SPEAKING
FREELY Touch of sunstroke in Singh's
border vision By Nimmi Kurian
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh, during his recently concluded
maiden visit to India's border state of Arunachal
Pradesh, described it as the land where the "sun
kisses India first" and waxed eloquent on how it
"will rise from the east as a new star and become
one of the best regions of our country".
While the metaphor may be a trifle trite,
it reflects the growing
priority India attaches to the
development of its northeastern region. India has
been underscoring the transformational potential
of the three Ts - trade, tourism and transport -
for the region, which shares long international
borders with China, Bhutan, Bangladesh and
Myanmar.
As it seeks to integrate the
region with the extended neighborhood, the
implications these hold for the economic future of
the northeast are little studied and even less
understood. Can India's "land of the rising sun"
find its own place under the sun?
The
answer will essentially turn on how India tackles
five critical challenges. The first will be how
the region will be (re)imagined in the national
narrative. The restive border region has
constituted a site of contestations between
national and transnational interpretations. In the
national narrative, the northeast has appeared as
the periphery - the outer limits of the state's
absolute sovereignty, a space that is
territorially organized, patrolled, enforced and
enclosed.
The accompanying burden of
marginality has shunted the northeast to the edges
in discourses of power and representation. But
seen in a transnational frame, the border becomes
not quite the "margin" but the center of a vast
and bustling network of social and cultural flows.
Given its location, the northeastern region has
historically looked outwards, the ethnic makeup of
its peoples reflecting centuries-old processes of
co-mingling and migrations.
It is this
traffic that has been so vital to and an integral
part of the everyday existence of border
communities and which operate despite the
exclusionary nature of territorial mapping of
borders. The thriving of what is euphemistically
referred to as informal trade bears testimony to
the futility of measures to "close" the border.
A second key challenge will be how any
sustainable basis for the economic take-off of the
region can be crafted without addressing the
difficult issue of public finance. The absence of
viable domestic sources of revenue generation has
considerably compromised local initiative and in
the long run any prospects for meaningful
autonomy. Going by the resource flows from the
center, the northeast, unlike popular perception,
is far from being a neglected region.
The
problem with growth strategies based on resource
flow is that they can end up being double-edged
swords. On their own, huge fund transfers can at
best only be a partial solution and can often end
up being part of the problem. In the northeast, of
the $7.6 billion that is spent every year, annual
financial transfers from Delhi make up as much as
$5.1 billion, creating its own constituency of
vested interests among politicians, expatriate
contractors and extortionists.
Adopting a
development strategy that has been designed in the
distant capital has also brought with it the
dangers of parachuting, which is becoming apparent
in the northeast. To begin with, such a
development is highly vulnerable since it is
programmed to respond not to local particularities
and specifications as it should, but to the
changing political preferences and priorities of
its designers in the center. In the absence of
attention to the former, funds have gone on to
sustain the self-serving cycle of corruption,
militancy and underdevelopment.
The lack
of institutional entry points for local inputs
within a participatory ethos has meant that
perception of funds has tended to veer between
indifference and a lack of ownership, furthering
feelings of alienation.
Thirdly, the
promise of trade-fostering industrialization will
depend on the region being able to realize its own
potential based on its indigenous resource
endowments. For the northeast to benefit
therefore, products in which the region enjoys a
comparative advantage must find a place in the
export basket.
The manner in which this
aspect is managed will make all the difference
between the northeast being either a production
center or ending up as a mere conduit for goods
produced elsewhere. If one looks at the current
export basket of India's border trade, the
northeast as a region does not enjoy a comparative
advantage in any of the products being traded. For
instance, products such as wheat, steel, treated
steel and electronic goods, which feature in
India's exports to Bangladesh, do not originate in
the northeast but are sourced from other domestic
locations in India.
The northeast also
does not find a presence in India's export basket
to Southeast Asia, which includes products such as
shrimp, granite, cotton and aluminum ingots. If
the region remains a mere conduit for exports on
account of its location, it will gain only minimal
benefits.
A fourth challenge will be to
remove several formidable roadblocks to mobility,
which is absolutely vital if there is to be a
seamless flow of people, goods and services. India
is involved in creating a sub-regional
communication network spurred in part by the
strategic stakes it has in creating multi-modal
lines of communication across the region. The
various infrastructure projects that India is
involved in are expected to result in enhanced
physical connectivity and access to the extended
neighborhood.
Intra-connectivity within
the northeast will also form a critical corollary
to external connectivity. Far more forbidding than
the landlocked status of the northeast is the
sobering fact that each of these states there
suffers the double disadvantage of being
"internally locked" on account of poor or
non-existent transport linkages.
Compounding these barriers to mobility has
been the lack of institutional connectivity, which
has also worked to keep levels of border trade
considerably below their potential. Complicated
procedural requirements and paper work have
resulted in higher transaction costs and diverted
trade to informal private channels at the cost of
the exchequer. Multiple handling and transhipment
of goods are common, resulting in mindless
duplication of procedures. Single window
clearance, harmonization of tariff and customs
procedures point the way forward, complemented by
facilities such as banking facilities, warehouses,
power supply.
Fifthly, is India's
subregional vision likely to compete or coincide
with China's own moves in the shared subregion?
China has been energetically seeking to strengthen
subregional economic cooperation between the
contiguous regions of northeast India, southwest
China, Myanmar and Bangladesh. A necessary first
step towards any proposed cooperative framework
would call for a dialogue towards a mutually
acceptable conception of peace in the subregion.
Unless their conceptions of peace
coincide, any move to explore transborder
cooperation between India and China will be a
non-starter. Since the security perceptions of a
state are always relational, India for instance
will read China's border signals in terms of the
level of trust these will inspire.
A case
in point was the controversy stirred up by during
the visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit
to India in November 2006. During the visit,
remarks by the Chinese envoy to India, Sun Yuxi
reiterating China's territorial claim to Arunachal
Pradesh marred China's diplomatic offensive in a
year celebrating India-China friendship. The
repeated invocation of rigid notions of
territoriality can thwart the potential of
alternative border discourses that can transcend
this logic. This has to do with the fact that
these norms hold out two vastly different futures
for the India-China border. While the logic of the
former would stimulate wariness, the latter could
offer scope for building joint stakes in peace.
Perhaps the single-most visible indicator
of the trust deficit is explained by the paradox
that while India is willing to engage China
bilaterally, it has been somewhat reluctant to do
so subregionally. This is borne out by the
consciously eastward orientation of India's
continental connections aimed at integrating its
eastern region with Southeast Asia.
India's policy of looking east via the
northeast by linking it to the dynamic economies
of Asia holds out promise for the border region.
But if the sun metaphor invoked by the Indian
prime minister is to bear fruit, India will need
to tackle a set of hard questions imaginatively.
Unless creatively managed, there is every
danger of the northeast falling between two Ts -
caught between the promise of transboundary
cooperation and the unyielding logic of rigid
notions of territoriality. From being on the
margins of "closed" borders, it will be far more
tragic if the northeast is reduced to being on the
edges of an open economy.
Nimmi
Kurian is an Associate Professor at the Center
for Policy Research, New Delhi. Her most recent
publication is Troubled Transitions: The Politics
of Social Harmony in China, CPR Issue Brief No. 1,
2007.
(Copyright Nimmi Kurian, 2008)
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
