India, ASEAN, and the battle for influence in Southeast Asia
The recently concluded ASEAN Post-Ministerial Conference with India saw the adoption of the new ASEAN-India Plan of Action (2026–2030), which will guide both sides in realising the full potential of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership over the next five years. This is in line with India's vision for its Act East Policy (AEP) in Southeast Asia.
As the Act East Policy enters its second decade, the overarching question pertinent to Southeast Asia is how this policy framework can be made more effective to enhance engagement with ASEAN and its member states. The conceptions of India's redesignation of 'Look East' to 'Act East' in 2014 have been overwhelmingly attributed to India's strategic competition with China — against the backdrop of the latter's growing influence in Southeast Asia. But 10 years later, with India's growing profile in the Indo-Pacific, to make its engagement with Southeast Asia or the Act East Policy itself solely about China, ignores the fact that New Delhi has interest in the region independent of Beijing and vice-versa. This is severely reductionist and by and large, a grave misconception.
However, there remain questions on India's evolving role as a rising power and its engagement with Southeast Asia, seeing how the emerging, dynamic Indo-Pacific order has given new strategic meaning to India. This reinforces the argument that there is a lack of understanding of India's aspiration and strategic positioning. That brings us to an important question, what role does India hope to play in the Indo-Pacific through the AEP vis-à-vis its relations with Southeast Asia?
In the last decade, India has been touted to play the role of 'balancer' to a more assertive China. Against the backdrop of the South China Sea dispute, major power rivalry and trade and economic disruptions, perceptually, New Delhi's rise and the AEP makes it a natural balancer for Southeast Asia.
Dhruva Jaishankar in his book Vishwa Shastra: India and the World argues that while New Delhi has the potential to play the role of 'balancer', more specifically an economic balancer, much work must be still done before this is realised. With Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal recently slamming the nature of the India-ASEAN trade relationship, perhaps India is not ready to fully embrace this role of economic balancer.
But this concept of balancer also means that the India-Southeast Asia relationship is viewed through a China lens or even US-China prism, and this does not give enough credit or currency to the value of India's ties with the region. In many ways, being a balancer reduces the India-Southeast Asia relationship to a product of, for and by China. Following Indian foreign policy, the semantics that come out of New Delhi, and the trajectory of India's relations with ASEAN and ASEAN member states in recent years, it is clear that this is not the role India envisions for itself, nor how Southeast Asia distinctly views India.
Is India then a growing normative power? Does the AEP provide the necessary policy framework to support India for this role in the region? At the 2025 Raisina Dialogue, to a question on whether India has the appetite to be a normative power in the region with its growing role in the Global South, Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar indicated that while New Delhi may not explicitly use the term to describe its role, as the most populous country in the world, India's Global South mobilisation efforts certainly cannot be ignored, as these will continue to set standards for cooperation.
India's role as a normative power is, however, reliant on the extent to which ASEAN and its member states identify with and cooperate within India's Global South agenda and Indian-led initiatives. It also heavily depends on how consistent and creative India is with its initiatives. This means keeping the momentum on proposals announced at ASEAN summits and focusing on the public goods delivery aspects of mega initiatives like the MAHASAGAR. Underpinned by its AEP, India's active presence in mechanisms like IORA, BRICS, BIMSTEC which function on the basis of addressing shared regional challenges through niche area cooperation also serves as a key enabler to its budding role as a normative power.
Moving forward, whichever role India envisions for itself with the hope that it resonates with Southeast Asia, India must focus on three main aspects of its ties with the region. First, a strong strategic partnership is indicative of a strengthened AEP. India has a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with ASEAN, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, a Comprehensive Partnership with Thailand and Enhanced Partnership with Brunei. These partnerships can be seen as the structural and functional manifestation of India's outreach and engagement via its AEP and so it is crucial that they are fit for purpose and in tune with geopolitical realities.
Secondly, there must be thoughtful continuity in the initiatives announced during ASEAN summits. For example, if India wishes to 'advocate for the Global South' as announced in the 12-point proposal during the 2023 ASEAN-India Summit in Indonesia, then it should have also been reaffirmed in the 10-point plan in a more detailed manner during the 2024 ASEAN-India Summit In Laos. Consistency in optics, semantics and the chosen 'lexicon' is essential for India's role-building in the region.
Finally, there must be greater synergy between ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific and India's Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative. This must be clearly demonstrated, and one way to do this is active participation in the ASEAN Indo-Pacific Forum. Periodic assessment of the progress in cooperating within these frameworks and clearly highlighting successes will not only aid in shaping the trajectory of relations but help quantify the power and increasing relevance of the AEP over the years.
The writer is analyst, Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS), Malaysia
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