Mending fences with Myanmar a must

India has played its cards admirably in securing the support of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Maldives 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 the platform to undermine India’s influence in South Asia, while aggressively seeking to secure China’s admission to it.

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 the Bimstec organisation which brings together all the eastern Saarc members across the Bay of Bengal — India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, 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. Marginalising Pakistan in South Asian regional forums till it mends its ways should be the salient feature of India’s policy to promote regional economic cooperation. Institutions such as the Saarc University and the Saarc Secretariat can be kept going, with all other facets of South Asian cooperation being shifted to new groupings.

India needs to pay more attention to relations with Myanmar, which can play a salient role across our eastern shores in this new strategic setting. There are reasons to believe that while Myanmar has sought to take relations forward, there is unhappiness over the insensitivity we have shown by undertaking cross-border strikes against NSCN(K) separatists on Myanmar’s soil, without prior approval from that government. Those given to 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 appropriately.

Chest-thumping to celebrate cross-border raids is inappropriate and intensely disliked in Myanmar. We also need to remember that unlike in countries such as Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, we have a deplorable record in executing development projects in Myanmar.

While Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly spoken of improving connectivity across our eastern borders by a trilateral “friendship highway” through Myanmar to Thailand, work on this highway has been tardy. We did not repair and upgrade an estimated 80 World War 2 bridges when we initially undertook to rebuild the road which, if properly utilised, could be the centrepiece for tourist traffic across Manipur to Mandalay and 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 halt.

One of the unique features of our border with Myanmar has been that tribals living on both sides can travel freely across it. There are reports suggesting that New Delhi is planning to fence this border. This has invited strong opposition from the chief ministers of the four bordering States: Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh. Fencing should be limited and not affect the free movement of tribals. It 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 providing the landlocked North-Eastern 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.

The poor and unimaginative project planning, which involved the lack 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.

Have we carefully assessed the types of goods that will be carried across this strategic corridor and how it will be administered? Over two decades ago we agreed to construct an 1800-MW hydroelectric project across the Chindwin river close to our border in Manipur. We have debated and discussed this project for over two decades and have invited ridicule.

Yangon 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 and most notably China manage their border with Myanmar.

We should seriously 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 that country. There is much we can learn not only from the Chinese, but also from our Japanese friends.

The writer is a former High Commissioner to Pakistan

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