Which of the following countries is/are NOT a member of the 'Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Co-operation (BIMSTEC)' ?
1. Thailand
2. Nepal
3. Bhutan
4. Indonesia
Se

Question

Which of the following countries is/are NOT a member of the 'Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Co-operation (BIMSTEC)' ?
1. Thailand
2. Nepal
3. Bhutan
4. Indonesia
Select the correct answer from the code given below :
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UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, Only 4. BIMSTEC has exactly seven members — Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand — and Indonesia is not among them. Thailand is in fact a founder: the grouping was created by the Bangkok Declaration of 6 June 1997 as BIST-EC, standing for Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Myanmar joined on 22 December 1997, making it BIMST-EC, and Nepal and Bhutan became full members in February 2004, at which point the name settled as BIMSTEC. Indonesia is a founder-member of ASEAN, a different Southeast Asian grouping, and that is exactly why it is the plausible-looking odd one out here. So only country 4 is a non-member.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Nepal and Bhutan are both full BIMSTEC members. They were the last two to join, in February 2004, and their entry is precisely what turned BIMST-EC into BIMSTEC. Being landlocked does not exclude them — BIMSTEC covers the Bay of Bengal's hinterland as well as its coast.  (b) Half right. Indonesia is correctly picked out as a non-member, but Thailand is not merely a member, it is a founder — the 'T' in the original BIST-EC, and the country whose capital gave the founding Bangkok Declaration its name.  (d) This makes Thailand the non-member, which inverts the position entirely. Thailand has been in since 6 June 1997, leads BIMSTEC's connectivity sector, and hosted the sixth BIMSTEC Summit in Bangkok in April 2025, only months before this exam.

Concept: BIMSTEC — the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation — is a regional grouping of the Bay of Bengal littoral and its hinterland. It joins five South Asian countries (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka) to two Southeast Asian ones (Myanmar, Thailand), which makes it the principal bridge between SAARC and ASEAN. Its permanent secretariat, opened in 2014, is in Dhaka. Work is divided into sectors led by individual members — under the seven-sector structure adopted at the 5th Summit (Colombo, 2022) and in force at this exam, India leads Security, Thailand Connectivity, Bangladesh Trade and Investment, Myanmar Agriculture and Food Security, Nepal People-to-People Contact — which is where culture and tourism now sit — Sri Lanka Science, Technology and Innovation, and Bhutan Environment and Climate Change. Older material still lists the pre-2022 fourteen sectors, in which Bhutan led culture. India has pushed the grouping hard since 2016 as an alternative to a SAARC paralysed by India-Pakistan relations; neither Pakistan nor Afghanistan is a member.

State PCS 2025 Q95 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q95 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer