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Youth engagement key to India-ASEAN ties

India is banking on the youth to secure the future of a centuries-old relationship with ASEAN member states, as both sides prepare to celebrate 25 years of the India-ASEAN dialogue partnership this year

Tama Salim (The Jakarta Post)
New Delhi
Wed, July 5, 2017

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Youth engagement key to India-ASEAN ties

I

ndia is banking on the youth to secure the future of a centuries-old relationship with ASEAN member states, as both sides prepare to celebrate 25 years of the India-ASEAN dialogue partnership this year.

Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj, in her opening remarks to the 9th Delhi Dialogue on Tuesday, said youth was an important factor in promoting innovation, another pillar of Indian-ASEAN relations.

“An important component of our [25th anniversary] celebrations will be to commit the youths of our region; they’re the future leaders and hold the key to our relationship in the years to come,” Swaraj asserted.

In celebration of the partnership this year, Delhi has lined up a number of initiatives that will heavily focus on youth.

“We are convinced that the future of our relationship with ASEAN is with the younger generation,” Preeti Saran, secretary for the Indian Foreign Ministry’s eastern affairs, told ASEAN reporters in New Delhi on Monday.

Saran said her government, in collaboration with the India Foundation, would organize an India-ASEAN Youth Summit on Aug. 14 to 19 in Bhopal, to gather young leaders from all over ASEAN, representing politicians, cultural personalities, business people and media.

The senior diplomat said the younger generation of today required “a little bit more attention” to raise awareness about the joint initiatives that both India and ASEAN were conducting to strengthen the existing
partnership.

She argued that older generations in India and ASEAN countries were contemporaries in the struggle for liberation from the chains of colonialism.

“They were very familiar with each others’ predicaments,” Saran said, noting the younger generation’s disconnect with their elders’ cross-border linkages.

While India may have left its historical and cultural marks throughout the Southeast Asia region, the world’s second most populous country is arguably more engaged with its immediate ASEAN neighbors, particularly in the Mekong-Ganga subregion.

The Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam (CLMV) countries of ASEAN have a special relationship with India, particularly the Northeastern region that shares a land border with Myanmar.

The Ministry for the Development of the North Eastern Region (DONER), an Indian coordinating ministry that oversees cross-sectoral development initiatives for the region, is aiming to facilitate cooperation with ASEAN and become the spearhead for Indian-ASEAN relations, joint secretary SN Pradhan said.

By law, the majority of India’s 60 plus ministries are obliged to allocate 10 percent of their budget to DONER, including the Ministry for Human Resources Development, which leads education-based youth engagement initiatives.

According to “Mekong-Ganga Cooperation,” a report compiled by Delhi-based think tank the Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS), education has been an important element in India’s policies in the region.

The RIS report notes that about 900 scholarships are already offered annually by India under the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) program.

While there have been instances of cooperation with ASEAN youth, Pradhan said more exchanges and visits were needed between the partners to deepen relations.

Meanwhile, Vietnamese Deputy Foreign Minister Pham Binh Binh, a leading delegate of the ASEAN-India dialogue partnership, said, “We must promote cooperation in education and tourism, cultural and people-to-people exchanges, particularly between the young generations.”

India has taken steps to strengthen its engagement with ASEAN, placing it at the core of its Act East Policy, which was articulated during the 2014 ASEAN Summit in Naypyidaw in Myanmar.

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