India’s Act East Policy (AEP), launched in 2014, represents a strategic evolution from the previously launched Act East Policy. It aims to broaden India’s engagement beyond Southeast Asia to the broader Indo-Pacific region. Although ASEAN states remain vital, AEP has expanded India’s strategic outreach to include East Asian partners such as Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the Pacific Island countries. Encompassing economic, cultural, connectivity, and security dimensions, AEP aims to place India at the heart of Asia’s evolving geopolitical and economic trajectory, contributing to shared prosperity and stability.
At its core lies the development of India’s North East, which constitutes both a strategic opportunity and a critical hinge for securing India’s long-term position within Asia’s future architecture. It has also emerged as a cornerstone for multilayered economic integration. Situated at the crossroads of South Asia and ASEAN, it shares long borders with several neighboring countries. Historically, the region has faced infrastructural marginalization and recurring security concerns. AEP has focused on transforming the Northeast through infrastructure development, including projects for roads, rail, air, and inland waterways. Thus, geared toward enhancing connectivity not only within India but also cross-border to Myanmar, Bangladesh, and the broader Indo-Pacific region. This underscores deeper integration into the regional supply chain. Strategic connectivity projects, such as the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway and the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Corridor, linking the Indian Northeast with Southeast Asia, are strengthening trade and diplomatic engagement. Economically, the Act East Policy has yielded measurable outcomes, with India’s trade doubling with ASEAN in the past decade, crossing $130 billion by 2024.
Such efforts align with economic development, environmental sustainability, and social inclusion, leveraging the region’s natural resources and its cultural affinity with Southeast Asia. Schemes such as the Northeast Special Infrastructure Development Scheme (NESIDS) and investment platforms like “Advantage Assam 2.0” have attracted participation not only from domestic but also from international capital. It has emphasised sectors including renewable energy, tourism, and agriculture.
The policy also emphasizes cultural diplomacy for advancing people-to-people ties and recognizing shared heritage across borders. Such soft power projections serve as instruments of peace-building frameworks in a historically volatile frontier. Despite persistent security challenges, the regional transformation under AEP gradually unlocked new opportunities for regional connectivity and prosperity. It is also repositioning progressively as both a site of enhanced connectivity and a locus of emergent prosperity within the Indo-Pacific matrix.
India’s increasing military and maritime cooperation with Southeast Asian countries has been seen recently through regularized joint exercises and defense technology collaboration. Thus, reflecting AEP as India’s strategic response to China’s expanding presence in Asia, particularly its assertive actions in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. Participation in multilateral frameworks such as the Quad, the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative, and the ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM+) underscores India’s commitment to a rules-based regional order. Such mechanisms strengthen India’s diplomatic agency and security profile in the Indo-Pacific, reassuring smaller littoral states while contributing to the maintenance of a regional balance of power.
Notably, the Act East Policy transcends mere domestic development goals and articulates a broader geopolitical orientation for India. Domestically, the expansion of highways, railways, and airports in the North East has improved internal connectivity and integration with India’s broader economy, addressing the entrenched challenges of isolation and enabling balanced regional development. Through AEP, India asserts itself as an indispensable stakeholder in the construction of a rules-based Indo-Pacific regional order, where freedom of navigation, multilateralism, and regional stability prevail.
By extending engagement to Pacific Island nations and forming strategic partnerships with countries such as Australia and Japan, India further enhances its intent to shape an inclusive regional security ecosystem. This approach also enhances India’s soft power image as a responsible great power, strategically autonomous yet deeply committed to shaping Asia’s geoeconomic and security futures. Infrastructure development, transnational linkages, and diplomatic initiatives in this frontier are best understood as India’s connectivity geopolitics, wherein the effectiveness of such projects will shape India’s capacity to influence regional trade networks, strategic alignments, and emerging alliance frameworks. In this context, the North East is being reconceptualized as a pivotal hinge of India’s Indo-Pacific strategy, integral to sustaining the country’s strategic relevance within an Asian order that is undergoing rapid transformation.
Despite impressive gains, AEP faces challenges in implementing its initiatives. Infrastructure expansion in the North East must overcome challenging geography, persistent security concerns, and bureaucratic inefficiencies. Regional political complexities, combined with strategic competition from China’s Belt and Road Initiative, necessitate that India sharpen its economic diplomacy and scale up investment commitments. Effective coordination between central and state governments, as well as greater involvement of the private sector in infrastructure projects, is critical for timely progress.
Looking forward, India aims to harness emerging sectors such as the digital economy, renewable energy, and value-added manufacturing to deepen its Asian integration. Deepening cooperation on humanitarian assistance and climate resilience across the Indo-Pacific will additionally consolidate India’s leadership role. The Northeast’s evolving connectivity infrastructure and inclusive development strategies will remain crucial pillars in turning AEP’s vision into reality. While economic integration remains vital, India’s stronger defense partnerships, multilateral engagements, and maritime presence denote a deliberate regional balancing act.
The forthcoming decade will prove decisive for the trajectory of Act East. If India consolidates its infrastructural, diplomatic, and strategic undertakings, it will not only remake its northeastern frontier but also assert itself as a key driver in shaping Asia’s 21st-century economic and geopolitical landscape. Act East thus stands as a cornerstone for India’s vision to shift from a continental power to a major maritime and regional player, actively engaged in shaping the global order alongside partners who share its commitment to peace, development, and a rules-based international system.
