Re-energise ties with Myanmar : The Tribune India

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Re-energise ties with Myanmar

INDIA has played its cards admirably in securing the support of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives to join it in refusing to participate in the forthcoming SAARC Summit in Islamabad.

Re-energise ties with Myanmar

For keeps: Take forward the friendship with our eastern neighbour.



G Parthasarathy

INDIA has played its cards admirably in securing the support of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives to join it in refusing to participate in the forthcoming SAARC Summit in Islamabad. There have been a number of indications in recent months that measures were being considered in New Delhi to deal with the dismal role of SAARC in failing to promote economic integration, develop transportation and energy corridors and promote cooperation to deal with terrorism. The main obstacle to SAARC attaining its full potential has been Pakistan. Islamabad’s only interest has been to use SAARC to undermine India’s influence in South Asia, while aggressively seeking to secure China’s admission to SAARC. 

India has been encouraged by its experience in promoting economic and anti-terrorism cooperation with its ASEAN partners and its ‘quadrilateral’ partnership with SAARC members Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. There has, however, been far too little attention paid to utilising BIMSTEC, which brings together all eastern SAARC members across the Bay of Bengal — India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka — with ASEAN members Myanmar and Thailand. Bearing this in mind, India drew inspiration from past BRICS Summits hosted by Brazil and Russia, where partner nations from Latin America and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation were invited to attend. New Delhi has invited the leaders of its six BIMSTEC partners to meet with the leaders of Russia, China, Brazil and South Africa at the Goa summit. It has thereby prevented Pakistan from undermining its diplomacy across its eastern neighbourhood and made BIMSTEC the primary organisation for regional outreach. Developing a quadrilateral India-Sri Lanka-Maldives-Seychelles corridor, across the western Indian Ocean, can reinforce this effort. 

India should develop a policy for regional containment of Pakistan by complementing these efforts with an India-Iran-Afghanistan economic partnership. Pakistan has to learn that its efforts to deny India connectivity across its western neighbourhood, while undermining India’s economic partnerships with its eastern neighbours, will only lead to Rawalpindi being increasingly marginalised. The BRICS meeting in Goa will also send a message to China that we are willing to cooperate with it in regional forums. Keeping Pakistan out of, or marginalised, in South Asian regional forums till it mends its ways should now be the salient feature of India’s future policies to promote regional economic cooperation. Existing SAARC Institutions like  SAARC University and SAARC Secretariat can be kept going, with all other facets of South Asian cooperation being shifted to new groupings like the four-nation quadrilateral and BIMSTEC.

India needs to pay more serious attention to relations with Myanmar, which can play a more salient role across our eastern shores in this new strategic setting. There are reasons to believe that while, in keeping with its traditional politeness, Myanmar has sought to take relations forward, there is unhappiness at the insensitivity we have shown by repeatedly playing up a cross-border strike against NSCN (K) separatists on Myanmar soil, undertaken without prior Myanmar government’s approval. Those given to insensitive chest thumping in India should remember that for over two decades, Myanmar has cooperated with us in counter-terrorism operations on their soil against armed separatist groups from India. We have reciprocated this help appropriately. Chest thumping to celebrate cross-border raids is uncalled for. It is intensely disliked in Myanmar. We also need to remember that unlike in other countries like Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, we have a deplorable record in executing development projects in Myanmar. Some of these projects need specific mention.

While PM Modi has repeatedly spoken of improving connectivity across our eastern borders by a trilateral “friendship highway”, through Myanmar to Thailand, the project work on this highway has been tardy and inefficient. We did not repair and upgrade an estimated 80 World War II bridges when we initially undertook to rebuild the road, which, if properly utilised, could be the centerpiece for tourist traffic across Manipur to Mandalay, and even beyond to Thailand. Sadly, because of poor project implementation and unimaginative restrictions and procedures, this road is hardly utilised. The bus service that was inaugurated with much fanfare has come to a grinding halt.

One of the unique features of our borders with Myanmar has been that the tribals living on both sides of the border can travel freely across the border. There are reports suggesting that New Delhi is now planning to fence this border. This has invited strong opposition from the chief ministers of the four Indian states bordering Myanmar — Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh. Any fencing being undertaken should be limited and not affect free movement of tribals. The fencing should be undertaken primarily to prevent the rapidly growing and illegal imports of Chinese products from across the India-Myanmar border.

An even greater financial and planning disaster has been our approach to provide our landlocked Northeastern states access to the Bay of Bengal, through a land and river corridor in Myanmar, combined with the development of the strategically located port of Sittwe in the Bay of Bengal. Poor project planning, which involved the absence of a detailed study on hurdles to be overcome, has made us something of a laughing stock in Myanmar, with odious comparisons being drawn between India and China on project implementation. More importantly, have we carefully assessed the types of goods which will be carried across this strategic corridor and how it will be administered?  Finally, over two decades ago we agreed to construct an 1800 MW hydel project across the Chindwin river close to our borders in Manipur. We have only debated how this project will be implemented and have invited ridicule.

The Myanmar government is determined to spare no effort to get the best possible benefits it can from widespread global and regional economic interaction. Rather than building fences across its border with Myanmar, India should be carefully studying how other countries, most notably China, manage their borders with Myanmar. We should ask ourselves why we couldn’t have a booming economic interaction across our borders with Myanmar, as China does. Japan is now admired in Myanmar because of measures it has recently devised to promote meaningful trade, investment and economic ties with Myanmar. There is much we can learn from the Chinese and our Japanese friends.

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