Power shifts in Myanmar, Bangladesh stymie India’s Act East Policy
End of Hasina rule in Bangladesh, law-and-order situation in Myanmar stall key initiatives of India including Kaladan and Akhaura-Agartala railway projects
India's Act East Policy — rolled out in November 2014 to promote economic cooperation and strategic ties with countries in the Indo-Pacific region, to improve the economic development of the North Eastern Region (NER) — appears to have hit a giant speed-breaker.
Power shifts in Myanmar and Bangladesh have turned cold several of India's trade and connectivity projects worth thousands of crores initiated under the Act East Policy.
The development could well ring the death knell for India’s plan to position the NER as a gateway to Southeast Asia, say experts, even as New Delhi is frantically trying to revive the Kaladan project in Myanmar.
The Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project aims to connect India and Myanmar by road and water. It will also connect North-East India with the rest of India.
Act East Policy
The policy, originally named 'Look East Policy', aims at developing the economically backward North-East by enhancing its trade, economic and cultural engagements with South East Asian countries.
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Among the key projects was a 1,400-km long India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway and the Kaladan Multimodal Transit Transport Project. These were expected to strengthen connectivity and cooperation between the two regions.
The trans-highway project was conceived at an India-Myanmar-Thailand ministerial-level meeting in 2002. But the actual construction began in 2012, only after the NER became relatively peaceful.
Roadblocks in implementation
The idea of only overland connectivity, however, continued to be perilous because of law-and-order issues on several stretches of the proposed highway.
This led to the conceptualisation of Kaladan – a sea-river-road connectivity project – in 2008.
But till date neither of the projects has been completed mainly because of disturbances in Myanmar and inhospitable terrains.
Also read: How Myanmar coup threatens to spoil India’s Act East dream
Meanwhile, a whole new vista opened up for the policy when an India-friendly Awami League government headed by Sheikh Hasina was formed in Bangladesh in 2009.
Hasina smoothened pathway
Soon after assuming charge, Hasina's government uprooted camps of North-East insurgent groups in her country, helping curb insurgency in the region to a large extent.
She also agreed to give transit facilities to India. This provided a new option to connect the NER with South-East Asia through Chittagong port, bypassing a trouble-torn Myanmar. It would also connect the landlocked region with mainland India via Bangladesh, skirting the narrow Siliguri corridor.
Seizing the opportunity, India lined up a slew of intermodal transport linkages and inland waterways through Bangladesh. It extended to the Hasina government three Lines of Credits (LOC) amounting to around $8 billion for the development of infrastructure in various sectors including roads, railways, shipping and ports.
Hostile neighbour
The fate of most of these projects is now under cloud. The Akhaura-Agartala railway project worth around Rs 1,000 crore, and the 1.9-km-long friendship bridge over River Feni, built at a cost of Rs 133 crore to connect Sabroom in Tripura with Ramgarh in Bangladesh, was completed but not operationalised. The reason is the hostility of the new interim government in Dhaka.
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The upgradation of the Mongla Port with India’s assistance — to develop it as a Indo-Bangladesh protocol route connecting National Waterway 1 (Ganges) and 2 (Brahmaputra) to provide an effective river connectivity between North-East states and the rest of India — is also in limbo.
India’s plan to connect the NER with industrial value chains in the Bay of Bengal region through Matarbari deep-sea port in Bangladesh, to be operationalised in 2027, is also in jeopardy due to prevailing uncertainty in bilateral relations between the two neighbours.
Vital conduits
Another Indian credit-funded project, to upgrade 50 km of road from Ashuganj river port in Bangladesh’s Brahmanbaria to the Akhaura border in Tripura, has also been suspended after the fall of the Hasina government.
Tripura Transport Minister Sushanta Chowdhury reiterated the uncertainty over the future of the projects but said the Centre is keeping a close tab on the situation.
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“The North-East cannot be the gateway to South-East Asia without linkages through Myanmar and Bangladesh. The two countries need to cooperate to make the Act East policy successful,” said former Nagaland Chief Minister KL Chishi.
The deterioration of India-Bangladesh relations has forced New Delhi to turn its focus again on reviving the Kaladan project, stalled due to the ongoing conflict between the Myanmar Junta and the Arakan Army (AA).
Fate of Kaladan project
The AA controls over 14 out of 17 townships in Myanmar’s Rakhine state where the Kaladan project is located. This apart, it has also recently taken control of Paletwa in the neighbouring Chin state bordering Myanmar.
Indian Ambassador to Myanmar Abhay Thakur reviewed the operations of the Kaladan project at Rakhine’s Sittwe Port on January 16-17. He met the Chief Minister of Rakhine State, U HteinLin.
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To revive the project India needs the cooperation of the AA, which controls most areas around the project.
Unconfirmed reports say at least two rounds of talks — one in Bangkok and another in New Delhi — were held in the past six months between the AA leaders and India’s top security officials to hammer out a cooperation deal. ‘
Thakur’s meeting with HteinLin, a retired colonel, indicates that India is still banking on the Junta to salvage the project.
