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