Pranab to explain India’s Look East policy to Northeast

NEW DELHI: Diplomacy in India has generally been conducted behind the closed doors of South Block and the PMO and remained mainly outside the public arena.

But this time around, external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee is going all the way to Shillong in Meghalaya , to explain India's "look east policy" to the people of the region who will benefit the most if the Prime Minister's vision of connectivity with ASEAN and India's north eastern states take off.

The newly-created division of public diplomacy, within the foreign ministry is organising the meet. The idea of public diplomacy, borrowed from the US system, is to give people of the country an idea of why government takes certain policies.

At the same time the interaction with the public gives the government a feed back of how certain polices will be viewed by the people. As   foreign policy often impinges on domestic consideration, the interaction with the thinking public also gives South Block the necessary feedback about public perception.

On Saturday, Mukherjee will explain to leading citizens, opinion makers, researchers and academics the implications of India's policy to open the region for trade with the thriving ASEAN economy.

After explaining the government's policy, Mukherjee will have an interactive session with the invitees. This will help
him get an idea of the challenges the north-eastern states are likely to face and the difficulty of developing the area due to militancy.