Arunav Chetia

This paper will look at India's role in Southeast Asia and beyond under the 'Act East' Policy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It first will outline the historical basis of India's 'Look East' Policy and the objectives of the previous governments. Second, it analyses the shift from 'Look East' to 'Act East' and its implications for Southeast Asia. Finally, it will also look at the various future possibilities for India under the 'Act East' policy under the evolving Asian geopolitics. This paper examines the motivations for launching the Act East Policy and what it has accomplished so far. It also describes the imperatives of the future, if the policy is to deliver the desired results in promoting India's interests in the strategic, security, economic and cultural spheres, in the region and beyond.

Developing countries are experiencing rapid surge in their population and labour force. Migration and Urbanization are direct manifestations of the process of economic development, particularly in the contemporary phase of globalization. A large part of the migration and urbanization in the less developed countries have historically been linked to stagnation and volatility of agriculture and lack of sectoral diversification within agrarian economy, India being no exception to this. The growth rate in agricultural production and income has been low, unstable and disparate across regions, resulting in lack of livelihood opportunities in rural areas. This has led to out-migration from several backward rural areas, most of the migrants being absorbed within the urban informal economy. The International Labour Organization (ILO), which has been carrying out studies on the informal sector, estimates that it employees between 20 to 70 per cent of the total urban labour force in the developing countries in a wide range of activities (Sethuraman 1981) 1. The formal sector has been able to accommodate only a small proportion of the increase in the labour-force in these countries over a period of time and the major brunt has to be borne by its counterpart 2 i.e. the informal sector. The withdrawal or displacement of the labour force from rural economy and their absorption in the urban sectors have created serious stress in receiving regions as well. The capacity of the cities and towns to assimilate the migrants by providing employment, access to land, basic amenities etc. are limited. 3 The UNFPA (2007) regards concentration of poverty, growth of slums and social deprivation in cities as the major challenge of development in less developed countries. 4 In the given scenario, it is important to understand whether processes like urbanization and migration has been able to actually solve the problems of the informal sector or has contributed to the vulnerability of the informal sector. In " Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labor " , Arthur Lewis (1954) claims that the growth of capitalism would attract labourers in the subsistence sector to the capitalist sector. Thus, in the Lewis model subsistence sector covers at least a part of the informal sector and there would be a flow of labour from urban informal to urban formal sector. However, in many developing economies, the industrialization process and growing formal service activities

India saw big gains in financial inclusion with the implementation of the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana. JAM (Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile) trinity, an initiative by Government of India to link Jan Dhan accounts,
Mobile numbers and Aadhaar cards of Indians to directly transfer subsidies to beneficiaries and eliminate intermediaries and leakages, is nothing short of a social revolution. The schemes which have followed since then have not only aimed for financial inclusion but also to ensure inclusive growth. There is a strong correlation between financial exclusion and poverty and inequality. Till late 2013, according to Ministry of Finance, 45% of urban and 52% of rural households did not have bank accounts. However, financial inclusion is not just about opening of
bank accounts but also access to credit from formal sources. In India with a large rural population, financial exclusion has both geographic and social dimension. Although financial inclusion initiatives started in 1955, gathering momentum with nationalization of private banks in 1969 and 1980, the objective of nationalization was limited to extending bank activities to the unbanked population. Many other factors such as poverty, low-income, distance from bank etc., restricted the rural and vulnerable sections including women from getting access to formal banking system. According to the Census 2011, nearly 73% of farm households did not have access to formal credit sources. However, some 300 million new bank accounts were opened under the Jan Dhan Yojana.