Author Description

The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi Sectoral Techno Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is a sub regional grouping. It is positively perceived as a bridge between the SAARC and the ASEAN regional groupings, as it embraces fier SAARC members viz., Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka Nepal and Bhutan and two ASEAN members, Myanmar and Thailand, around the Bay of Bengal and the Eastern Coast of the Indian Ocean Formed in 1997 with the main objective of promoting cooperation among the contiguous countries of the Bay of Bengal, the BIMSTEC has identified six agreed areas of cooperation, viz., tread and investment; technology; transport and communication; energy; tourism and fisheries. With the changing image and the recent economic clout India's increasing engagement with the ASEAN national collectively and individually is a positive step in the direction of its Look East policy. Though not all potential areas of sub regional cooperation in the BIMSTEC have received adequate attention in this volume, it is yet a pioneering effort in launching an exclusive collected work on the subjects as the literature on the BIMSTEC is very inadequate and wanting. About The Author:- T. Nirmala Devi is professor and Director of the Center for SAARC Studies, Andhra University Visakhapatnam. After obtaining Ph. D. in Economics She has been working on South Asian studies for over two decades. She was a Baden- Wurttemberg Fellow at the South Asia Institute University of Heidelburg, Germany. Her other areas of interest are international economic, women’s studies and demographic studies. Besides co-editing two books, WTO and Implications for South Asia (2006) and Regional Cooperation in South Asia: New Dimension (2002): she has authored three books, viz., Population and Development in SAARC (1996); Socio-Economic profile of SAARC Countries (1994); and Regional Economic and nearly sixty research papers on South Asia to her Credit. Contents:- Contents, Foreword, Amb. A.N. Ram, Former Secretary (East),