If the new strategic partnership between Bangladesh and India takes the expected step forward next week, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visits Dhaka, it could herald a new beginning for the eastern sub-region of South Asia including Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and India (BBNI).
Major confidence building initiatives taken by the two Bay of Bengal neighbours, with new agreements and initiatives on the border before the weekend, have already created a favourable environment for a successful visit to Dhaka by Prime Minister Singh. Indeed, the Dhaka visit could become this year’s most important foreign policy initiative by Dr Singh.
Bangladesh is keen on a BBNI sub-regional co-operation in the hydro power sector and seeks what it calls a more “equitable share” of Teesta River water. This should be possible in theory and could become the game-changer for the region. Dr Singh’s visit to Bangladesh could help begin a new era in closer and better connectivity between India and Bangladesh opening up the possibility of new land-based infrastructure projects that will enable road and rail links between South Asia and South-east Asia.
Going beyond sub-regional co-operation, a strong Indian initiative to revive the moribund Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multisectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation would help speed up the process of bridge building with South-east Asia through Myanmar and Thailand. The Asian Development Bank is ready to fund projects that would improve connectivity as well as the region’s social and economic infrastructure.
Interestingly, many member countries of the Association of South-east Asian Nations are once again focused on their region’s links with South Asia. This is an opportune time for both India and Bangladesh, and indeed Myanmar, to adopt a collective approach in taking major infrastructure and energy projects forward, with support from the Asian Development Bank.
Indians have traditionally been brought up on the idea that the flow of people in this part of Asia has been from the west of India, from Central Asia. There has been a similar, if less intrusive, flow of people from India to the east as well, both by land and sea. India was not merely the recipient of invaders and settlers from its west, but it was also the home of migrants, traders, teachers and travellers who have gone east.
The partition of the subcontinent cut off India’s land links with both Central and West Asia, on the one hand, and its land links with South-east Asia, on the other. It is these links that the creation of a South Asian free trade area and the new infrastructure projects will revive.
Though action on the western land border will take time, till Pakistan is able to get its internal act together, improve relations with India and the latter is able to reconnect with Afghanistan and beyond by land, the region stands at the cusp of meaningful action both on the eastern land border and also across the maritime frontier.
Even with Pakistan there has been some progress. Reports of a meeting of minds on trade and connectivity between India and Pakistan offer hope of further progress on this front. Pakistan is reported to be on the verge of agreeing to normal trade relations with India, which would imply implementing the World Trade Organisation’s “most favoured nation” obligations and offering transit trade rights that would facilitate trade among India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.
But land was not the only link in history between India and its neighbours. Waves of seafarers all the way from Gujarat to the Bengal coast sailed across both the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea.
The modernisation of ports and improved air connectivity have brought both regions closer. Air connectivity between India and its wider southern Asian neighbourhood, ranging from the Persian Gulf to the Malacca Straits and beyond, is already very good. Sea connectivity too is set to increase, restoring ancient links between the ports of the Gulf region and western India and the Bay of Bengal littoral.
What this means is that South Asia has the potential to once again become the crossroads of Asia — linking the land-based and the maritime economies of West Asia, Central Asia and the whole of East and South-east Asia.
It is obvious that India has a stake in this given the geo-economics of the region. However, what is not often appreciated in the region is the enormous benefit the new infrastructural connectivity and economic links will confer on countries to India’s east and west, including the large and small land-locked economies of Central Asia and the Himalayan region.
Stop thinking of India as an isolated subcontinent cut off by the high Himalayas, the deserts and the oceans, an “island” so to speak, and think of the region as the “crossroads” between Asia’s resource-rich west and north-western regions and its booming industrial economies of the East and South-east Asia. Seen this way, the benefits of regional integration would be continent-wide and not restricted to the region’s largest economy.
The important thing about the India-Bangladesh relationship at this point in time is that there is strong political commitment to a movement forward at the highest levels in both countries. By resolving residual bilateral differences the leadership of both countries would be building a new partnership with South-east and East Asia for the 21st century.
A similar movement forward on the western border is also possible, if more difficult. But pure self-interest should guide the political leadership of all the countries in the region to re-establish the region’s role as Asia’s crossroads.
