North East needs proper connectivity with ASEAN

RC AGARWAL

THE LOOK EAST POLICY, which was initiated in 1991, marked a key and strategic shift in India’s perspective of the world at large. The essential philosophy of the Look East policy is that India finds its destiny by linking itself more and more with its Asian partners and the rest of the world, and that India’s future and economic interests are best served by greater integration with East and South East Asia.

India’s conscious efforts to forge closer economic ties with ASEAN countries have paid real dividends; bilateral relations between India and ASEAN improve rapidly.

Thus, India became a sectoral dialogue partner in March 1993 and later became a full dialogue partnership member in 1995, and a member of the ASEAN regional Forum (ARF) in 1996 and finally to a summit level partnership in 2002.

India –ASEAN cooperation now covers wide field including a long term Cooperative Partnership for Peace and Prosperity with ASEAN, which is the cornerstone of India’s Look East Policy. And finally, India has signed the FTA with ASEAN at Bangkok in Thailand on 13th August 2009.

A sub-regional grouping called BISTEC was established in 1997, which later came to be known as BIMSTEC with the active supports from Thailand. India promotes BIMSTEC to establish economic links with peninsula member countries of ASEAN..

The Mekong-Ganga Cooperation (MCG) of Vientiane Declaration of November, 2000 is in fact an extension of the Look East policy and has yielded many benefits and supported India’s economic transformation and growth, including closer and strategic relations between India and Southeast Asian countries resulting in impressive increase in the quantum of bilateral trade and increased people to people contact and interaction

ASEAN, a key pillar of India’s Look East Policy accounts for 10% of the nations exports, but trade is carried mostly through the sea route. The only transportation link with the region is through a road in Moreh in Manipur and Tamu in Myammar. But the value of trade through this land route is minuscule and is limited to local goods. India’s rail link with the ASEAN region will also have to pass through Manipur. Significantly,

India has a wide network of inland waterways in the form of rivers, canals, backwaters and creeks. The total length of these waterways is 14,500 km, out of which about 5,200 km of river and 485 km of canals can be used by mechanized crafts. However, India has no such significant development in freight transportation by waterways, as compared to other developed countries like USA, China and European countries.

The Kaladan Multi-Model Transit Transport Facility envisages connectivity between Indian ports on the eastern seaboard and Sittwe port in Myanmar and then through riverine transport and by road to Mizoram (India), thereby providing an alternate route for transport of goods to the Northeast India.

The proposed railway link between New Delhi to Hanoi ( Vietnam) under Greater Mekong Sub Region Cooperation decided by South East Asian Countries foreign ministers at Phnom Penh, Cambodia on the 20th June,2003.This project will definitely help North East India and Myanmar in particular to connect each other in near future.

India should push for it again in wake of the plans for a rail line with the ASEAN countries. The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific has for long been pushing for a 1,14,000-km Trans Asian railway network that will connect Europe with Asia. In this direction one of its key proposals has been to link ASEAN countries with South Asia. The intergovernmental agreement on the rail network has come in to force from June, 2009 and will need investments worth $15 billion to connect the missing links.

India has embarked on an ambitious project to build and refurbish 7,603 km of roads in the strategic north-eastern region by 2013 to increase connectivity for civilian and military traffic and to promote trade with China and Myanmar. Of this, 1,310 km will be constructed at a cost of Rs. 76 billion by 2009 and the balance 5,711 km at a cost of Rs. 44 billion and a total of 120 billion US Dollar.

The writer is the president of NEFIT