June 6 marked the completion of 25 years since the 1997 Bangkok Declaration launched a modest grouping (of Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand), with the acronym, BIST-EC. Three countries (Nepal, Bhutan and Myanmar) joined it later to make it the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC). This unique set of five countries from South Asia and two from Southeast Asia are parents to an institution with an unwieldy name but lofty ambitions. It is the parents’ responsibility that the 25-year-old offspring, now a full adult, begins taking strides to achieve the goals set before it.
Past trajectory
At the grouping’s birth, the world was different; it was stamped by America’s ‘unipolar moment’. India and Thailand joined hands to start an experiment of infusing a part of South Asia with the economic and institutional dynamism that defined the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). But BIMSTEC found the burdens of South Asia too heavy to carry, and so it grew slowly.
