India–China Initiatives in Multilateral Fora

This article reflects on the experience of India's engagement with China in two multilateral forums: the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) Forum for Regional Economic Cooperation, formerly known as the ‘Kunming Initiative’, and the China-India-Russia Academic Trilateral Conference. Though both forums are so-called ‘Track Two’ ventures, the dynamics of the two exercises are rather different. As of now, the ‘Trilateral’ is rated relatively successful in so far as it has shown more substantial progress from ‘Track Two’ to ‘Track One’. Tracing these brief histories, this article argues that academic cooperation should be seen to have value in and of itself, and not merely as the mechanism that propels a speculative, academic exercise into state-to-state policy. In social science terms, the two exercises afford very different challenges, which are still to be realised in effective academic collaboration and a substantive agenda of research. In particular, the BCIM framework commends a perspective on transnational cooperation that focuses on regional development issues beyond the narrow geopolitical considerations of bilateral and multinational engagement.