Time for India to concentrate on NE

Amitava Mukherjee

(Amitava Mukherjee is a senior journalist and commentator.

He can be reached at amitavamukherjee253@gmail.com)

Something unusual had happened in May this year. An aircraft came to Imphal from Hkamti in the Northern Sagaing Region of Myanmar. After some time it took off again and headed for Guwahati where the plane offloaded a considerable number of Indian insurgents, mostly from Manipur and Assam. The act was a gesture of goodwill from the Tatmadaw or the Myanmar army.

In February last year the Tatmadaw had raided the NSCN (Khaplang) base in the Northern Sagaing Region and had arrested quite a few senior NSCN leaders. Hideouts of some other Indian secessionist groups in the aforementioned region were also raided resulting in arrests of a good number of such insurgents. They were the people brought back to India by the above mentioned aircraft. This gesture of the Myanmar army was significant. Obviously it is now trying to strike out a chord with New Delhi.

The Myanmar army has come round to an assessment that Aung San SuuKyi, the State Counsellor and the supremo of the National League for Democracy(NLD), is opening up a route for China to first interfere and then control Burmese polity. As a result a distance between Suu Kyi and New Delhi has been created and the Tatmadaw wants to use this chasm to increase its space in Burma.

The Government of India can blame itself only for Suu Kyi veering round to China's orbit of influence in spite of the fact that the daughter of General Aung San, the legendary Burmese freedom fighter, had her education at the Lady Shri Ram College of New Delhi. She has personal friends in different layers of Indian society and administration. That Suu Kyi has presently distanced herself from India is, to a large extent, due to the lukewarm attitude that India has been maintaining in her relations with Myanmar. This level of contacts must increase for the success of India's Act East policy. However, policy makers in New Delhi will have to understand that India's profile in Myanmar is closely linked to how much attention the Government of India gives to its north-eastern part of the country.

Let us consider how the two are interlinked. Long before Aung San Suu Kyi set her feet in the corridors of power in Naypidaw, New Delhi had struck an agreement in 2008 with the then Government of Myanmar to construct the Kaladan Multi Modal Transport and Transit Project( KMMTTP) which would first connect India's eastern city of Kolkata with the Sittwe port in the Rakhine state of Myanmar. Next the Sittwe sea port will be connected to Paletwa in the Chin state of Myanmar by a river route and then roads will connect Paletwa with the Mizoram state in Northeast India. Pilotted and funded by India, the project was originally scheduled to be completed in 2014 but as its progress stands now, the project is likely to be extended up to at least 2021, if not beyond.

Although road works in the Mizoram side is nearly complete, the same has not moved at all in the 109-kilometre-long stretch connecting Mizoram with Paletwa. There are cogent reasons as the terrain passes through insurgent-infested areas. But at the same time India could have initiated a backchannel diplomatic initiative to neutralize the insurgent armies. After all the Arakan Army operating in the Rakhine state is known to be not totally opposed to the project. Myanmar is the only South East Asian country with which India has a land border and therefore this country is extremely important for taking forward India's Act East policy. Although Aung San SuuKyi is not prepared to give India any strategic depth in her country yet a speedy completion of the Kaladan Multi Modal Transport and Transit Project and increased communication between Myanmar and north-eastern India might open up the field for New Delhi.

But there is a perceptible lack of policy planning on the part of New Delhi. Indian policy makers must realize that in order to reach out to the ASEAN countries New Delhi must increase its economic presence in Myanmar which is now below the expected level. So far as bilateral trade is concerned the balance of trade is in favour of Myanmar by 4:1 ratio. This is sensible given Naypidaw's status of a vulnerable junior partner. But its exports to India consist of mostly primary agricultural items like beans, pulses and forest products while India sends to Myanmar finished industrial goods. If India really wants to retain its hold on Myanmar then it must extend help towards building up of industrial infrastructure in that country.

This tardy and lukewarm approach on the part of India is reflected in the quantum of bilateral trade. While Sino-Myanmar trade has reached an impressive quantum of $ 4.4 billion the corresponding figure for Indo-Myanmar trade amounts to only $ 2 billion. In addition China's cumulative foreign direct investment in Myanmar has already touched a high level of more than $20 billion.

So what is the way out? Haranguing from New Delhi will serve no purpose. Increased communication with Myanmar is not possible unless there is improvement of infrastructure in the north-eastern part of India. Here lies the solution. Bilateral trade will pick up only when there is a smooth and easy communication system between the two countries. Increased mutual trade will give rise to more cultural exchanges leading to other forms of confidence building measures. Most important, there must not be delays in India sponsored infrastructural projects.

This was the reason why India had lost out to China in a race for getting gas supplies from Myanmar. New Delhi's planned project was construction of a Myanmar-Bangladesh-India gas pipeline. There were signals from the very beginning that Bangladesh was not enthusiastic about the project. It procrastinated and India failed to read Dhaka's attitude. Valuable times were lost. Myanmar ultimately turned its face away from India and instead entered into an agreement with China in 2005 by which it agreed to supply 6.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas to China in the next 30 years.

Conducting of foreign policy demands proper perception of evolution in the mindset of individuals and dynamics of given situations. India failed to realize that Aung San Suu Kyi has metamorphosed from an idealist to a politician. Suu Kyi knows that she cannot do without China given India's wobbly and half-hearted approach in South and South East Asian strategic scenario. New Delhi should gave got a clear hint of her change of persona when a committee headed by Suu Kyi gave a green signal, a few years back, for resumption of work in Letpadaung mine, a China-funded project whose work was ordered to be halted due to popular protests on environmental grounds. A more serious development near India's north-eastern border which mandarins and politicians in New Delhi failed to take note of is the already completed renovation of the portions of the Stillwell Road in China and Myanmar. A Chinese construction company had bagged the contract for reconstructing in Myanmar the stretch running from Myitkyina to the Pangsau Pass close to the Indian border in Arunachal Pradesh. It is strange that no Indian company made aggressive efforts to buy this contract.

For New Delhi filling up these gaps has now become a necessity because Myanmar is an important member of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), a multilateral organization which India is trying to push up as an alternative to the SAARC. Interestingly, Myanmar is still hedging on the question of proximity to India or China. It cannot dispense with Beijing altogether because much of the ethnic insurgent armies operating from within Myanmar, particularly the United WA State Army, are allegedly being patronized by China. But on the other hand, Naypidaw has entered into defence cooperation agreements with India and its army and navy have participated in bilateral and multilateral exercises with India and other nations. Moreover, Myanmar has recently bought a submarine and torpedoes from India. However, Chinese presence in the construction of the Kyakphyu port in Myanmar, situated on the Bay of Bengal, can give Beijing a decisive advantage in its race for strategic supremacy. Moreover, China already enjoys navigation rights for using Myanmar's river systems and Naypidaw has allowed China to set up a surveillance station in the Coco Islands which is quite close to India's Andaman and Nicober Islands. So New Delhi has a tough job at hand in Myanmar. But can it rise to the occasion? That is the important question.