedom of navigation and overflight in the Indo-Pacific region.
- The Joint Statement also reiterated the commitment to enhance India-ASEAN cooperation in various areas such as-
- Maritime activities,
- Counter-terrorism,
- Transnational crimes,
- Cyber security,
- Digital economy,
- Regional connectivity,
- Smart agriculture,
- Environment,
- Science & technology,
- Tourism, among other areas.
- The Joint Statement also proposes expediting the review of ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement (AITIGA) to make it more user-friendly, simple, and trade-facilitative.
Why ASEAN-India Summit 2022 is Unique/Remarkable?
- Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP): the ASEAN-India relationship is now elevated to comprehensive strategic partnership (CSP) level.
- A decade ago, the 2012 Commemorative Summit endorsed the Strategic Partnership (SP) between India and Asean.
- Ten years later, the relationship is now upgraded to the CSP. The Asean signed the CSP with China and Australia last year.
- Asean and India issued a joint statement highlighting what the CSP offers
- Vice-president led Delegation: For the first time, the Indian delegation was headed by the vice-president, which was a correct decision.
- The Asean Summits do not need high level political participation. Several high-level political leaders attended it.
- This is because many of them are on an Asia tour to attend: the COP27, Asean Plus Summit, the APEC and G20. One flight, four stops!
- Focus on Indo-Pacific: Indo-Pacific has gained the centre stage. Asean has issued the leaders’ declaration on mainstreaming four priority areas of the Asean outlook on the Indo-Pacific within Asean-led mechanisms.
- This is nothing but to clearly recognise Indo-Pacific as a reality moving ahead.
- India’s strategic position in the Indian Ocean and IPEF-membership makes it an essential economic power.
ASEAN-India Relations Way Forward
- Implementing FTA: Asean and India must reinforce the trade and investment relations.
- Since the free trade agreement (FTA) in goods came into effect between Asean and India in 2010, the trade between them has almost doubled to reach over $ 87 billion in 2019-20.
- However, it declined to $ 79 billion in 2020-21 due to pandemic-driven slowdown.
- Upgrading the Asean-India FTA (AIFTA) and its effective utilisation may perhaps add the required momentum to the bilateral trade flows while promoting sustainable and inclusive growth for both Asean and India.
- Promotion of Market-driven production networks: Another great opportunity to scale up the Asean-India engagements is the development of market-driven production networks.
- The pandemic has disrupted the supply chain networks and the supply of intermediate inputs and final goods across the world has been distrusted disproportionately.
- Current engagement in value chains between Asean and India is not substantial.
- Some of the sectors that hold promise in value chains between Asean and India are electrical equipment, industrial machines, automobiles, pharmaceuticals, power generating machines and telecommunications.
- Asean and India can leverage the emerging scenario and support each other to build new and resilient supply chains.
- However, to explore this opportunity, Asean and India must upgrade the skilling, improve logistics services and strengthen the transportation infrastructure.
- Focus on Investments: Investment reform is another challenge for both India and Asean.
- Asean and India should cooperate towards designing appropriate policies, simplifying investment regimes and streamlining investment processes to further strengthen the value chain and investment linkages.
- Business and economic cooperation between India and Asean in areas of mutual interest such as-
- Financial technology (FinTech), connectivity, start-ups, and innovation, empowerment of youth and women and the development of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
- These will be an important driver to move up the Asean-India relations to a higher plateau.
- CSP joint statement has extended space for connectivity. For India, the ‘Connecting the Connectivities’ may play out well if and only if the overall architecture is benign and serve as a basis for regional infrastructure cooperation.
- We should not forget our Northeast when we talk about connectivity with Asean.
- Somehow, the CSP joint statement missed the importance of the Northeast.
- Focus on Socio-economic aspects of India-ASEAN Relations: We agree that socio-cultural issues in Asean–India relations assume special significance.
- The 10 Asean States are mere cultural replications of 29 Indian states and Union Territories.
- Our cultural approach to Asean must be inclusive and broad-based.
Conclusion
- A stronger Asean-India partnership would strengthen multilateralism, which is at the moment facing a great survival challenge.
- Moving from SP to CSP, addressing the regional challenges and appropriate solutions together, leaving aside narrow differences, is what we need and what we need to respect.
19th ASEAN-India Economic Ministers’ Meeting 2022