New Delhi:The ASEAN region is one of the major hubs for India's global economic engagement and the coronavirus pandemic has triggered a new urgency to re-imagine the cooperation and expand its ambition further, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Thursday.
In an address at a CII event, he also said that the centrality of ASEAN to the Indo-Pacific and the importance of ties between India and the grouping are self-evident.
"But if they have to continue to be salient, then we must strive to go beyond ideas and concepts that have outlived their shelf life," the external affairs minister said without elaborating.
The 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is considered one of the most influential groupings in the region, and India and several other countries including the US, China, Japan and Australia are its dialogue partners.
Jaishankar said the larger region is undergoing "significant" socio-economic changes and that the pandemic has clearly accelerated them.
"It is important that we -- India, the ASEAN and our relationship -- we recognise that a different world awaits us. It is one that puts a greater premium on trust and transparency, resilience and reliability, as also on choices and redundancy," he said.
"Our contemporary conversations will be relevant only if we adequately capture these emerging concerns," he noted.
Jaishankar said India's ties with the ASEAN are rooted in history, geography and culture and what has energised them in recent years is a growing awareness of the potential they hold for mutual interests and development.
He said that as cooperation between the two sides grew in the course of the last 25 years, new facets and domains emerged for collaboration and that connectivity and security were among the more notable ones.
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"As a result, our Look East policy matured into an Act East one. Its success is reflected in drawing India more comprehensively into the Indo-Pacific. There is no doubt that the ASEAN is one of the major hubs for India's global economic engagement," Jaishankar said
"As it develops, it is natural that we would like to re-visit the level of ambition that we have set for our partnership. That is also influenced by autonomous changes in the region. But what has given this objective a new urgency is the necessity to re-imagine our cooperation in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic," he said.
The external affairs minister said a crisis can often be the basis of creativity and the endeavour should be to come out of the pandemic stronger.