IAS Gyan

Daily News Analysis

BIMSTEC

7th June, 2021 Health

Context: In a message on the occasion of 24th BIMSTEC Day, PM Modi said that the grouping will continue to grow and “scale new heights” of cooperation in the common pursuit of building a secure, peaceful and prosperous Bay of Bengal region.

  • The BIMSTEC has emerged as a promising regional grouping and it made progress on several fronts including the finalization of the BIMSTEC Master Plan for Transport Connectivity and the text of the BIMSTEC Charter.
  • India has been making concerted efforts to make BIMSTEC a vibrant forum for regional cooperation as initiatives under SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) were not moving forward for a variety of reasons.

What’s BIMSTEC?

  • Though BIMSTEC is a Bay of Bengal camp, two land-locked states — Nepal and Bhutan — are also part of the seven member-group. Five of them are from South Asia — India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka — and two from South East Asia — Myanmar and Thailand.

What this grouping means in numbers?

  • The BIMSTEC region is home to around 1.5 billion people which make up for around 22% of the world’s population. The region has a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of $2.8 trillion.

What is India’s interest in the grouping?

  • The BIMSTEC is a bridge between South Asia and Southeast Asia.
  • The two Southeast Asian countries in the grouping, Myanmar and Thailand, have a crucial place for India’s ambitious connectivity plans for northeastern region.
  • Myanmar is only Southeast Asian country India has a land boundary with. An India-Myanmar-Thailand highway is one of the key projects that figures in a big way in the government’s Act East (earlier Look East) policy.
  • With the India-Pakistan bickering coming in way of a smooth functioning of the Saarc, groupings such as BIMSTEC can take forward the concept of regional cooperation in a different manner.

What are the founding principles of the BIMSTEC?

  • The cooperation within BIMSTEC will be based on respect for the principle of sovereign equality, territorial integrity, political independence, non-interference in internal affairs, peaceful co-existence and mutual benefit.
  • This cooperation within BIMSTEC will constitute an addition to, and not be a substitute for, bilateral, regional or multilateral cooperation involving the member states.

What are the priority sectors of the BIMSTEC grouping?

  • Seven members of BIMSTEC have so far identified 14 priority sectors. Each country leads one or more areas in a voluntary manner.
  • India leads two — counter-terrorism and transnational crime, telecommunication and transport.
  • But there has been a view that the proliferation of commitments didn’t yield tangible results over the past two decades and the regional grouping should trim its list of priorities.

What are India expect from this grouping?

  • Connectivity and security cooperation are expected to top the list of the regional grouping.
  • India considers connectivity to be an important aspect of the cooperation of the grouping including physical connectivity, grid connectivity, and increasing the people to people contacts.
  • The grouping is expected to agree to several measures including a protocol for coastal shipping agreements that could also give sea access to two landlocked countries, Nepal and Bhutan.
  • Security cooperation to deal with traditional and non-traditional threats would also be a key focus area at the summit.

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/bimstec-emerged-as-a-promising-regional-grouping-pm-modi/article34746534.ece?homepage=true