Vientiane: Prime Minister Narendra Modi participated in the 21st ASEAN-India Summit in Vientiane, Laos to mark the 10th year of the Act East Policy and announced a 10-point plan to strengthen connectivity and resilience with its partners in the region with an aim to boost physical, digital, cultural and spiritual connectivity and resilience in his quest to chart the future direction of India's relations with the bloc.
During the high-level summit, Modi asserted that India's Act East policy has given energy and momentum to historic relations between New Delhi and ASEAN countries. He also said India-ASEAN cooperation was much needed today in the face of global conflicts. "We are peace-loving countries, respect each other's national integrity and sovereignty and we are committed to the bright future of our youth. I believe that the 21st century is the century of India and ASEAN countries," he added.
Prime Minister Modi laid out India's human-centric approach in the development partnership with ASEAN by highlighting how 300 ASEAN students have benefitted from scholarships at the Nalanda University. "Efforts have been made to preserve shared heritage and heritage in Lao, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Indonesia. Whether it is the Covid pandemic or natural disaster, we have helped each other," he added.
What was PM Modi's 10-point plan at India-ASEAN Summit?
According to the Ministry of External Affairs, PM Modi reiterated India's support for ASEAN Unity, ASEAN Centrality and ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific. He highlighted that India-ASEAN trade had doubled to over $130 million in the last 10 years and that ASEAN is today one of India’s largest trade and investment partners with direct flight connectivity established with seven ASEAN countries.
The Indian PM announced a 10-point plan in keeping with the Chair’s theme of "Enhancing Connectivity and Resilience”
- Celebrating the year 2025 as ASEAN-India Year of Tourism for which India would make available $5 million towards joint activities
- To celebrate a decade of Act East Policy through several people centric activities including Youth Summit, Start-up Festival, Hackathon, Music Festival, ASEAN-India Network of Think Tanks and Delhi Dialogue.
- To organise ASEAN-India Women Scientists Conclave under ASEAN-India Science and Technology Development Fund;
- Doubling the number of scholarships at Nalanda University and provision of new scholarships for ASEAN students at Agricultural Universities in India
- Review of ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement by 2025
- Enhancing Disaster Resilience for which India would make available $5 million
- Initiate a new Health Ministers’ track towards building Health Resilience
- Initiate a regular mechanism of ASEAN-India Cyber Policy Dialogue towards strengthening Digital and Cyber Resilience
- Workshop on Green Hydrogen
- Invited ASEAN Leaders to join ‘Plant a Tree for Mother’ campaign towards building climate resilience.
Furthermore, the leaders agreed to create a new ASEAN-India Plan of Action (2026-2030) that will guide both sides in realizing the full potential of the ASEAN-India partnership and adopted two joint statements on strengthening India-ASEAN Comprehensive Strategic Partnership for Peace, Stability and Prosperity in the Region in the context of the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP) and another on Advancing Digital Transformation.
The leaders recognised the contribution of India’s Act East Policy in advancing the partnership between ASEAN and India. They also lauded India’s leadership in the field of digital transformation and welcomed the partnership with India in digital public infrastructure.
India-ASEAN relations
2024 marks a decade of India's Act East Policy and during this decade, the engagements have grown from stronger people-to-people connections to robust cooperation in trade and investment, defence and security, and connectivity including fin-tech, heritage conservation and capacity building. It also marks important anniversaries of India's diplomatic relations with several countries in the region like Brunei, Philippines and Singapore.
India has also been one of the first responders to disaster occurrences in the region from the Indian Ocean Tsunami to Typhoon Yagi, during which it provided crucial assistance to countries like Vietnam, Myanmar and Laos. India has also lined up cooperative activities with its ASEAN partners in the fields of capacity building, scholarships, building collaborative R&D and more.
At the last ASEAN-India Summit, Prime Minister Modi held extensive discussions with ASEAN partners on further strengthening of ASEAN-India Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and charting its future course. Prime Minister reaffirmed ASEAN centrality in the Indo-Pacific and highlighted the synergies between India's Indo-Pacific Ocean's Initiative (IPOI) and ASEAN’s Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP).
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