India will be Asian backwater unless it bridges gap to Asean

The unprecedented scenes could be a tipping point for Asia’s balance of power – but only if Delhi can overcome its traditional bureaucratic inertia and turn initiatives into action.

Its proclaimed “Look East” policy yields little unless backed by a concrete action to build trust and inspire confidence with timely implementation of programmes and schemes. India must ponder why even its close neighbourhood has for long felt alienated from Delhi, and how it can inject vigour in its “Neighbourhood First” policy.

Formed in Bangkok in 1966 during the Cold War, Asean in Indian eyes was an American construct. Asean leaders, meanwhile, looked on India as a backward country with little to contribute. Since then much water has flown down the Mekong and the Ganges. Home to 640 million people, 8.8 per cent of the world population, with a GDP of over $2.8 trillion rising to a projected $10 trillion by 2030, the 10-member Southeast Asian grouping now commands enviable economic and strategic importance. Today, it’s not America but China that looms large over the region, economically and strategically, recalling Mao Zedong’s famous declaration, “We must have Southeast Asia ... After we get that region, the wind from the East will prevail over the wind from the West.”

After early trouble, the Asean-India partnership has steadily evolved since 1992, with India becoming a summit partner in 2002 and deepening cooperation in the three “Cs” – commerce, culture and connectivity. The Asean-India 25 years summit in Delhi on Thursday ushered in greater India-Asean integration plus a rediscovering of age-old cultural, religious and linguistic bonds.

India is striving to match China by highlighting the crucial socio-cultural dimension of the relationship as a bedrock for mutual understanding and respect. China has sprinkled Confucius cultural centres around Southeast Asia and the world to extend its soft power. India is poised to belatedly highlight its civilisational and cultural links with the region, helping pave the way towards a “shared destiny” with the Asean peoples.

Knowledge of India and Indians in Southeast Asia remains poor, and vice versa. Little is known of India’s profound influences on the cultures of the region, manifest in its religions and languages, textiles and medicine, art and architecture, and exemplified in the various forms of the Ramayana and in the stones of Angkor Wat and Borobodur.

Connectivity is central to the Asean-India strategic and economic partnership. Land, air and maritime infrastructure, so critical for trade and commerce as well as tourism and cultural exchanges, is simply not being built. 

India habitually drags its feet even on projects that provide lifelines linking its mainland with Northeast outposts via Bangladesh and Myanmar. A glaring example is the missing rail link between India’s Agartala and Akhaura in Bangladesh, a mere 15km stretch, critically important for India’s Northeast to connect with the country’s mainland but whose construction has been delayed for seven years already.

Myanmar – strategically located at the tri-junction of East, Southeast and South Asia – is the only country in Asean that borders India and thus serves as a bridge between the two. India has for decades talked of improving road and rail connections and a new port on Myanmar’s coastal Rakhine, but its slothful energies have generated wariness in Nay Pyi Taw. The 127km Tamu-Kalay missing rail link between India and Myanmar has made no progress despite a feasibility study having long been completed.

The Kaladan sea-river-road project, signed in 2008, has suffered unacceptable time and cost overruns. This mix of road and riverine transport project would give the landlocked Northeast access to the Indian Ocean and cut 625km from the circuitous route through the Assam and Siliguri corridor.

The India-Myanmar-Thailand trilateral highway is another to suffer delays. India’s National Highway Authority has just awarded the construction contract for the two-lane 120km highway in its  Kalewa-Yargi section, following the 132km Tamu-Kalewa Friendship Highway section already built by India. It is hoped that proposed extension of trilateral highway to the entire Cambodia-Laos-Myanmar-Vietnam region will be undertaken with alacrity.

Nearer home, India has dithered in regard to a mere 18km rail link for Biratnagar in Nepal, also a 15km line for Bhairahwa, and reconstruction of the Jaynagar-Bijalpura line, likewise the 18km Hashimara- Phueontsholing line in Bhutan. Instead of whining over China’s bid to extend its rail network to Kathmandu, India could take up Nepal’s offer of 10 years ago to construct 174km rail line linking Birgunj with Kathmandu.

An unavoidable fact of geography, India commands the centre-stage in South Asia. The region’s geography dictates that the onus of region-wide connectivity falls on Delhi. All around India, China shares land borders with five SAARC countries, looks over the Chicken’s Neck at a sixth, and has a long border with Myanmar. Although an extra-regional player, China has long wanted to fill the South Asian space that nature gifted to India. 

China is now seeking to entice India’s ring of neighbours. That Delhi does have Beijing’s deep pockets is fact, but what is inexcusable is its bureaucratic sloth and smugness. While India remains a laggard, in sharp contrast China sprints ahead. India is seen as chugging along with a bullock-cart mentality; China has zipped ahead like a Formula One racing car.

The time has come for India to push the process of regional integration forward.  

Raghu Dayal is a senior fellow at the Asian Institute of Transport Development.