wl-3864-Breaking Free from Geographical Isolation - India’s Eastward Inclination and the North East

Partition of India at the time of independence geographically isolated the Northeast region as its traditional outlets to the rest of the country and the world fell in erstwhile East Pakistan. Connectivity disruption pushed this once prosperous region to prolonged development deficit. In ‘Look East’ policy and its later invigorated version of ‘Act East’ policy, the region harbored a hope of liberating itself from the geographical isolation from India opening up to East and Southeast Asia through it. This paper discusses how the policies played out from the perspective of the Northeast region. In view of political uncertainties in the key neighboring countries of Myanmar and Bangladesh, it also explores an alternative for the region for overcoming its developmental drags.