Promise, not yet progress

Before the growth of regional trading blocs, there were the cold-war alliances such as the NATO, the Warsaw Pact, SEATO and CENTO. If it was geopolitics that led to the earlier political blocs, at the core of the recent developments are the compulsions of an increasingly interdependent trade lattice in a globalising world. Although regional groupings had already been in force in South and Southeast Asia in the form of SAARC and ASEAN, an association aimed at fostering economic cooperation between parts of  these regions was established in Bangkok in June 1997. BIMSTEC's name originally stood for Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand Technical and Economic Cooperation. After Burma joined the group in December of that year, and Bhutan and Nepal in 2004, the acronym's expanded form was changed to the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation.

Trade liberalisation alone is not a sufficient condition for countries to turn to either single or multiple 'regional integration arrangements' (RIA). The enormous pressures of globalisation are forcing countries to seek greater efficiency through larger markets, increased competition, access to superior technology, and greater investment outlets through RIAs. Within such arrangements, there is also a desire to assist neighbouring nations for mutually beneficial reasons, as well as to take preventive action against the spillover of unrest and mass economic migration. The compelling logic of regional groupings, coupled with the obvious failure of SAARC and the near-debilitating East Asian crisis of 1997, collectively contributed to the formation of BIMSTEC.