Land transport bottlenecks delay India-Asean connectivity
Difficulties in the development of land transport routes in India's northeast have caused slow progress on establishing connectivity to |Burma and eastwards to Thailand and other Southeast Asian nations, said Montek S Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of the Ind
With its "Look East" policy, launched 20 years ago, India planned to establish physical linkage with Southeast Asian countries long ago, but progress has been slow to materialise.
In fact, New Delhi has poured a great deal of investment into infrastructure development during the past two decades, but most of this was |provided for its own northeastern region, where the roads are not as good as they should be, Ahluwalia said.
However, India does have transport-link options, as there is already a lot of port connectivity with Southeast Asian countries, he said, citing shipments between Chennai and Singapore as an example.
"Certainly, port connectivity with Myanmar is something we are exploring and doing something about," Ahluwalia told visiting journalists from Asean.
Asked whether India is interested in cooperating with Thailand in developing a port and special economic zone in Burma’s Dawei district, he said he was not aware whether the idea had been officially proposed to Indian leaders.
However, India would not rule out any idea and there was much sense in encouraging the initiative, he said.
India has been exploring the possibility both a rail and road link with Burma in the long run, he added.
"If you look 10 or 20 years ahead, that is logical actually, and of course we are now discussing with Bangladesh improving connectivity through that country," the senior planner said.
Geographically, unless Bangladesh allows connectivity through its territory, land transport from India to Burma has to go northeast via the narrow neck of India.
Ahluwalia acknowledged that infrastructure development linking India and Southeast Asia had been slower than it should have been, as India had been primarily focused on its domestic development.
India has improved connectivity with the northeast of the country, but it still has no easy access from the northeast to Bangladesh.
"Part of the problem is the tradition in this |part of the world of not using toll roads, so |basically if you don’t use such a road, you don’t have an incentive for your neighbours to use the road to get to the other side of the country," he said.
