India’s achievement in launching the Chandrayaan 3 lunar mission marks a turning point in its space exploration endeavours, with far-reaching implications that extend beyond technological success. This article discusses the strategic importance of Chandrayaan 3’s successful landing on the lunar surface, emphasizing its implications for India’s technological advancement, defense capabilities, education sector and economic growth. Furthermore, it delves into the challenges faced by the Indian space program, including limited budget allocations, technological dependencies, and market access. Drawing insights from global space initiatives, the article proposes strategic recommendations for realizing India’s full potential in the space domain, such as substantial investment, expertise in human spaceflight and private sector participation. Through a comprehensive analysis of Chandrayaan 3’s multidimensional impact, this article contributes to the scholarly discourse on space exploration and underscores India’s growing prominence in the global space community.

The growth of a nation in the international politics as well as regional politics is to a large extent depends on the foreign policy it envisages in pursuance of its own national interest. The Indian government’s Act East policy is one of those foreign policies that has been envisaged way back in the 90s as Look East Policy, which aimed at forging and establishing a closer ties and relations with India’s eastern neighbour like Myanmar and the ASEAN countries. This attempt of India in establishing a closer and concrete relation with Myanmar and the ASEAN countries through the Look East Policy has been found wanting in many aspects as with the passage of almost 22 years there had been very little achievement on various fronts. Thus, in the year 2014 November, at the 12th ASEAN-India Summit and 9th East Asian Summit held at Naypidaw in Myanmar, Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India formally enunciated the Act Policy, which is a redefinition of the Look East Policy of 1991 aiming at forging economic, political, cultural and security cooperation with Myanmar and ASEAN countries. And for this the development and restructuring of the Northeast region and its people should be a priority for the Indian government, as the region with its strategic location and the cultural proximities of the people with the populations of Myanmar is the gateway for looking east and for actively engaging with ASEAN eastern countries. In this context, the paper underlines the importance of empowering the NE people with modern high tech education, providing them entrepreneurial and skill development training by involving higher educational institutions. At present, only Assam is having an IIT and the rest of the NE regions are neglected regions in terms of technical education. Before starting the smart cities it is necessary to start technical educational institutions to achieve the Make in India vision of the present Union government. For that, it is necessary to take initiative to build confidence building measures by giving assurance to the NE people that their cultural identity will be protected in spite of celebrating pluralism. The highly popular English education may be helpful for the policy makers to reach the unreached. Moreover, NE higher education institutions can take initiatives to start courses on understanding the East Asia regions’ culture, business environment, language, sensitivities and other economic priorities and opportunities, so that the people of NE would serve as bridges and change agents for a better India-ASEAN cooperation. Above all, the Central government with the cooperation of the state governments should take the initiative to address the causes of insurgency to achieve a peaceful NE, to move towards a pro-active Look East and Act East Policy. This paper intends to analyse the important areas the central and state governments should concentrate for winning the people of NE without alienating them, before aggressively pursuing the frontier expansion, for any external aggressive policy without the wholehearted cooperation and involvement of the local population will be a disaster.