The India-ASEAN relationship has been a bit one-sided — hot pursuit by India but cautious interest by ASEAN, wary of upsetting China. There are good reasons why India and ASEAN should be friends, not least because both illustrate that democratic credentials and economic success are not necessarily mutually exclusive.The author, who served as India’s ambassador to ASEAN, provides an insider’s perspective of why and how it should be wooed.Much of ASEAN, like India, belongs to the Global South. But Singapore and Brunei Darussalam have per capita GNIs (Atlas method) of High-Income economies, while Malaysia jostles China in the upper middle-income...