<\/p>\n
News<\/span><\/b>: Recently, the fifth Summit of the <\/span>Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) <\/span><\/b>was held. <\/span><\/p>\n In the summit, <\/span>BIMSTEC Charter<\/span><\/b>, and <\/span>Master Plan for Transport Connectivity<\/span><\/b> were adopted among other things.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The <\/span>Rohingya crisis<\/span><\/b> has weakened the bilateral relations between <\/span>Bangladesh<\/span><\/b> and <\/span>Myanmar<\/span><\/b>. For example, Dhaka wants all the refugees to be repatriated to Myanmar and Myanmar is not responding positively.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n How is BIMSTEC important for India?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n India will be leading the <\/span>\u2018security pillar<\/span><\/b>\u2019 out of the seven designated pillars of the revived BIMSTEC. It will give a boost to regional aspirations of India, which were not fulfilled by the <\/span>SAARC<\/span><\/b>. The SAARC has been facing various roadblocks and has not met since November 2014. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n India does not have any sharp disagreements or hostilities with members of BIMSTEC unlike <\/span>SAARC<\/span><\/b>. The latter one is burdened by <\/span>India-Pakistan hostilities<\/span><\/b>. Thus, it would provide a co-operative environment for India.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n India has opted not to be part of <\/span>China-led RCEP<\/span><\/b>. Therefore, BIMSTEC, a regional grouping of countries which are in close proximity to India, may provide it with a lot of opportunities.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The <\/span>sustained bilateral<\/span><\/b> and <\/span>group-level discussions<\/span><\/b> are required to prevent problems like the <\/span>Rohingya crisis<\/span><\/b> to act as a roadblock in the functioning of the grouping and implementation of the decisions.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n India should ensure continued <\/span>political engagement<\/span><\/b> with <\/span>Nepal, Sri Lanka<\/span><\/b> and <\/span>Bangladesh<\/span><\/b>. This would ensure <\/span>smooth bilateral<\/span><\/b> and <\/span>group-level working relationships<\/span><\/b>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n India should take a leadership role<\/strong> in the region. It can start with promoting <\/span>cross-border connectivity<\/span><\/b>; lowering barriers to the movement of people and goods; and promoting flow of investments.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In order to boost intraregional trade and economic ties, a \u2018<\/span>coastal shipping ecosystem\u2019<\/span><\/b> and an <\/span>interconnected electricity grid<\/span><\/b> is required.\u00a0 In this context, India’s PM has also called for a <\/span>BIMSTEC Free Trade Agreement<\/span><\/b>.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The BIMSTEC members should learn from the security- and trade-related issues which troubled <\/span>SAARC<\/span><\/b> and <\/span>SAFTA<\/span><\/b>.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Source<\/span><\/b>: The post is based on an article \u201c<\/span>Cohesion and co-operation: On power imbalances in BIMSTEC<\/span><\/b>\u201d published in The Hindu on 1<\/span>st<\/span> April 2022.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" News: Recently, the fifth Summit of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) was held. In the summit, BIMSTEC Charter, and Master Plan for Transport Connectivity were adopted among other things.\u00a0 What are the challenges facing the BIMSTEC?\u00a0\u00a0 The Rohingya crisis has weakened the bilateral relations between Bangladesh and Myanmar.… Continue reading Cohesion and co-operation: On power imbalances in BIMSTEC\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10328,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[212,10498],"class_list":["post-177163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-gs-paper-2","tag-the-hindu","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704884585},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10328"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What are the challenges facing the BIMSTEC<\/span><\/b>?\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n
Way Forward\u00a0<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n