Imageries of Space

Abstract

Spatial imaginations evolve. One such major spatial experiment has been India’s Look East/Act East policy that is the subject of this chapter. This chapter reads the genesis of India’s Look East policy in two spatial registers. First, this policy was reflected in India’s urge to redefine its neighbourhood as it finds itself bogged down in its immediate vicinity. The second register has to do with India’s efforts to find a solution to chronic economic underdevelopment of India’s turbulent and fraught northeastern region by bringing the advantages of scale to this geographically locked-in area. The author also discusses how the Look East policy has increasingly veered towards the new articulation of ‘Indo-Pacific’ as a geo-political theatre for a rising power that needs to balance against China.