The role of India’s NE in Regional Cooperation Architecture

Ambar Kumar Ghosh and Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury
Contd from previous issue
Given the delays in operationalising the Kaladan Multi-Modal Trade and Transit Project between India and Myanmar, Ashuganj port in Bangladesh may be used by India as an alternative to Myanmar’s Sittwe to revitalise trade routes to the North East. No doubt at present, the Ashuganj riverine port cannot be used in a major way as its multi-modal connectivity is poor. But India could help in speeding up its development to make cargo transportation to Tripura and the other North Eastern States easier.
Exploring connectivity in the Indo-Pacific
The very construct of the “Indo-Pacific” is contested by different stakeholders in the region. It is largely perceived as an “interconnected space across the two continents of Asia and Africa and between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean”. The region, one of the world’s most crucial trading sea routes, is “a continuum across the two oceans joined together by its main trading channel, the straits of Malacca.”
There is need for transnational interaction and connectivity in the Indo-Pacific for both strategic and functional reasons. First, the growing economic, military and diplomatic footprint of China in the region has turned it into a space of strategic balancing of power for the other regional as well as extra-regional players who need to build a coherent response to the Chinese onslaught. Second, other stakeholders like the US, Japan, South Korea, India, the member states of ASEAN, and other littoral states in the region, also want to harness the immense economic potential of the Indo-Pacific through greater interaction, connectivity, and commercial linkages.
India is crucial to the geopolitics of the region and it needs to assume a more prominent and proactive role. It has affirmed the need for a rules-based order in the region that is free, open and inclusive, and ensures the right to freedom of navigation for all actors based on respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all other Nations; peaceful resolution of disputes through dialogue; and adherence to international rules and laws. This constructive and inclusive vision has led important players like the US and Japan pushing for a greater leadership role for India in the region. This resonates with India’s own diplomatic push for closer interaction with the region, manifest in its policies like ‘Neighbourhood First’ and ‘Act East’. Such a vision of closer regional interaction requires engagement at several levels with neighbouring countries.
BIMSTEC, as a multilateral institution, can contribute constructively to the enhancement of physical, economic and people-to-people links with Southeast Asia. India can play a central role in strengthening BIMSTEC as a more meaningful regional architecture in the Indo-Pacific. The Bay of Bengal is at the heart of the Indo-Pacific, and its auxiliary—the Andaman Sea—is India’s geostrategic gateway into the wider waters. Conceptualising the Indo-Pacific as a natural geographical region that hosts “a vast array of global opportunities and challenges”, India has launched the Indo-Pacific Oceans’ Initiative (IPOI) to focus on seven pillars: maritime security; maritime ecology; maritime resources; capacity building and resource sharing; disaster risk reduction and management; scientific, technological and academic cooperation; and trade connectivity through maritime transport. Given Japan’s wide experience in bringing about connectivity in the region,its support for the connectivity pillar of the IPOI is crucial.
India, along with Japan, the Southeast Asian countries and other littoral states, have espoused the vision of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP). Forums like the Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR) initiated by India reinforce its vision of integrated and equitable maritime connectivity. India interacts with its Indo-Pacific partners both bilaterally and multilaterally, in a variety of spheres “including maritime security, the blue economy, connectivity, disaster management, and capacity building.” In a future that will see immense competition for energy and other resources, the Bay of Bengal, with its wealth of hydrocarbons and sea routes vital for trade, has become an arena of both maritime cooperation, and competition amongst its stakeholders. As India ventures to ‘Act East’ and prioritises its neighbourhood to play a more prominent role in the Indo-Pacific, the Bay emerges as a cardinal sub-region for its strategic manoeuvres. The Bay is geographically rightly positioned to be India’s link to the wider waters of the Indo-Pacific as the country aspires to extend its area of influence beyond the Malacca Strait.
Japan has taken a leading role in assisting India and other countries in infrastructural connectivity projects under the IPOI. It is important to deliberate on the ways in which India can collaborate with the littoral and non-littoral stakeholders beyond Malacca in the Bay of Bengal region on maritime connectivity. India’s maritime initiatives need greater synchronisation with those of other regional agencies to better integrate collaborative growth in the Bay. Most importantly, members of BIMSTEC need to collaborate among themselves and with other stakeholders to build greater regional connectivity and enable collaborative growth to ensure stability and prosperity in the Bay. How efficiently India’s North East serves as a hinterland for strengthening connectivity in the Bay and the wider Indo-Pacific region is a matter of great concern.
Conclusion
India and its key regional partners, especially Japan, have taken a holistic approach to connectivity with Southeast Asia. It perceives the North East as a significant space in itself and not a mere transit point for regional connectivity. Various connectivity projects have begun in the North East, pursuing the vision of greater regional connectivity.
There are serious challenges, however: inadequate funds, lack of effective cooperation among the different states, lack of planning and insufficient participation of different countries in specific roles, limited data sharing among the regional stakeholders, and the involvement of the military due to security issues in the border regions. These have to be collectively addressed by all the stakeholders.
Physical connectivity projects in the North East have often been beleaguered by delays. There is urgent need for timely completion of the projects. There must be detailed stocktaking of the present state of infrastructural initiatives in the Northeast, the challenges such projects face, and how these can be overcome. Development of human resources and capacity building in India’s NER should go simultaneously with development of resilient infrastructure.
Japan’s role as a reliable partner in the region is crucial. The scope for collaborative efforts among BIMSTEC member countries as well as other stakeholders in accelerating connectivity in the Bay region also needs to be explored. The Northeast has close cross-border ethnic and religious ties with India’s eastern neighbours and Southeast Asia. Apart from physical connectivity, facilitating the flow of people across borders, closer people-to-people contact would foster greater opportunities for regional interaction.
Courtesy : Observer Research Foundation