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Prospects brighten for Kunming
Initiative
By Ramtanu
Maitra
Some new developments in Sino-Indian and
Sino-Bangladesh relations indicate that the Kunming
Initiative to rebuild the old Stilwell Road, linking
northeastern India with southern China to enhance
Sino-Indian trade, has been revived.
Optimism
was raised by the statements of Indian Defense Minister
George Fernandes, who is widely identified as the
staunchest critic of China in India, that hinted at
changes in Indo-Chinese relations. At a conference on
"Asian Security and China 2003-2010" in New Delhi last
month, Fernandes said that the September 11 tragedy had
altered the nature of the discourse about security and
how it is to be prioritized in consonance with the
Indian experience of dealing with a similar situation
for the past two decades. "The Sino-Indian relationship
is to be rearranged in this altered context," he said.
Of equal importance was a seminar organized in
the Indian state of Assam last December. Jointly staged
by the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian
Studies, based in Kolkata, and Dibrugarh University, the
seminar suggested the reopening of the road to improve
relations with neighboring countries. It also proposed
that the road should measure up to international
standards and be capable of carrying 40-foot containers.
Senior professors attending the seminar observed that
once the road was opened, the entire Southeast Asian
region would become a major trade hub. For Yunnan
province, which is landlocked, the road will pave the
way for access to the Bay of Bengal.
Indian
roadblock
The seminar's conclusion was, however,
not endorsed by India's Home Ministry, a bastion of
China antagonists. The ministry continued to show its
disinclination to reopen the Stilwell Road, ostensibly
in view of the continuing militancy problem in the
region. The more likely reason is inertia: Indian
bureaucracy, and the present Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) seems to have no sense of seizing an opportunity.
Fear of disturbing the status quo reigns supreme among
the bureaucrats generally.
Those who oppose the
enhancement of Sino-Indian trade relations point out
fearfully that the road will allow Chinese goods to
flood the Indian market. A huge amount of Chinese goods
come in as it is, and will continue to do so through the
unmanned Indo-Nepal borders. Also, a large amount of
Indian goods travel in the opposite direction. Yunnan
province, where Kunming is situated, imports annually
over half a million tonnes of iron ore from India and
exports to it about a million tonnes of phosphatic ore.
The "fears" would seem to have a definite political
bias.
The Kunming Initiative got its name on
August 17, 1999, at a conference on regional cooperation
and development among China, India, Myanmar and
Bangladesh held in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan
province in the southwestern region of China when
delegates acclaimed a proposal to revive the Stilwell
Road, or the Old Burma Road. The Stilwell Road, which
stretches from Ledo in Assam to Myanmar across the
Phangsu pass and joins Bhamo in Myanmar and then extends
to Yunnan province of China. The road covers a distance
of 1,043 miles from Ledo to Kunming. The distance from
Ledo to Kolkata is about 1,065 miles.
The Home
Ministry's opposition to the proposal flies in the face
of unanimous endorsement by India's seven northeastern
states. They have demanded re-opening of the road to
increase the volume of trade with Southeast Asian
countries. Their enthusiasm is well founded. If the
Stilwell Road is reconstructed from Ledo in Assam to
Mytkina in Myanmar - an admittedly difficult,
mountainous 250-mile stretch, this road can then be
extended to the Moreh-Tamu (India)-Kalewa (Myanmar)
crossing on the Chindwin River. Indian engineers have
already built this road recently -it was completed in
2001 - and a bridge over the Chindwin can extend the
road as far as Mandalay, which is on the Myanmar railway
system. Another Indian northeastern state, Mizoram,
which shares as much as 450 miles of border with
Bangladesh and Myanmar, could be linked to Akyab (now
called Sittwe) in Myanmar, and if Bangladesh agrees,
Agartala in Tripura could be connected to Chittagong.
That will open up the entire northeastern region of
India, making it the commercial outlet for eastern
trade.
Sino-Bangladesh initiative
In
addition to support among the northeastern Indian
states, and among some groups and institutions in Delhi,
the Kunming Initiative received a big boost last
December when Bangladesh Prime Minister Begum Khaleda
Zia met with the governor of Yunnan province, Xu
Rongkai, during her official five-day visit to China.
Following an hour-long meeting, the Bangladeshi
spokesman told the media that the Yunnan governor had
asked Zia to encompass Bangladesh in the Kunming
Initiative for an enhanced cooperation to the mutual
benefit. The governor said that his province would
cooperate with Bangladesh in strengthening interaction
in economic, trade and cultural fields under the Kunming
Initiative, joined by Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and
northeastern India.
Xu, responding to a proposal
from the prime minister, agreed to set up the
Chittagong-Myanmar-Kunming air route, which, then, would
help to build a sub-regional communications network.The
proposal for the air link has been taken up seriously
and it is expected to get the green light this month
when Yunnan officials meet Bangladeshi officials in
Dhaka.
Some analysts point out that the Kunming
Initiative got bogged down because of India's concern
about the growing economic power of China and also due
to the less-than-friendly relations between Dhaka and
New Delhi. There is no question that much more is at
stake for India in improving its relations with
Bangladesh and also in developing a more transparent
one-to-one relationship with China.
What is
at stake for India?
Delhi has already made
significant efforts to open up northeast India to
Southeast Asia. Almost two years ago, then-Indian
external affairs minister Jaswant Singh, on a visit to
Myanmar, made the point that the natural outlet for
India's northeast is through neighboring Southeast Asian
countries and not Kolkata.
"The northeastern
states have to have an access eastward," he told newsmen
accompanying him on his tour to Myanmar, the first by an
Indian minister in 14 years. Subsequently, India has
built the Moreh-Tamu-Kalewa road. Besides the Moreh-Tamu
linkage, three new trade points are being opened at
Champai-Rih, Pangsau Pass and Paletwa on the Kaladan
River to enhance economic cooperation between the two
countries. The two sides have also identified the
Lungwa-Yangyong and Pangsha-Pongnyo crossings as
potential trading points. Weekly haats (village
markets) are held at these places on the Indo-Myanmar
border in the Nagaland sector.
It seems that New
Delhi has finally begun to recognize the importance of
extending its trade by land to Southeast Asia. Myanmar's
readiness to cooperate with India in helping to develop
a transport corridor has assumed great importance for
New Delhi. The transport corridor through Myanmar can
offer a cheaper and faster alternative to the narrow
Siliguri corridor in the northern part of the state of
West Bengal. This is currently utilized as the trade
corridor within India for sending goods to the northeast
India. India and Myanmar are presently working on a
project along the Kaladan River that runs through the
Indian state of Mizoram and Myanmar before joining the
Bay of Bengal. This project envisages upgradation of
port facilities at Sittwe, about 155 miles from the
border between Mizoram and Myanmar, where Kaladan flows
into the Bay of Bengal.
Once the right waterway
and road links are established, commodities and goods
will have economically viable passage from India's east
coast ports to Sittwe and thereafter through Mizoram and
other states of India's northeast. Last month, India
started short-haul turbo-prop services to link all the
capitals of the northeastern states and also some
destinations in the eastern region of India. At the
moment the air service will meet only passenger
requirements, but New Delhi hopes that the connectivity
itself will enhance trade and commerce with and among
the northeastern states. If things begin to move, more
commercial proposals will surface.
According to
the Independence of Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Ministry
of Energy and Mineral Resources has accepted, in
principle, a proposal for the construction of a
Myanmar-Tripura-West Bengal gas pipeline through
Bangladesh. It is also said in that the Myanmar, Tripura
and West Bengal state governments of India have accepted
the proposal in principle.
(©2003 Asia Times
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