Book excerpt: Pax Indica

Shashi Tharoor
June 29, 2012First Published: June 29, 2012
Last Updated: 2012-08-18 09:43:58

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Book excerpt: Pax Indica

• Review: Pakistan On The Brink

Pax Indica
Shashi Tharoor
Allen lane
RS 799 pp 456

Gorilla on the beach
In 1410, near the Sri Lankan coastal town of Galle, the Chinese Admiral Zheng He erected a stone tablet with a message to the world. His inscription was in three languages — Chinese, Persian and Tamil — and his message was even more remarkable: according to Robert Kaplan’s 2010 book Monsoon, it “invoked the blessings of the Hindu deities for a peaceful world built on trade”…

The subcontinent has long been at the centre of Asia’s most vital trade routes, and India’s commanding position at the heart of South Asia places it in both an enviable and a much-resented position… No one loves a huge neighbour: one need only ask the Mexicans what they think about the United States, or the Ukrainians their views of Russia. India cannot help the fact that, whether it wants to or not, it accounts for 70% of the population of the eight countries that make up the subcontinent’s premier regional organisation, the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (Saarc). Worse, it accounts for 80% of the region’s collective GDP, and is by far its most militarily powerful member… India is the proverbial 298-pound gorilla on the beach, whose slightest step will immediately be seen by the skinny 98-pounders as proof of insensitivity, bullying or worse.

Nonetheless, there is a widespread perception, which New Delhi would be unwise to ignore, that India’s relations with the countries neighbouring it have been poorly managed. While its recent rise, unlike China’s, is largely seen around the world as benign, India’s neighbours hardly constitute an echo-chamber for global applause. Of the eight nations with which it shares a land or maritime border — Pakistan, China, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and the Maldives — there has been a history of problems, of varying degrees of difficulty, with six. Adding Afghanistan to the list, India has nine countries in its direct neighbourhood which are all, in varying degrees, vital to its national security. As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh remarked during his October 2011 visit to Bangladesh, “India will not be able to realise its own destiny without the partnership of its South Asian neighbours.”

The charge that relations with most of them have been generally unsatisfactory is not untrue. Yet it is partly because of circumstances beyond India’s own control.

The burma flip-flop
As elections in 2011 (and a by-election in 2012) both ratified and subtly altered the consequences of three decades of military rule in Myanmar, formerly (and to many nationalists, still) called Burma, the perspective from India may help explain much about the international survival and continued acceptability of the junta in that country.

Burma was ruled as part of Britain’s Indian Empire until 1935, and the links between the two countries remained strong. An Indian business community thrived in the major Burmese cities, and cultural and political affinities between the two countries were well established. Jawaharlal Nehru, was a friend of the Burmese nationalist hero Bogyoke (General) Aung San, whose daughter Suu Kyi studied in New Delhi.

When the generals in Rangoon (now Yangon) suppressed the popular uprising of 1988, overturned the results of a free election overwhelmingly won by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), shot students and arrested the new democratically elected leaders, leaving NLD leaders and party workers a choice of incarceration or exile, the Government of India initially reacted as most Indians would have wanted it to. India gave asylum to fleeing students, allowed them to operate their resistance movement on the Indian side of the border (with some financial help from New Delhi) and supported a newspaper and a radio station that propagated the democratic voice. For many years, India was unambiguously on the side of democracy, freedom and human rights in Burma — and in ways more tangible than the rhetoric of the regime’s Western critics. In 1995 Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding, India’s highest honour given to a foreigner.

But then reality intruded. India’s strategic rivals, China and Pakistan, began to cultivate the Burmese generals. Major economic and geopolitical concessions were offered to both suitors. The Chinese even began developing a port on the Burmese coast, far closer to Calcutta than to Canton. And the generals of the Slorc (State Law and Order Restoration Council) junta, well aware of the utility of what comes out of the barrel of a gun, began providing safe havens and arms to a motley assortment of anti-New Delhi rebel movements that would wreak havoc in the north-eastern states of India and retreat to sanctuaries in the newly renamed Myanmar.

This was troubling enough to policy-makers in New Delhi, who were being painfully reminded of their own vulnerabilities to a determined neighbour. The two countries share a 1600-kilometre land border and a longer maritime boundary with overlapping economic zones in the strategically crucial Bay of Bengal. Four of India’s politically sensitive north-eastern states have international borders with Myanmar. These borders are porous and impossible to patrol closely; people, traders, smugglers and militants all cross easily in both directions. The potential threat to India from its own periphery is therefore considerable.

But the clincher came when large deposits of natural gas were found in Burma, which it was clear would not be available to an India deemed hostile to the junta. India realised that its rivals were gaining ground in Delhi’s own backyard while New Delhi was losing out on new economic opportunities. The price of pursuing a moral foreign policy simply became too high.

So New Delhi turned 180 degrees. When Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf travelled to Myanmar in 1999 to celebrate his country’s new relationship with his fellow generals, India’s then foreign minister Jaswant Singh soon followed. The increasingly forlorn resistance operations from Indian soil were shut down in the hope of reciprocation from the Burmese side. And New Delhi sweetened the Burmese generals’ tea for them by providing both military assistance and intelligence support to their regime in their never-ending battles against their own rebels.

India’s journey was complete: from standing up for democracy, New Delhi had gone on to aiding and enabling the objectives of the military regime. When monks were being mowed down on the streets of Yangon in 2006, the Indian government called for negotiations, muttered banalities about national reconciliation and opposed sanctions. New Delhi also sent its oil minister to negotiate an energy deal, making it clear the country’s real priorities lay with its own national economic interests, ahead of its solidarity with Burmese democrats. (At the same time, Indian diplomats intervened discreetly from time to time on behalf of Suu Kyi, though their effectiveness was limited by New Delhi’s unwillingness to alienate Rangoon.)

All this was, in fact, perfectly understandable. Officials in New Delhi were justified in reacting with asperity to Western critics of its policy: India needed no ethical lessons from a Washington or London that has long coddled military dictators in our neighbourhood, notably in Islamabad. Any Indian government’s primary obligation is to its own people, and there is little doubt that the economic opportunities provided by Burmese oil and gas are of real benefit to Indians…

One inescapable fact of geopolitics remains: you can put your ideals on hold, but you cannot change who your neighbours are. The member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), on Burma’s eastern flank, have made similar calculations.

India’s government therefore cannot be blamed for deciding that its national interests in Burma are more important than standing up for democracy there. And yet, paradoxically, the gradual opening up of Myanmar following the 2011 elections and the installation of a general-turned-civilian, Thien Sein, as president, may offer New Delhi some measure of vindication. As the new regime released political prisoners, permitted freedom of movement to the detained Aung San Suu Kyi, allowing her to contest and win a by-election, and even questioned the environmental and economic impact of a big Chinese dam project in the country’s north, India’s Western critics began grudgingly to acknowledge that genuine change might well be on the way.

Countries like India that had maintained links with the junta and gently prised open its clenched fist may well have achieved more than those whose threats, bluster and sanctions had merely hardened the junta’s heart.

These are edited extracts from Shashi Tharoor’s Pax Indica, to be released on July 9

GREETINGS ON INDIA'S INDEPENDENCE DAY

WRAPUP 2-China, India meet to focus on trade, despite mistrust


Tue, Dec 14 2010

Source:Reuters

By Sui-Lee Wee

NEW DELHI, Dec 15 (Reuters) - Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, accompanied by more than 400 business leaders, will seek to boost trade with India and soothe tensions between the world's fastest-growing major economies when he visits on Wednesday.

Wen's visit is the first by a Chinese premier in five years. He is accompanied by China's top tycoons, underscoring the growing commercial ties of countries which, between them, house more than a third of the world's population.

"Impressive business delegations have accompanied Barack Obama and David Cameron, but when the Wen circus rolls into town with 100 of China's top tycoons, the red carpet needs to be a bit longer," said a commentary in the Hindustan Times on Wednesday.

"Let trade do the talking, other issues that add to the trust deficit will hopefully get addressed on the way."

The two countries, one-time rivals who went to war in 1962, are now entwined by their booming trade relationship and rising global clout.

Both have stood together to resist Western demands in world trade and climate change talks, but they have also clashed over China's close relationship with Pakistan, fears of Chinese spying and a longstanding border dispute.


Wen is expected to announce more Chinese investments in India or lower trade barriers to assuage the worries of Indian politicians, peeved that the Sino-Indian trade balance is heavily in China's favour.

India's deficit with China could reach $24-25 billion this year, analysts said. The deficit rose to $16 billion in 2007-08, from $1 billion in 2001-02, according to Indian customs data.

India has sought to diversify its trade basket, but raw materials and other low-end commodities such as iron ore still make up about 60 percent of its exports to China.

In contrast, manufactured goods -- from trinkets to turbines -- form the bulk of Chinese exports.

China is now India's largest trade partner and two-way trade reached $60 billion this year, up from $13.6 billion in 2004.

"Economic ties constitute literally the bedrock of our relations ... Both sides are keen to further enhance mutually beneficial trade and are looking at new initiatives," said an Indian foreign ministry spokesman on Monday.

Still, total investment by China in India is small, amounting to only $221 million in 2009, representing only about 0.1 percent of China's total outward foreign direct investment stock in that year.

That figure is seven times less than what China has invested in Pakistan, according to data from China's Ministry of Commerce.


TIBETAN PROTESTS

The Sino-Indian trade relationship is overlaid with political and strategic rifts.

Beijing's longest running grudge against India is over its granting of asylum to Tibetan leader Dalai Lama, who fled to India in the 1950s following a failed uprising, setting off a chain of events that led to the war between them.

Hundreds of demonstrators wearing orange T-shirts with slogans such as "Free Tibet Now" took to the streets of central Delhi, shouting "Wen Jiabao go back!" and "Tibet's independence is India's security."

The Tibetan protests, which usually accompany visits by Chinese leaders to India, were peaceful, watched over by a heavy police presence. Security was also stepped up outside the Chinese embassy in Delhi.

The Dalai Lama is due to visit Sikkim, an Indian state on the Chinese border, during Wen's visit to Delhi, something that could inflame tensions.


FRAGILE RELATIONS

The two nations have pursued divergent paths in their development: for India, a democracy, economic reforms began only in 1991; for China, a one-party state that implemented market reforms in 1979, catapulting the country's economy.

Although both India and China have said they are exploring a possible free-trade agreement, no real progress is expected on that front as there is some scepticism in New Delhi that Beijing may only want to dump cheap manufactured goods on India's booming $1.3 trillion economy. [ID:nSGE6BC04V].

While the two are often lumped together as emerging world powers, China's GDP is four times bigger than India's and its infrastructure outshines India's dilapidated roads and ports, a factor that makes New Delhi wary of Beijing's growing might.

"Relations are very fragile, very easy to be damaged and very difficult to repair. Therefore they need special care in the information age," China's envoy to India, Zhang Yan, told reporters in New Delhi.

India fears China wants to restrict its global reach by possibly opposing its bid for a permanent U.N. Security Council seat or encircling the Indian Ocean region with projects from Pakistan to Myanmar.

Long wary of Washington's influence in South Asia, Beijing's overtures toward New Delhi also come just a little over a month after U.S. President Barack Obama's trip to India, during which he endorsed India's long-held demand for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council and announced $10 billion worth of business deals. [ID:nSGE6A707T].

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron also visited India this year.

After Wen's Dec. 15-17 visit he travels straight to Pakistan, India's nuclear armed rival, for another two nights.

In the days leading up to Wen's trip, China and India have agreed on a series of business deals.

Chinese telecoms gear maker Huawei , whose imports were banned by India only in May over spying fears, said on Tuesday it aims to invest more than $2 billion in India over the next five years. India is the world's fastest growing mobile phone market and second only to China in subscribers.

India's Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) will sew up about $3 billion in loans from Chinese banks, while Reliance Communications will sign an accord with China Development Bank for a $1.93 billion, 10-year loan. [ID:nSGE6BE00I].

The loans are yet another example of the growing challenge the BRIC group consisting of the frontier markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China are giving Western banks, which have traditionally been the destination for companies like ADAG. (Additional reporting by Henry Foy and Abhishek Madhukar, Editing by Paul de Bendern and Miral Fahmy)

Tibetan monks share their culture at Musikfest with song, dance, art, meditation

Tibetan monks will share their culture with song, dance, art and meditation

• 

The Tibetan Monks of Drepung Loseling will perform 'The Mystical… (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO )

August 02, 2012|By Steve Siegel, Special to The Morning Call

Beneath Musikfest's normally boisterous and frantic face lies an inner eye of tranquility. As a unique tonic to the festival's restless hustle and bustle of pop, rock and polka, a troupe of Tibetan monks from the centuries-old Drepung Loseling Monastery will soothe the eyes and calm the soul in a series of programs featuring sacred music, dance, meditation and mandala sand painting.

Yeshe Phelgey, a Tibetan who spent 20 years in southern India and is one of the monks in the group, sees nothing incongruous with the Musikfest performance. For example, consider the sand painting, one of Tantric Buddhism's most unique arts. In the Tibetan language, this art is called "dul-tson-kyil-khor," which means "mandala of colored powders." Millions of grains of multicolored sand are being painstakingly laid into place on a table in geometric shapes and in a multitude of ancient spiritual symbols by the monks. The mandala will be finished by Saturday, and ceremoniously destroyed on Monday.

"The sand painting is exactly like the music festival itself — all different colors and designs exist in a place for a few days, and after it's finished nothing remains," Phelgey says with haiku-like simplicity.

Phelgey speaks with more than just spiritual knowledge. The monks of the Drepung Loseling Monastery, based in Mundgod, South India, with a North American seat in Atlanta, Ga., have seen their share of performance venues. Endorsed by the Dalai Lama as a means of promoting world peace and healing through the sacred performing arts, they've performed to an audience of more than 50,000 at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and shared stages with the likes of Philip Glass, Paul Simon, Sheryl Crow, Patti Smith, the Beastie Boys and many others. They've appeared in such prestigious venues as Carnegie Hall and the Ravinia Festival, as well as in hundreds of university auditoriums, civic halls, festivals and churches across the country.

The sand painting began Thursday at Handwerkplatz in the Colonial Industrial Quarter of downtown Bethlehem. The monks first draw an outline of the mandala (a Sanskrit word meaning "circle") on a wooden platform. Then they lay the colored sand, which is placed by pouring from traditional brass funnels called chak-pur. Each monk holds a chak-pur in one hand while running a metal rod on its grated surface; the vibration causes the sand to flow like liquid.

Tonight, the monks will take part in the festival's opening ceremonies at AmericaPlatz at Levitt Pavilion SeelStacks by invoking a blessing of the site with multiphonic chanting and a variety of musical instruments. These might include trumpets, gongs, cymbals and singing bowls. The biggest crowd-pleasers by far are the long trumpets called "dungchen," which can be up to 16 feet long with a sound compared to the singing of elephants.

The opening program also includes Tibetan polychanting, a commonly used spiritual practice involving throat singing, a technique where multiple pitches are produced by each performer by controlling muscles in the vocal cavity, intensifying the natural overtones of the voice. In fact, the Drepung Loseling monks have even taken polychanting to the big screen, having performed on the Golden Globe-nominated soundtrack of the motion picture "Seven Years in Tibet," starring Brad Pitt.

IDSA COMMENT

PLA Conducts Missile Tests In Tibet

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Bijoy Das

July 30, 2012

Sometime in early July 2012, China’s People’s Liberation Army conducted a high altitude exercise with a new type of surface-to-air missile somewhere in the Tibetan plateau under its Lanzhou Military Area Command (MAC). This was reported by the PLA Daily Online and also by the Tibet Online news portal on 20 July 2012.1 The report says that the exercise was carried out at a mountain pass at an altitude of 5000 metres by a mobile PLA unit, and that three missiles were successfully fired at enemy aircraft targets in the “South-east” direction. The reported also noted that for the purpose of the exercise, the PLA unit covered thousands of kilometres across the Gobi desert, mountainous terrain and glaciers experiencing adverse weather conditions. Apart from testing new equipment in the Tibetan environment, the exercise has reportedly helped the unit to gather more than a hundred technical data relating to topics like storage and maintenance of equipment, system coordination and troop mobility in the Tibetan plateau. The unit reportedly also collated ten kinds of tactical and training methods related to this missile in the terrain.

The area described by the report is possibly located somewhere east or north of Ladakh. If located east of Ladakh, it may fall under Ali (Ngari in Tibetan) area of the South Xinjiang Military District. Ali is part of the Tibetan plateau (administered by the Tibet Autonomous Region), but comes under the jurisdiction of the Lanzhou MAC headquartered in the Gansu province (See Map.) The part of Tibet lying to the east of Ali comes under the Chengdu MAC headquartered in the province of Sichuan. The Lanzhou MAC covers the entire Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR). XUAR abuts eight countries in all—Mongolia and Russia in the North; three Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) in the west; and three South Asian countries in the southern direction viz. Afghanistan, Pakistan (actually the disputed Pakistan-occupied Kashmir) and India (the state of Jammu & Kashmir). If located north of Ladakh, it is also possible that the exercise was conducted somewhere immediately west of Ali, which too would be just north of Kashmir and in the Karakorams presently contiguous between China and Pakistan.

The “new” surface-to-air missile tested seems to be tailor-made for operations in the high altitude terrain and rarefied atmosphere of Tibet. Key information relating to its dimensions, target acquisition, radar, range and launch are unavailable. Intelligence agencies concerned need to collect and analyse such information from whatever signature the tests have emitted and from the picture below of a similar test earlier.

It is possible that this new missile is a truck mounted tactical weapon, which generally plays an air defence role for assets like airfields. As such, it is possible that a unit of the Artillery Brigade of the 21st Group Army from Zhongning, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, undertook the exercise. (See Map)

Towards the end of September 2011, a similar test was conducted of two “new” missiles in Horqin grasslands, Tongliao, Inner Mongolia by an Air Defence Brigade of the Shenyang MAC (see picture).2 . External factors like climate and topography were somewhat similar if not identical to Tibet’s. Reports suggest that these are the first of the third generation indigenous air defence missiles. Earlier generation missiles active in the PLA inventory are S300PMU2 and Hongqi series.

The news report also indicates that Indian aircraft have been assumed as “enemy aircraft” in the war exercise since the only country lying south-east of this area is India. Besides, there is no other “threat” from this direction other than India, according to Chinese perception, for which China might test a missile for in Tibet. The long distance covered by the unit undertaking the exercise is also reminiscent of the PLA’s STRIDE-2009 exercises.3 The troops must have taken back valuable lessons on mobility, mountain warfare and new weapon systems. Therefore, it would be fair to surmise that the PLA would in the near future induct this new missile along with a suitable unit of the Second Artillery in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China.

Nonetheless, this exercise and missile test throws up larger questions relating to regional security, mutual threat perception and bilateral relations between China and India. Although such tactical exercises are routine, it again reveals the security dilemma existing between these two neighbours. Earlier, the PLA has already twice carried out large military exercises in Tibet during 2012, once in March and later in June. The message which such exercises convey to India, needless to say, is that of belligerence. Development and deployment of the new missile in Tibet would definitely figure in the acquisition and deployment of matching defence hardware on the Indian side. Frequent tactical exercises and conventional force accretion cannot be equated with strategic defensive capacity building of a nation. Further, the exercise comes at a time when there are already rumours of a likely border skirmish between China and India, initiated by China. Against such a backdrop, what would eventually happen is the further intensification of the perception of an armed conflict and the militarisation of the Himalayan region. It has recently become known that the Himalayan glaciers are shrinking rapidly. The people on either side are also known to be languishing far below the national income averages. Ergo, militarisation is the last thing which the Himalayas need at this point of time.

India and China have been striving long to forge a peaceful solution to the disputed Himalayan border. However, military moves like the latest Chinese test run counter to such efforts for peace as also for China’s own assertion of its “peaceful rise”. When there are questions arising in the neighbourhood about its peaceful intentions, China ought to start more cooperative efforts of peace and harmony in every area of dispute rather than test and deploy machines of war. When the governments of both China and India have repeatedly stated their resolve to solve all outstanding issues including the boundary dispute through peaceful negotiations, it is difficult to fathom the rationale for such a missile test. The test and its publicity may indeed act as a dampener for the diplomatic process and its successes and go against the spirit of earlier resolutions of peace. The possible consequences would also undermine China’s efforts for a harmonious neighbourhood. India has already had to devote substantial resources for ramping up its defences along the border with China due to the latter’s military developments and exercises. While there is visible improvement of interaction between the two countries’ top level leaders, their military diplomacy and confidence building measures and cooperation in multilateral fora, such military activities reveal that their relations would take long to acquire the quantum of critical trust to say farewell to arms.

1. 1.Jiefangjun xinxing daodan haiba 5000mi gaoyuan diqu shouci shishe 3fa 3zhong (解放军新型导弹海拔5000米高原地区首次实射3发3中) available at http://military.people.com.cn/n/2012/0720/c1011-18559381.html, last accessed on 20 July 2012.
2. 2.Jiefangjun mouxinxing fangkong daodan shouci shishe 2fa 2zhong (解放军某新型防空导弹首次实射2发2中) available at http://news.qq.com/a/20111012/000826.htm, last accessed on 23 July 2012.
3. 3.B. Raman, ‘Stride-2009 – China's Largest Ever Long-Range Military Exercise’, Paper no. 3354, 13 August 2009, South Asia Analysis Group, available athttp://www.southasiaanalysis.org/%5Cpapers34%5Cpaper3354.html, last accessed on 23 July 2012. Also see, Dennis J. Blasko, ‘PLA Exercises March toward Trans-Regional Joint Training’, China Brief Volume 9 Issue: 22, 04 November 2009, The Jamestown Foundation available at http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=35690, last accessed on 23 July 2012.

Nepal Perspective: South Asia already connecting with external Regions

Bhaskar Koirala

Regional Expert, Nepal

The India-Myanmar land network is an example of South Asia already having physically connected with an “external” region whereby Myanmar and India-which shares a land boundary of approximately 1,643km connecting Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Nagaland, and Mizorom with mainland Southeast Asia through the Myanmarese states of Kaschin, Sagaing and Chin-have been able to forge wide-ranging road linkages. In an effort to explore land connectivity to reach Southeast Asia, India began to initiate land and rail links from its restive Northeastern region. In this regard, the160km India-Myanmar Friendship road was completed in 2001 which likely spurred another initiative in 2005, namely the Trilateral Highway between India, Myanmar and Thailand under the Mekong-Ganga cooperation initiative. The 1 360km Trilateral Highway, which cost about US$700 million to construct, runs from Moreh in India to Maw Sot in Thailand through Bagan in Myanmar. Incidentally, this highway project also undertook the task of constructing a road from Kanchanburi in Thailand to Dawei in Myanmar, and the development of the deep seaport at Dawei (in other words, one infrastructure project can ostensibly lead to many others). In this context, developments underway in India’s rail corridor with Myanmar must also be mentioned, because there has been some talk of possibility connectingthis corridor to the anticipated 1,350km railway track from Kunming (China) to Myanmar, Laos and onwards to Bangkok. The Northeastern Indian states mentioned above have been politically restive for some time now, and indeed one “of the primary motives behind India’s connectivity diplomacy with the Southeast Asian region is to cultivate Northeastern India. The development deficit in the Northeast remains a challenge for the Indian government. However, this challenge can be addressed by integrating the Northeast with the Southeast Asian region, thereby ushering in prosperity of the entire region” (Bhattacharya, 2008).

The direct and indirect benefits, for example, of the India-Myanmar Friendship road and other road networks straddling the Northeast with Myanmar, have been enormous: between 1991-92 and 2001-02 bilateral trade between India and Myanmar and India expanded from US$74.8 million to around US$428 million (McAteer, 2005). We can just imagine what this increase in trade has done to change the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Yet, despite such achievements, there is still a sense of inadequacy on the part ofIndian policy makers such as Indian Minister for the Development of Northeastern Region, Mr. Mani Shankar Aiyar, who commissioned a concept paper in 2007 that calls for reinvigorating India’s look-east policy by inculcating more intensely India’s Northeast in this entire process. India’s look-east policy (via the IndianNortheast) dates in earnest to Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao from the early 1990s. In the context of currently glacial forward movement in infrastructure connectivity between China and South Asia (the fastest growing parts of the world) what is instructive is that it would take such a considerable amount of time to put into place sound and adequate infrastructure that renders extensive benefits which then naturally draws wide popular support. The point is that while infrastructure connectivity between any two regions can be incrediblyadvantageous, it takes time to put such infrastructure (along with the concomitant

Soft-infrastructure such as an appropriate cross-border legal framework etc) into operation and hence it is disappointing to witness such apparently slow momentum and inadequate resolve on this front between China and South Asia. The much celebrated Nathu-La trading point along the China-India border is a case in point: a senior Chinese customs official remarked that “figures show that border trade has been uninspiring since the re-opening [of the Nathu La Pass in 2006]” (The Sikkim Times, 2007). Acknowledging this, the Indian Minister of State for Commerce, Jairam Ramesh, indicated that “the real issues inhibiting trade were upgrading of infrastructure on the Indian side and negotiating a new protocol with China which will enable cross-border trade” (ibid).

Just as in the eastern or north-eastern flank of South Asia, developments in Afghanistan, the newest member of SAARC, demonstrate the “outward projections” already taking place at the western edge of South Asia. Cooperation between Afghanistan and countries in the Central Asian region in the establishment of common infrastructure projects can serve as tangible evidence of how similar partnerships between China and South Asian states have the potential to deliver sizeable benefits to all parties. A couple of noteworthy examples are in order here. For instance, August 2007 saw the opening of a new bridge just 700 meters long over the Pyanj River that connects the ports of Nizhny Pyanj on the side of Tajikistan with Shir Khan Bandar on the Afghan side (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 2007). I will highlight the particular benefits of this bridge below as an exercise to extrapolate for advantages of similar projects that can be initiated between China and South Asia. Going back even earlier to 2005, the 1 20 km Dogharoun-Herat road was inaugurated that year connecting Afghanistan with Iran, with some estimates indicating that about 60% of Afghan imports and exports will travel through this highway, and that eventually it will extend to all of Asia (Business Intelligence, 2005). Afghanistan, of course, as a part and parcel of South Asia, has been at the crossroads of the Middle East and Asia, Europe and Asia, and between Northern Europe, Russia and the Indian Ocean. Trade had taken place across this area for over two thousand years with a halt in commerce beginning in the early twentieth century when the Soviet Union’s southern borders sliced through the region. Recent transformations in Afghanistan have led to the reopening of historical trade routes that will render feasible much more voluminous trade between countries of Central Asia, China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and the South Asian region. The tremendous potential deriving from Afghanistan’s pivotal position, as a link for South Asia to Central and West Asia, should serve as an excellent example of how promising it will be for South Asia (strategically abutting the People’s Republic) to forge more extensive infrastructure linkages with China as a worthy objective in itself and as a way for the region to reach into East Asia and possibly even Russia.

With respect to infrastructure connectivity in the case of Afghanistan, the bridge over the Pyanj River referred to above “will provide the [entire] region with inter-connectivity by cutting the distance between Dushanbe (in Tajikistan) and seaports almost by half. It also facilitates access to a warm water port in Karachi, Pakistan, for the countries to the north. This should spur increased trade and economic development throughout the region (US Department of State, 2007)”. Prior to the operation of the bride across the Pyanj river, transport across the river equaled approximately 40 trucks on ferry per day; subsequent to the inauguration of the bridge, 1 000 trucks began plying over the bridge per day, with unofficial estimates of trade having risen from US$6 million in 2006 before the bridge was in place to about US$30 million in 2007 (ibid).

What is significant for the South Asian region and China as a result of the Pyonj river bridge is that it opens up Tajikistan to cement from Pakistan, pharmaceutical from India, consumer goods from China, cement, citrus fruits, vegetables, perfume oils and products, and textiles from Afghanistan. On the other hand, Afghanistan,as the newest member of SAARC, will gain access to a host of products: wheat, vegetable oil, fertilizers, carpet materials, wood, clothing, shoes, black metals, mechanical equipment, electrical equipment and vehicles from Tajikistan, Russia and Kazakhstan. The benefits of South Asia connecting with outside regions are indeed impressive as I have tried to show. It is therefore rather puzzling that South Asia has not yet made focused attempts to physically connect with the only SAARC Observer that is contiguous to our region, namely the People’s Republic of China, a country that has incidentally registered consistently high GDP growth for more than a decade and is projected in 2008 to overtake Germany as the world’s second largest trading country (Xinhua News Agency, 2005). According to Chinese Vice-Minister for Commerce Gao Hucheng, “China’s output of 172 sorts of commodities ranks first in the world, with the output of tractors and containers accounting for above 80 percent of the world’s total, and that of watches and radio cassettes, 60 percent”(ibid). A Chinese Ministry of Commerce’s report on foreign trade “estimated that China’s foreign trade volume will surpass 1400 billion US dollars this year, up 20 percent from the previous year, with exports to grow 26 percent, and imports around 18 percent” (ibid). There is really no other long-term alternative but for SAARC to take account of such facts and prepare for an institutional mechanism that will plan and execute physical connectivity with China, in which infrastructure development will obviously acquire a central role.

To shift attention now to the “North section” of South Asia, namely to the entire northern mountainous regions of Nepal (but equally those areas along the Sino-Indian and Sino-Pakistani borders), the opening in 2006 of the Qinghai-Tibet railway of course represents a huge milestone in Chinese engineering and scientific achievement, but the implications for Nepal itself and for the rest of South Asia from this incredible feat of infrastructure development have not become fully evident as yet. In 2006 itself, the chairman of the government of the Tibet Autonomous Region, Mr. Qiangba Puncog, had indicated to the visiting Nepalese Foreign Minister Mr. K. P Oli that “Tibet is a remote place that is looking forward to being connected to South Asia [and that) the railway extension will promote business exchanges” (Zhu, 2006). Towards that end, thenext segment of railway extension will happen in the Xigaze Prefecture in Tibet which borders not only Nepal but India and Bhutan as well and it is very promising that according to currents plans, a branch line of the railway will be built from Lhasa to the city of Xigaze covering a distance of some 270 kilometers in the next three years. The coming decade will almost certainly witness the Tibet railway extended to the borders of Nepal itself, and what is significant is that this will happen at a time when Nepal is undergoing monumental state restructuring with a very strong likelihood of a federal system emerging in Nepal, which means that those Nepalese provinces or districts that border the Tibet Autonomous Region will have to carefully begin planning for ways in which the Tibet railway may connect with Nepalese territory, not to mention planning for multiple highways connecting Nepal with the existing East-West highway in Tibet. Nepal should of course actively and continuously consult on a bilateral basis with China on these important issues, but it would be just as relevant for Nepal to seek a more multilateral approach in this regard as well by placing this issue to a certain extent within the ambit of a (possible) future SAARC-China cooperation framework.

SOURCE;TELEGRAPHNEPAL.COM