The term connectivity is a loaded concept: what India sees as connectivity, in terms of roads, highways, connectivity by rail or by sea and air and its economic spinoffs, may evoke feelings of insecurity especially in the neighbourhood.
It explains Sri Lanka’s unwillingness to allow a land bridge linking the island with the Indian mainland; Bhutan is reluctant to allow free movement of vehicles from within the region citing environmental issues;
Nepal chafes at its economic dependence on India yet opposes any move to restrict free movement across their common border. Bangladesh has allowed Indians to transit its territory to the northeastern states but with caveats.
There is a lack of trust, says Riya Sinha of the CSEP think tank. A well-known scholar on connectivity issues, she also points to infrastructure.
Any cross-border railway line takes ten years from discussion to actual materialisation. It explains why the SAARC Multimodal Regional Transport agreement that highlighted five cross-border railway corridors in the 2000s, saw their implementation in different phases only in the past few years.
“A key challenge is the fact that we don’t have enough infrastructure, actual railway handling infrastructure at our border spaces. The kind of cargo handling equipment required at railway yards is not available. Without this kind of handling equipment, it is very difficult for any agency to facilitate this type of movement.”
“At the cross-border level, several challenges still exist,” she said. “One is on how India actually looks at connecting while putting its assets in a neighboring country. Is the railway board comfortable putting its assets in Bangladesh or in Nepal?”
Assam Chief Minister Hemanta Biswa Sarma is a strong votary of more and more infrastructure, but his demand for “robust railway and road networks’ around the Siliguri corridor”, overlooks some fundamental points.
While his citing the Siliguri Corridor (chicken’s neck), the 22-km stretch of land linking the seven northeastern states with the Indian mainland, is an acknowledgement of its strategic value, it may even aid those not wanting to make such investments deeming them high risk.
Bangladesh Chief Information Adviser Mohammad Yunus described the northeastern states as “landlocked”, it would not have won him any admirers in India. In that sense, he had touched a sensitive cord.
It didn’t help that he also wants the Chinese to refurbish a World War II base in Lalmonirhat, which is barely 12-km from the Indian border. In other words connectivity has to measure up to the hard demands of security.
