Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: While the day’s harder news unfolded at home, India’s top diplomat was making a quieter, longer play in Manila. At the ASEAN Post-Ministerial Conference with India, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar told the region that in “an extremely turbulent” world, “it is only through deeper cooperation that we can de-risk and diversify.” It was a compact statement of India’s Act East strategy: with global supply chains and geopolitics in flux, the neighbourhood to India’s east is less a distant market than a partner in building resilience together.
The agenda he set out was broad and practical — trade and investment, mobility and talent, technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence, green and sustainable growth, and connectivity. Jaishankar underlined that energy, food and health security “can no longer be taken for granted,” and pointed to 2026 as the ASEAN-India Year of Maritime Cooperation, a theme with obvious resonance for two maritime regions that share the Indian Ocean and its trade. On the sidelines, he joined the East Asia Summit and ASEAN Regional Forum meetings and a Quad foreign ministers’ gathering — a full diplomatic ledger in two days.
Act East, in practice: In Manila, EAM Jaishankar called for deeper India–ASEAN cooperation on trade, technology, the green transition and maritime security — framing 2026 as the ASEAN-India Year of Maritime Cooperation.
Diversification is not a slogan but a strategy: the more partners a country trades and builds with, the fewer shocks can knock it off course.
At a Glance
• Where: ASEAN Post-Ministerial Conference with India, Manila (July 22–23)
• Message: “de-risk and diversify” through deeper cooperation in a turbulent world
• Agenda: trade, mobility, tech & AI, green growth, connectivity, maritime security
• Also: East Asia Summit, ASEAN Regional Forum and Quad meetings on the sidelines
The logic is sound and increasingly urgent. Southeast Asia is one of the fastest-growing regions on earth and a natural complement to India’s own industrial ambitions — a place to build alternative supply chains, share the digital-public-infrastructure that India has pioneered, and cooperate on the clean-energy transition. For a country diversifying its trade relationships across the UK, the EU, the Gulf and now the East, ASEAN is a keystone rather than an afterthought. The maritime theme, too, is more than symbolism for two regions whose prosperity sails on the same sea lanes.
The constructive way forward is to convert the warm language of summitry into contracts, cables and cargo. That means closing the long-pending review of the India-ASEAN goods-trade agreement on fair terms, widening student and worker mobility, linking digital-payment and identity systems, and deepening the maritime cooperation that keeps shared waters safe and open. India brings scale, a vast market and a proven playbook in public technology; ASEAN brings dynamism and a strategic location. Knit patiently together, that partnership is one of the surest hedges India has against a world that has stopped being predictable.
