The Act East Policy (AEP) of India is being projected as the new economic development strategy for India’s North Eastern Region (NER). Such a projection is based on the identified cardinal component of economic integration with South East Asia in terms of increased trade, investment, tourism and connectivity. In South East Asia, Thailand happens to be an important economy having significant interest to NER. This paper, through a SWOC analysis brings out a number of strengths and opportunities of the NER that can facilitate this economic integration. These include, continuum of cultural capital, abundant complementing and supplementing natural resources, low labor cost, young consumption society, strong community base to reduce information asymmetry, high opportunity for investment in agro processing, hydropower, petrochemicals, IT etc., geographical proximity to Bangladesh, Myanmar and China, upcoming India-Myanmar-Thailand trilateral highway, presence of world class educational institutions, FTA with Thailand and ASEAN and increase in labor cost in China.

Some of the significant weaknesses and challenges to this envisaged economic integration on the NER side includes, high transactions costs because of relatively undefined property rights, sub-optimal intra-regional, inter-regional and inter country integration in terms of physical and digital connectivity, information asymmetry with respect to the people and economy of Thailand and institutional rigidities. From the Thai side, some of the manifested weaknesses and challenges are: low awareness about NER and sub-optimal connectivity with it. The paper concludes that there is adequate scope for economic integration between NER and Thailand under the AEP framework based on economic and cultural capital rationales.