Rising India in the Changing Asia - Pacific : Strategies and Challenges

About the Book :

Rising India in the Changing Asia-Pacific: Strategies and Challenges, is an attempt to understand and examine changing geopolitical realities of the Asia-Pacific in the twenty-first century and emerging contours of India?s responses to the new-emerging challenges as an emerging great power. This edited volume throws light on two decades of India?s Look East policy, its efforts towards connectivity, regional cooperation and its overall foreign policy thrusts towards its extended neighbourhood in the East. The volume also puts in perspective India?s approaches to multilateralism and its role in the whole gamut of ASEAN-driven regional architectures ? ASEAN, ASEAN Regional Forum, East Asia Summit, ASEAN Plus Defence Ministerial Meeting (ADMM+), BIMSTEC, Mekong Ganga Cooperation etc. The study suggests that India has focused its attention on strategic engagement with Asia-Pacific by expanding its commitments and participation in the multilateral cooperative framework to counter both traditional and non-traditional threats facing the region. While China-threat seems to have been giving fresh lease of life to India?s balancing roles at regular intervals, challenges like maritime security, sea-piracy, terrorism, climate change, food security, natural disasters, and financial security continue to bring India and the Asia-Pacific together. The region exhibits a new buoyancy towards greater economic integration, physical and cultural connectivity and sustained engagement at the levels of governments, private businesses and people-to-people. Although challenges, such as bureaucratic loopholes, pressure groups and the lack of political will, inhibit the full-scale relationship, civic drivers of engagement are giving new momentum to the strategic engagement between a rising India and a very powerful Asia-Pacific in what has come to be known as ?Asian Century?.

About Author :

Ganganath Jha is Professor in Southeast Asian and Southwest Pacific Studies, School of International Studies, JNU, New Delhi. He is a renowned expert of Southeast Asian Affairs. He has written numerous articles in several journals and edited volumes. He has six books to his credits, namely (i) Foreign Policy of Thailand (Radiant, 1978), (ii) Southeast Asia and India: A Political Perspective (National Book Organisation, 1987), (iii) Ethnic Politics of Southeast Asia (NBO, 1998), (iv) Indonesia: Society and Politics (Shipra Publications, 2003), (v) Society and Politics in Southeast Asia (Anamika, 2008) and (vi) India and Southeast Asia: Introspection for Future Partnership (Anamika, 2010). Vibhanshu Shekhar is Research Fellow, Indian Council of World Affairs, New Delhi. Before joining the ICWA, Dr. Shekhar worked with the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University for more than two years and published his book The Politics of Islam, Nation-building and Development: Ethnic Violence and Terrorism in Indonesia (Anamika Publication, 2011) Vibhanshu Shekhar headed Southeast Asia Research program at the New Delhi-based Institute of peace and Conflict Studies for a year (2007-2008). He has published in nationally and international academic journals, newsmagazines, newspapers, and academic websites. He has done his Post-doctoral research from Australian National University, Canberra and PhD from School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi