Losing the Bay of Bengal
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Nay Pyi-Taw this week to attend a regional summit brings his decade of leadership of Indian diplomacy to a virtual close. His first trip abroad after he became prime minister in 2004 was to Bangkok to attend the first summit of the very same organisation with the rather ungainly name, the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC).