“Strategy, connectivity, development: Where our interests intersect in India’s North East and the Bay of Bengal”
Keynote Address by High Commissioner Philip Green at the Centre for Bay of Bengal Studies: Asian Confluence - Shillong, Meghalaya
06 May 2026
I am very pleased to be back in Shillong. Although all parts of India are delightful to visit, there is something special about the North East. I have had the pleasure of visiting Arunachal Pradesh and Assam in the past. I have flown in today from Bhutan. Last month I was in Darjeeling. And later this month, my wife and I will make our first visit to Sikkim.
In all of this, and possibly in all of my visits around India, Meghalaya is special to me. I undertook a beautiful - and taxing - trek in this state a year or so ago - to Nongblai and Kongthong - which remains amongst a handful of my most memorable experiences in India.
The pleasure of touring your state aside, there is serious work to be done here, as ASCON’s presence demonstrates.
In less than a decade, ASCON has built a strong reputation as a leading platform for research and dialogue on India’s North East, focused on the intersection between India’s North East, South East Asia, and the wider Indo-Pacific region.
I am delighted to be part of your activities here. The work of the Centre for Bay of Bengal Studies sits squarely at the heart of our shared interests: maritime security, stability and connectivity, and growth.
I want to acknowledge ASCON’s Executive Director, Sabyasachi Dutta. You have been a leader in ASCON’s success, and I want to thank you for bringing us together for this discussion today.
I am pleased to be with you today, alongside good friends, and deep experts on the Indo-Pacific, Ambassador Bhatia and Professor Raja Mohan.
I’m also keen to identify our own representative in this side of the country –the recently arrived Consul-General Bernard Lynch – who is accompanying me on this trip.
Before I get into Australia’s interests in India’s North East and the Bay of Bengal – I want to set the scene on Australia and India’s partnership.
The Australia-India partnership has never been more consequential. And it has never been in such good shape – it’s clearly at the highest point that our relationship has ever reached.
It’s worth recording too that, amongst all of our big partnerships, there is none that has developed so quickly as our relationship with India has over the last five years.
There’s a lot of reasons why that has happened, but let me identify three key drivers.
First, our increasing strategic alignment – there is convergence in our security interests and actions.
We find ourselves in an Indo-Pacific that is full of challenge and risk. As two nations that prioritise the maintenance of a rules based order, and have the heft with our partners to help ensure that is maintained, our interests are converging as never before.
We are doing more together with our militaries, our foreign services and our intelligence services - whether bilaterally or through the Quad.
The language that we use to describe each other has also changed. For Australia, India is identified in our National Defence Strategy as one of Australia’s few ‘top tier’ defence partners.
And just to give one numeric of what that means in practice – we have tripled the number of military exercises that we do with each other over the last decade.
Second, we enjoy very high levels of economic complementarity.
India is the fastest growing large economy in the world. So, there can hardly be an economy in the world that isn’t taking notice of India’s growth.
But for Australia, it is special – since the key products we produce – energy, minerals and metals, and high-quality education services – are amongst the inputs that India needs for the next phase of its economic growth.
Add to that underlying complementarity the very significant effort that the Australian government has put into the economic relationship in recent years. We have invested more than $250 million in new funding in that period – opening a new consulate, funding trade delegations, events and publications to draw attention to India.
And then there is our first phase free trade agreement – ECTA, struck four years ago – India’s first free trade agreement with an OECD country.
Together, these dynamics are having a remarkable impact on our trade.
Let me identify that in just one powerful statistic. India’s exports to the world have grown by 40 per cent in the last five years. But over that same five-year period, India’s exports to Australia have grown by 200 per cent.
Put simply, India is benefiting from trade with Australia five times faster than it is with the rest of the world.
I could identify similar statistics about how Australia is benefiting, but for the sake of brevity, let us just conclude that economic complementarity and the efforts of our governments are a major tailwind for our economies.
And third, the “living bridge” that connects us has never been more important or more vibrant.
There are now more than one million people of Indian origin in Australia. Now I am conscious that one million people might not seem like so many people to an Indian audience, but it is to us. It is roughly 4 per cent of our population, and it is our fastest growing community.
The Indian community is making a big contribution to our multicultural society. Let me give you a sense of that from the Australian census statistics.
Our census results tell us that people of Indian origin are twice as likely to hold a master’s or further degree than others in our community.
They tell us that Indian Australians are 1.5 times more likely to open their own businesses.
And they tell us that Indian Australians are 1.5 times more likely to engage in community activities than other Australians – cultural, philanthropic or sporting activities.
And there is one final ultra-compelling proof point of the Indian community’s engagement with Australia. Of the top three surnames that occur amongst those registered to play cricket in Australia, two will be very familiar to you – Singh and Patel.
Let me now turn to the geostrategic picture.
We live in a world that has become sharper and more contested. Superpower tension is a persistent feature of the landscape. The rules-based order is under unforeseen pressure. Strategic risks are compounding in every region of the world, with norms against the use of force weakening. And coercion is an increasing feature in our region.
While all eyes are currently on the Middle East, these trends are powerfully felt in the Indo-Pacific. That is the region where the world’s future is being shaped. It’s where Australia and India have the most on the line. And it’s where we can have the most effect.
As middle powers – or in India’s case, a leading global power – we have a responsibility to build the region we want. A region in balance. A region where no country dominates, and no country is dominated. Where all countries can make sovereign choices.
As we face these challenges in which our agency as nations becomes more important to mobilise, Australia sees India as a natural partner in the Indo-Pacific.
At a time where rules and norms are being challenged, India has been a steadfast advocate for a rules-based international order, including UNCLOS, and freedom of navigation and overflight.
We value India’s leadership in the Indian Ocean region – including its frequent role as a first responder in times of crisis – as we saw recently after Cyclone Ditwah in Sri Lanka.
We appreciate India’s efforts under its ‘Act East’ policy to build connectivity, trade and maritime connections with Southeast Asia – a region where Australia is very invested and deepening our engagement.
And we look forward to working with India in the Pacific, where we think it can make a strong contribution to the region's development priorities and climate change.
Australia and India have many interests in common, but where our interests most intersect, is where our geographies overlap, notably in the Northeast Indian Ocean.
It is one of the key domains of the Indo Pacific where key issues such as maritime security, connectivity and strategic stability are at stake.
The Indian Ocean is globally significant – through it travel more than a third of the world’s bulk cargo and around two thirds of global oil shipments.
But for Australia, it is of even greater significance.
In fact, 45 per cent of Australia’s exports depart from our West Coast. Think of iron ore, natural gas, gold and critical minerals, as well as very significant agricultural produce.
So, the Indian Ocean matters to Australia. Indeed, in our recently released National Defence Strategy we reaffirmed that the northeast Indian Ocean is in our primary area of strategic interest.
Any slowdown or disruption of maritime links – whether from piracy, conflict, or other forms of instability – would have serious implications for us.
As commercial shipping and military activity increases in the Indian Ocean, the need for transparency, communication and confidence building becomes even more important, to mitigate the risks of miscalculation and unintended incidents witnessed elsewhere.
And to assure ourselves of that, India, Australia and our neighbours need to work harder at it.
As our Foreign Minister Penny Wong put it to her counterparts from Indian Ocean countries - “We are bound not just by shared geography but by the shared destiny of our interests.”
All this helps explain why maritime security is at the centre of our strategic partnership with India, and a key part of Australia’s broader engagement with South Asia and the Indian Ocean region.
And it is for that reason that the Prime Ministers of Australia and India have tasked officials like me to produce a Maritime Security Cooperation Roadmap to further advance our bilateral maritime collaboration. That project is well underway, with a good chance that we will be able to secure it in the course of this year.
Beyond the bilateral, through the Quad, we are supporting maritime domain awareness in the region and working to build up our capacity to respond to regional challenges.
Australia and India share a strong belief in the importance of regional institutions. We are both founding members of IORA, where we are working closely together with India as the current IORA Chair, and co-chairing its Maritime Safety and Security Working Group.
While Australia’s principal interests in this sub region are in the maritime domain, the land domain and its connectivity are also of consequence to us.
India’s North East has unmet connectivity with its near abroad, which if potentiated could better connect India to South East Asia, and to the wider Indo-Pacific economy.
We perceive that improved connectivity, logistics, and industrial capacity in and through this region can boost growth, prosperity and security.
But we also perceive also the complexities that are engaged in this endeavour – particularly while conflict in Myanmar significantly impedes connectivity to wider South East Asia.
Australia isn’t in a position to make a big difference to these challenges – we have much to focus on in more proximate areas to us like the Pacific and South East Asia – though we note with admiration the significant investments that our partner Japan makes in development and connectivity here in the Northeast.
But we do seek to make our own special contribution.
Since 2019, the Australian government has been funding the SARIC initiative - that stands for South Asia Regional Infrastructure Connectivity.
The objective of SARIC is to increase regional infrastructure connectivity amongst the states of South Asia. We do this in the understanding that regional connectivity in South Asia lags potential; and, that were its potential to be met, the dividends would be substantial. One only has to look at regions with high levels of infrastructure connectivity amongst – and South East Asia comes to mind – to see what the benefits can be.
SARIC works at this objective by doing three things:
First, it builds a pipeline of bankable projects that will increase regional economic links and growth.
Second, it invests in training for people in the business of infrastructure connectivity in South Asia, with a particular focus on women.
And third, it creates forums that bring together people who work on infrastructure throughout the region, so that they can better understand the opportunities for working more closely together.
May I say, parenthetically, something about the Australian aid program of which SARIC forms a part. Figures from the OECD tell us that, across that group, aid transfers fell by 23 per cent last year alone. A large number of developed countries are cutting their development assistance budgets. Australia is not amongst them. In fact, Australia’s aid budget grew last year, as it has grown every year that the Albanese government has been in office.
Having just been in Bhutan, I can report to you of a landmark success of this SARIC program. Over many years, Australia has made small but important investments to prove up the prospects for a major dam and hydro power development in Bhutan. It’s called the Dorjilung Hydropower project.
Australia has funded technical studies, and environment and social impact investigations to build confidence in the project. Those contributions have not been big, but they have been catalytic – giving confidence to the World Bank and others that this project was sound.
Yesterday, I participated in the loan signing ceremony between the Royal Government of Bhutan and the World Bank – which formalised a range of support from the World Bank and the IFC to the tune of 815 million US dollars.
The project is essentially underway. And the result will be transformative. The project will generate 1125 MW of clean, green power. It will, in one stroke, increase Bhutan’s green power production by 40 per cent. And the regional character of the project is very clear - with TATA Power being the Government of Bhutan’s major partner in the project, and 80 per cent of the power produced slated for transmission to India.
It is, in short, a powerful symbol of how regional connectivity in infrastructure can provide substantial mutual benefit between the states of South Asia.
We are buoyed by the remarkable success of the Dorjilung project and are interested in replicating its success in other parts of South Asia. That would include in the connectivity between India’s North East and surrounding states, where practical, sustainable initiatives can be found and where the Government of India also backs the proposal.
I should also briefly mention the other ways in which Australia is engaging with the development needs of the North East. Through our Direct Aid Program, our consulate General in Kolkata is supporting small projects. In Assam, Nagaland, Tripura, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh. Meghalaya seems to be missing from this list, which is a matter I am confident that our new Consul General will attend to. Small projects under the Direct Aid Program typically fund activities like water management, education, skills, community resilience and the empowerment of women and girls.
A separate line of development effort relates to water – a subject of some Australian expertise, given that we occupy the world’s driest continent. The Australia-India Water Centre is a partnership led by IIT Guwahati and the Western Sydney University.
Education links underpin this engagement: through Australia Awards, we recently supported two Australian academics to serve as Scholars in Residence right here at ASCON, deepening understanding of North East India and the Bay of Bengal, carrying those insights back into Australian institutions.
So, how do we draw together an Australian perception of the North East, within the wider Indo Pacific?
First, we should acknowledge that we are facing a region and a world that brings more challenges than ever before.
The Indo Pacific is the key geography for us, but within it, the Pacific and South East Asia are our primary fields of concern.
There is much to occupy our policy makers in those fields, as well as flare ups further abroad, notably in Gaza and Iran that demand our attention.
But our bandwidth can and does extend to India’s North East, and to the Bay of Bengal. Most notably, Australia’s key interests are engaged in the North East Indian Ocean, and our increasingly valuable partnership with India is being framed with that as a major point of focus. The forthcoming Maritime Security Cooperation Roadmap will play a large role in charting the next phase of that effort.
And beyond the maritime domain, our SARIC initiative provides us with a useful point of engagement with all of India’s geographies that connect with its neighbourhood. In partnership with the Government of India, we want to play our part in increasing regional connectivity – which is both a route to engagement and greater prosperity in the region; and also seems more prospective as the Government of India reaches out ever more to its neighbourhood.
Beyond these initiatives, I should of course mention the regular engagement that our Consulate General in Kolkata is able to undertake in this region. With a new Consul General – one of our most experienced diplomats, just returned from serving as our Ambassador to Jordan – who has modestly more resources under his control, we can expect to see at least current levels of effort maintained. He will certainly have my support if he feels able to devote more effort to this consequential part of India. And the fact that the North East’s economic growth is strong – I am told that Meghalaya’s growth was just shy of ten per cent pa in the most recent statistics – provides some prospects for him and his Austrade team to delve into.
Beyond that, without claiming to offer any particular ways in which Australia’s attention might further engage in this subregion, allow me to offer a few personal thoughts that occur to me.
First, it’s worth recording that, that the Gulf Crisis has made people across the region think about different geographic alignments, and possible alternative energy flows. It strikes me that India’s East and North East will need more energy if the subregion’s growth prospects are to be fulfilled. That will include natural gas, a commodity that Australia exports the third largest volume of globally. Traditionally, India has sought LNG from the Gulf, while Australia has focused on Northeast Asian markets. That has served us both well, but a quick look at the map shows that Australia’s major LNG fields are in our North West, adjacent – across the Indian Ocean – from India’s East. Might it suit India in the future to secure supplies of gas whose transit doesn’t involve major geostrategic choke points? And if India was to look at making greener steel with its huge stocks of iron ore in its east, might it use Australian gas, rather than coal, to achieve that?
Second, in a very different field, Australia is putting an Indigenous lens on its diplomacy. We have been doing more with India’s tribal groups, connecting Australia’s First Nations. This is in the space of art, fashion and business, and included bringing Australia’s premier Songlines exhibition to Delhi this year. Given the large number of Indians of tribal background in the North East, we can see the basis for a greater exchange in this field. Might we, for example, invite an Australian First Nations artist to perform at the Hornbill Festival, in future?
Third, Australian institutions are responding very actively to Prime Minister Modi’s call for foreign universities to open branch campuses in India. In fact, the first two such campuses set up by foreign universities came from Australia – and another five Australian universities have sought and received University Grants Commission approval to open campuses from Chennai to Gurugram. The appetite among Australian universities for engagement with India – be that with a campus, with articulated degrees, or with joint programs – is far from slaked. Might this city of Shillong – well known for its admirable history in education – be a venue for more Australian university interaction in the future?
Ladies and gentlemen, it has been a pleasure for me, our Consul General and our teams to join you this evening in Shillong, and I look forward to the interaction which is to follow. Your sub- region engages our interest as we pursue a wider journey between India and Australia. I trust that we have been able to give you some points for reflection, and perhaps inspire some thoughts from you on how Australia might engage even more with India’s North East.