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Context

• India and ASEAN region is celebrating 30th Anniversary of their ASEAN-India Dialogue Relations in 2022.
• The year is embarked as ‘ASEAN-India Friendship Year’.
• The year also witnessed few key bilateral visits and meetings.

Key takeaways from the dialogue

• Member states of ASEAN and India have decided to establish meaningful, substantive and mutually beneficial Comprehensive Strategic Partnerships.
• Both sides also reaffirmed the importance of maintaining ASEAN Centrality in the evolving regional architecture in the Indo-Pacific.
• Both sides decided to enhance cooperation on cyber security, counter terrorism and digital economy and expedite the review of ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement.

What is ASEAN?

• ASEAN is a political and economic union of 10 member states in Southeast Asia.
• It brings together ten Southeast Asian states – Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam – into one organisation.
• It was established on 8th August 1967 in Bangkok, Thailand with the signing of the Bangkok Declaration by the founding fathers of the countries of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, and the Philippines.
• The preceding organisation was the Association of Southeast Asia (ASA) comprising of Thailand, the Philippines, and Malaysia.
• Five other nations joined the ASEAN in subsequent years making the current membership to ten countries.

India-ASEAN Relations: A Backgrounder

• Look-East Policy in 1992 gave an upthrust to India -ASEAN relation and helped India in capitalizing its historical, cultural and civilizational linkages with the region.
• India entered into a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in goods with the region in 2003 which has facilitated the bilateral trade which now stands at approximately USD 76 Billion.
• Further, the launch of Act East Policy in 2014 has added a new vigour to India-ASEAN relations.

Five-key focus areas for India and ASEAN

(1) Connectivity

• Physical connectivity remains a constraint in India-ASEAN trade relations.
• However, infrastructure projects like Trilateral Highway connecting India’s Northeast to Thailand, the Data Deep-sea Port in Myanmar, and the Kaladan Multi-modal Transit Transport Project have the potential to overcome the infrastructure bottleneck.  

(2) Maritime Security

• The maritime space in today’s world plays a key role not only in economic development but also in security and connectivity.
• Piracy, disputes over resources, territorial claims, terrorism, China’s increasing assertiveness, and a fractured governance system are creating instability in the Indo-Pacific region.

(3) Blue Economy

• Given India’s vast Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), there is huge potential in this sector that remains to be realized.
• India should deepen its engagement with ASEAN on this front through developing PPP models for fisheries sectors, knowledge sharing and joint efforts to conserve and manage coastal and marine resource.

(4) Strategic Relations

• India and ASEAN forged a strategic partnership in 2012.
• The further elevation of ties is focused on some specific areas – maritime security, joint implementation of projects in the Indo-Pacific, cybersecurity and inter-operability of digital financial systems.

(5) Other

• India and ASEAN focus on greater knowledge sharing and developing best practices for fostering inclusive growth.
• Policies governing cyberspace and cyber securities are in their nascent stage, in such scenario both India and ASEAN should seek to be a decisive voice in norm-setting, and in cultivating inter-regional cooperation for addressing cyber insecurity.

Issues in ties

• Trade imbalances: In bilateral trade, there is an imbalance as the majority of ASEAN countries have strong manufacturing bases that rely on export while Indian export remains feeble.
• Nature of engagement: India still engages more with ASEAN countries on a bilateral basis rather than on a multilateral basis.
• Limited financial outreach: India’s has a limited capacity to provide development assistance and other financial relation.
• Chinese presence:  ASEAN’s inclination to harness India for regional stability remains limited because of the presence of other regional powers like China.
• No strategic vision: ASEAN and India are yet to fully converge on a joint vision for the maritime domains of Asia and the world at large.

Why does ASEAN hold immense significance for India?

• Convergence on Indo-Pacific: Engagement with ASEAN has been, and will remain, a critical element of India’s ‘Act East’ policy and ‘Indo-Pacific’ initiative.
• Security convergence: India needs a close diplomatic relationship with ASEAN nations both for economic and security reasons.
• Improving presence: Connectivity with the ASEAN nations can allow India to improve its presence in the region.
• Connectivity with NE: These connectivity projects keep Northeast India at the centre, ensuring the economic growth of the northeastern states.
• Countering China: Improved trade ties with the ASEAN nations would mean a counter to China’s presence in the region and economic growth and development for India.
• Rule-based order in the region: ASEAN occupies a centralised position in the rules-based security architecture in the Indo-Pacific. Rogue neighbourhood is a liability of healthy growth.

Inherent issues with ASEAN

• Inequality matrix: Gap between rich and poor ASEAN member states remains very large and they have a mixed record on income inequality. While Singapore boasts the highest GDP per capita—nearly $53,000 (2016), Cambodia’s per capita GDP is the lowest at less than $1,300.
• Development disparity: Many regional initiatives are not able to be incorporated into national plans, as the less developed countries faced resource constraints to implement the regional commitments.
• Mixed nature of polity: The members’ political systems are equally mixed with democracies, communist, and authoritarian states.
• Contention with China: Every ASEAN member is exposed to the manipulations by China over the South China Sea.
• Lack of consensus: ASEAN has been divided over major issues of human rights. For example, crackdowns in Myanmar against the Rohingyas. The emphasis on consensus sometimes becomes a chief drawback.

Way forward

• India has cultivated strong bonds of historical and contemporary significance with the ASEAN.
• This relation can offer the region a natural recourse to peace, unlike the many conflicts that the ASEAN countries are involved in with China.
• There are opportunities for ASEAN and India to build long term partnership by sharing medical technologies and traditional medicine knowledge.
• Three potential areas for ASEAN-India partnership are Health security, digital economy and green sustainable development. India and ASEAN can work together to address the digital gap by solution and expertise sharing.
• Further, some emerging areas of cooperation could be cryptocurrency, making use of social media as a medium of change and exchange for digital payments, lucid involvement of MSMEs in financial digitalization, and participation in global value chains.

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Context

• Non-reporting of sexual assault against a minor child despite knowledge is a serious crime, held the Supreme Court under the POCSO Act.
• It further added that such non-reporting is more often than not done in an attempt to shield the offenders of the crime.

What is POCSO Act?

• The Ministry of Women and Child Development championed the introduction of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012.
• The Act has been enacted to protect children from offences of sexual assault, sexual harassment and pornography and provide for establishment of Special Courts for trial of such offences.
• The Act was amended in 2019, to make provisions for enhancement of punishments for various offences so as to deter the perpetrators and ensure safety, security and dignified childhood for a child.

Features of the Act   

• Gender neutrality: The Act is gender neutral and regards the best interests and welfare of the child. The Act calls for mandatory reporting of sexual offences. A false complaint with intent to defame a person is punishable under the Act.
• Definition of Child: The Act defines a child as any person below eighteen years of age.
• Definitions of sexual abuses: It defines different forms of sexual abuse, including penetrative and non-penetrative assault, as well as sexual harassment and pornography.
• Prevents child trafficking: People who traffic children for sexual purposes are also punishable under the provisions relating to abetment in the Act.  
• Preventing re-victimization of child: Adequate provisions are made to avoid re-victimization of the Child at the hands of the judicial system.
• Sensitization of Police: The Act assigns a policeman in the role of child protector during the investigation process.
• Child friendly investigation: The Act stipulates that such steps must be taken which makes the investigation process as child-friendly as possible.
• Speedy disposal: The Act provides for the establishment of Special Courts for the trial of such offences and stipulates that the case is disposed of within one year from the date of reporting of the offence.

What is the rationale behind the legislation?

• Multiple facets of crime: New forms of child abuse like online bullying, harassment and Child Pornography have emerged to a greater extent.
• Exception handling: As per the last available data from the National Crime Records Bureau of child rape cases came up before the courts under the POCSO Act read with Indian Penal Code Section 376.
• Larger conviction: Less than three per cent cases ended in convictions, pointing to the need for better access to justice for all, and not just more stringent conviction in a small percentage of cases.
• Deterrence against crime: There is the belief that harsher punishments will deter people from committing child rape.
• Zero-tolerance: Lastly, the disgust for the crime makes the perpetrator ‘deserving’ of death penalty.

Issues with the Law

• Recurrence of such crime: In the context of child rape, many preventive measures and policies do have a definitive impact on preventing child rape.
• Lower conviction: The conviction rates are low under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012.
• Investigation bottlenecks: There is lack of specialised investigators, prosecutors, judges, mental health professionals, doctors, forensic experts and social workers.
• Protection bottlenecks: Inadequate child protection and rehabilitation services, lack of compliance with child-friendly legal procedures are some other concerns.
• Under-reporting: A large proportion of perpetrators are family members or those close to or known to the family. This results in massive underreporting of such crimes.
• Protection of convicts: This concern will only intensify with death penalty, as the child’s family often settles a case of known person preventing him to the gallows.
• Vulnerability: The arbitrariness of the death penalty in India also arises from the discriminatory impact of the choice of what constitutes ‘rarest of rare’.
• Delay of trials: The Kathua Rape case took 16 months for the main accused to be convicted whereas the POCSO Act clearly mentions that the entire trial and conviction process has to be done in one year.
• Communal Politicization:  Considering rapes on communal angles is another challenge. The Unnao rape case and Kathua rape case are some of the examples.

Way forward

• The social menace of child rape requires sustained planning, engagement, and investment of resources by the government.
• The need of the hour is to prioritise prevention activities against abuse, creating safe (physical and online) environments for children.
• Developing a comprehensive outreach system to engage parents, schools, communities, NGOs partners and local governments as well as police and lawyers is needed.
• This will ensure better implementation of the legal framework, policies, national strategies and standards.

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