Which of the following sets of nations are members of the BIMSTEC Initiative?

Correct — B, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Myanmar. The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation has exactly seven members, and this option lists all seven and nothing else. Five of them are South Asian and two, Thailand and Myanmar, are South-East Asian, which is the point of the grouping — it bridges the two regions around the Bay of Bengal. It began in June 1997 with four members under the name BIST-EC, Myanmar joined at the end of that year, and Nepal and Bhutan became full members in February 2004, which is when the present name and the seven-member shape were settled.

• (a)Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, India and Sri Lanka — This is a five-member list confined to South Asia. Leaving out Thailand and Myanmar removes the two founding-era South-East Asian members and turns the grouping into something like a subset of SAARC.
• (c)Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, India, Sri Lanka and Maldives — Maldives is a SAARC member but has never been part of this initiative, and the list again omits Thailand and Myanmar. Substituting a South Asian island state for the South-East Asian members inverts the grouping's purpose.
• (d)Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Indonesia — Indonesia is not a member — it is a founding member of ASEAN, which is the confusion being exploited — and Thailand, which is a member, is missing from this list.

BIMSTEC is a regional grouping of the countries around the Bay of Bengal, formed to work on economic and technical cooperation across sectors rather than on political questions. Its permanent secretariat has been at Dhaka since 2014. It matters to India because it links the Act East policy to the neighbourhood, and because it does not include Pakistan, which is one reason it drew fresh attention as SAARC stalled.

The four options differ from one another in only one or two names each, so the safe method is to fix the seven-member list once and then check each option against it. A short mnemonic is that the grouping is five plus two — five from South Asia, being Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, and two from South-East Asia, being Myanmar and Thailand. Two exclusions are worth memorising alongside it, because they are the two traps that recur: Maldives, a SAARC member, is not in BIMSTEC, and Indonesia, an ASEAN founder, is not either. Anchored to the 2022 exam, the most recent meeting was the 5th Summit at Colombo on 30 March 2022, held virtually under Sri Lanka's chair, which adopted the BIMSTEC Charter and reorganised the old fourteen areas of cooperation into seven. Since then the Charter has entered into force, in May 2024, and the 6th Summit was held at Bangkok in April 2025.

• BIMSTEC stands for the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation.
• Its seven members are Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
• It was founded on 6 June 1997 by the Bangkok Declaration as BIST-EC; Myanmar joined in December 1997, and Nepal and Bhutan in February 2004.
• The permanent secretariat has been at Dhaka since 2014.
• The 5th Summit, held virtually at Colombo on 30 March 2022, adopted the BIMSTEC Charter and cut the areas of cooperation from fourteen to seven.

• Adding Maldives because it is a South Asian neighbour and a SAARC member. It is not in BIMSTEC.
• Adding Indonesia because the grouping reaches into South-East Asia. Indonesia belongs to ASEAN.
• Dropping Thailand, which was one of the four founding members in 1997.

As a membership set, as which country is not a member, or through the founding year, the secretariat and the summits.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The permanent secretariat of BIMSTEC is located in

  • (a)Kathmandu
  • (b)Colombo
  • (c)Dhaka
  • (d)Bangkok

  Answer(c) Dhaka — the secretariat opened there in 2014.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following countries is not a member of BIMSTEC?

  • (a)Bhutan
  • (b)Maldives
  • (c)Myanmar
  • (d)Thailand

  Answer(b) Maldives — a SAARC member, but never part of the Bay of Bengal grouping.