The charm and logic of connectivity

Reconnecting Southasia to itself and the world", the Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon often reminds us, is an important long-term political objective for New Delhi as a member of SAARC. But given the Subcontinent's reputation as the least-integrated region in the world, Menon's goal for India seems  ambitious. As the region limps towards the implementation of a free-trade agreement, it has also begun to explore prospects for trans-border and trans-regional highways, rail lines and petroleum pipelines.

Yet the inability to make rapid progress on either free trade or deepening connectivity together points to the huge gulf between the proclaimed objectives on regionalism and the capacity of India and its surrounding neighbours to realise them. Part of the problem lies in the rather innocuous-sounding first word in Menon's phrase – reconnecting. Paradoxically, Southasia finds it hard to integrate and connect precisely because it was, until the middle of the last century, a single economic and cultural space. The Great Partition did not merely break up the political unity of the Subcontinent; it also divided its markets, laid waste its significant internal connectivities, and made it difficult for people and goods to move across the new borders. Connecting and integrating are clearly easier than re-connecting and re-integrating.

The inward-looking economic policies and prickly nationalism all across the Subcontinent made the cross-frontier contact even more rigid as time went on. Meanwhile, the tensions between India and China after the late 1950s managed to shut down the centuries-old trade and commerce across the Himalayan rimland. Reconnecting Southasia, thus, is surely an ambitious objective, for it involves overcoming the bitter legacies of the Partition, the India-China rivalry, and an unfortunate mindset about borders that has emerged in Southasia, and especially in India.

As pointed out by Shyam Saran, Menon's predecessor as foreign secretary, "India must start looking at national boundaries not as impenetrable walls which somehow protect us from the outside world, but as 'connectors', bringing India closer to its neighbours." He adds: "Another mindset change is to stop looking at our border areas as being on the periphery or serving as 'buffer zones' preventing ingress into the heartland." It is evident that Saran and Menon, two of India's more imaginative senior diplomats, are trying to change the systemic thinking in New Delhi about its frontiers. And indeed, they appear to have had some success in generating support at the highest political levels.

Transmission belts
As Manmohan Singh told the 13th SAARC Summit, in Dhaka in 2005, "We may set up a SAFTA, but unless we have what I would call 'transmission belts' [read: highways and railroads] across borders to permit the uninterrupted flow of goods, peoples and ideas, SAFTA would yield little practical benefit." Two years later, at the 14th Summit in New Delhi in April 2007, the prime minister was even bolder in his formulation: "Connectivity – physical, economic and of the mind – enabling us to use fully our geographical and resource endowments, has historically been the key to our region's peace and prosperity. Southasia has flourished most when connected to itself and the rest of the world."

As the idea of connectivity gains traction in the Subcontinent, it must be examined at three different levels. The first is the need for greater physical and policy integration of markets within national boundaries; the second is about reviving pre-existing trans-border transport infrastructure within the Subcontinent; the third is the promotion of connectivity between SAARC and the neighbouring regions. Simultaneous progress on all three levels is necessary for a genuine transformation of the Subcontinent.

For decades, the governments of the region wantonly neglected the maintenance and expansion of connectivity within their own borders, an example being how India let the roads network in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh deteriorate. Fortunately, this has begun to change in recent years amidst the recognition of the centrality of infrastructural development in sustaining the current high growth rates across the region. India, for its part, has also undertaken a massive programme to upgrade its roads in the border areas, and to improve the connectivity of its vast frontiers to the heartland. New Delhi has also put special emphasis on connectivity and development in its traditionally neglected Northeast, setting aside nearly INR 310 billion in the 11th plan period (2007-11) for road-building in the northeastern states. India has also begun an expansion of its rail network into Jammu & Kashmir, as well as upgrading the highway to the state.

India's neighbours too have recognised the importance of internal road-building for national consolidation. After the success of the expressway between Lahore and Islamabad, launched in the late 1990s, Pakistan has focused on better land-links between its cities, as well up an upgrading of its transport infrastructure in Balochistan and in the volatile tribal regions of the NWFP and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. In Bangladesh, the construction of the Bangabandhu Jamuna Bridge (also known as the Jamuna Multi-purpose Bridge) in June 1998 finally opened the door for better links between the eastern and western parts of the country. When the frontiers open, this bridge will be the conduit of Southasia to Southeast Asia. Road construction has emerged as the principal element of the international strategy for nation building in Afghanistan. In Nepal, too, improving the internal transport has become a vital aspect of accelerating economic development and territorial consolidation.

The expansion and modernisation of the internal transport sectors within the boundaries of the SAARC countries, especially among smaller states, would be far more efficient when tied to trans-border connectivity. While the accumulated mutual distrust among the Southasian states has hampered the promotion of regional road networks and economic integration, a few small steps forward have been taken in recent years. For the first time in decades, the intensely militarised Indo-Pakistani border has been cracked open for the movement of goods and people. These include an opening on the Rajasthan-Sindh border, the expansion of links in the Punjab sector and on the Line of Control in Kashmir. The Samjhauta Express plies from Amritsar in India to Lahore in Pakistan, and the other rail link opened in February 2006 runs between Munabao (in Rajasthan) and Khokhrapar (in Sindh).

The bus-and-train diplomacy has also gathered some momentum on the India-Bangladesh border. Following the bus service between Calcutta and Dhaka launched in the late 1990s, a new train service was launched in 2008 between the two cities. There are also efforts underway to modernise the north-south transport infrastructure that has been allowed to deteriorate over the years, between the Ganga plains and Nepal. New Delhi and Beijing have also agreed to open the historic trade route between Tibet and Sikkim that runs through the Nathula pass. Meanwhile, India has embarked on a major plan to modernise its customs and other trade-facilitation infrastructure, on all of its land frontiers.

Bridge states
Although these connectivity gains in terms of new ideas and initiatives are not to be sneezed at, implementation is slow and some obstacles remain. Take, for example, the new openings along the India-Pakistan border. These benefits are often neutralised by the visa and customs procedures that continue to severely constrain the movement of people and goods. Crossborder buses have often gone empty, and goods remain trapped amidst a variety of non-tariff barriers. In addressing these issues, the leadership will clearly have to come from New Delhi, given India's physical centrality.

All the while, China's rapid development of its western regions and its search for a link to the waters of the Indian Ocean have put new pressures on the Subcontinent to wake up to the urgency of trans-regional connectivity. In Nepal, there is a lot of excitement about north-south roads connecting the Tibetan Plateau to the Tarai plains via the midhills, along the river valleys of the Trisuli, Arun and Kali Gandaki. Beijing's announced plans to extend its Tibet rail from Lhasa into Nepal, and the South Xinjiang Railway from Kashgar into Azad Kashmir, along with the work to modernise the Karakoram Highway and link it with the Gwadar port (built with Chinese assistance), and its hopes to develop the Irrawaddy corridor in Burma – all of these have shaken India out of its stupor, and compelled it to rethink its approach to regionalism. Realists in New Delhi know that it will be unwise – and, most likely, downright impossible – to stop the further penetration of Chinese transport infrastructure in the Subcontinent. It would be a smarter strategy for India to leverage the new Chinese strategy to its own advantage.

A cooperative approach with China would actually make it easier for India to bring its neighbours on board the massive long-term project of reconnecting Southasia. India's neighbours, in turn, could take advantage of their location as bridge states between India and China, two of the world's largest and fastest-growing economies. Similarly, the push from Iran to build an overland pipeline to India through Pakistan also offers the possibility of simultaneously integrating the Subcontinent both within itself and with the rest of the world.

Southasia needs a strategic commitment from India and at minimum one other neighbour in order to successfully implement at least one major trans-border and trans-regional project. Consider, for example, the prospect of the Chinese and Indian rail networks connecting up in the Kathmandu Valley – which is no longer beyond the realm of possibility, with China's plans to extend the Lhasa railroad and the Indian Railway's broadgauge network aiming at Raxaul on the Bihar-Nepal border.

Also imagine Nepal offering full transit facilities for Chinese and Indian goods, and getting Beijing and New Delhi to invest in building north-south road networks that could transform the country's geo-economics. Sceptics would argue that these projects, like so many others on the table in Southasia, will never take off. But the logic of connectivity – at the national, regional and international levels – is bound to assert itself sooner than later in the Subcontinent.

~ C. Raja Mohan is a professor of South Asian Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.