Guwahati, Oct. 4: The ministry of external affairs is embarking on a comprehensive dialogue to identify the challenges for sub-regional co-operation in India’s Look East policy.

Top officials of the ministry will arrive in Guwahati on October 7 for a three-day conference on India’s Look East Policy: Challenges for Sub-Regional Co-operation. The conference will focus on the challenges at the grassroots level by holding discussions with stakeholders in the Northeast.

The public diplomacy division of the external affairs ministry is organising the conference. The main focus will be on exploring issues related to the challenges of regional co-operation and socio-economic integration of the Look East Policy.

The division has been created to find multiple ways and means of informing the public about the foreign policy initiatives and more importantly, to hear their views.

The conference has been arranged in association with the Omeo Kumar Das Institute of Social Change and Development and the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations.

External affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee is participating in the meet. He will deliver the keynote address on Sunday, while the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, will deliver the inaugural address on October 8.

The deliberations assume importance as these come in the wake of the North East India Trade and Investment Opportunities Week at Bangkok which concluded today. Various issues of co-operation between the Northeast and Thailand were discussed in the course of the meet.

The NER draft 2020 vision report of the North Eastern Council said that the policy has still not delivered any concrete economic gains to states of the region.

“Various political, economic and cultural factors have gone towards the making of the Look East policy for the Northeast. To give effect to the policy, a large number of administrative measures have been taken up in recent years to promote trade in the region.

The recommendations of various studies to develop infrastructure at Moreh and open up other trade points have also seen considerable progress. Yet, despite this, the policy has not delivered any concrete economic gains to the NER states,” it said.

The director of Omeo Kumar Das Institute of Social Change and Development, Indranee Dutta, said the conference would look at perceptions from the grassroots level, as there would be experts from the academic sector, industry and civil society. “There is already a lot of scepticism regarding the Look East policy and the conference will try to identify the challenges and ways to address them,” she said.