Bird's eye view of Irrawaddy
Source: Wikimedia
The Rationale
Southeast Asia and East Asia regions are already well-known economic success stories, which emanated from most of the countries in these regions adopting an outward-looking strategy with trade-oriented growth and signaled to potential investors their openness to encouraging FDI flowing in from developed countries from within Asia & elsewhere.
The South Asia region is a relative latecomer to dynamic regional growth that was perceived largely as impeded by inadequate/ very poor infrastructure, high levels of regulations & trade barriers. Linking up South and Southeast Asia has figured in the political thinking of leadership in both regions, but somehow the conditions until recently were not conducive to embarking on such venture. The post-colonial isolationist attitude of Myanmar was a big impediment to its taking advantage of its naturally configured geo-strategic bridge between South and Southeast Asia. Developments in Myanmar after it joined ASEAN translated into economic reforms that gradually eased the restrictions and selectively opened its economic landscapes. The recent elections in that country signal the beginnings of a political transformation, therefore, now offer renewed hope of facilitating linking of the two regions.
However, conditions are not equally conducive at the moment for South Asian region’s westward linking with Iran and Central Asia.
Figure 1: Map of South and Southeast Asia
A Fractured Saga!
Trade and connectivity are handmaidens to each other, anywhere. However, in the South Asian region, Land and rail connectivity have remained hostage to the negative post-Partition political syndrome. Although road and rail corridors had been long identified by the UN ECAFE/ESCAP decades ago in its Trans-Asian Highway and Railway scheme presented to member governments concerned, progress remained excruciatingly slow – and painful, particularly within the SAARC region. Within the SAARC framework also, while senior officials, after many years of hard, and often fruitless consultations and negotiations, finally managed to cobble together a consensus draft regional Motor Vehicles Agreement (MVA) in 2014, their result did not pass political muster by some and efforts to get an all-SAARC endorsement of the SAARC Motor Vehicles Agreement at Kathmandu Summit in November 2014 was stonewalled by Pakistan. Following this disappointment, some of the SAARC countries, namely Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal (BBIN) in the eastern sub-region decided that their economic development aspirations that required increased physical connectivity across borders to boost trade, could not be allowed to be held hostage by some and decided to try and get a framework agreement in place at sub-regional level. Senior officials of the four countries met in January 2015 and put final touches to a draft MVA for the BBIN sub-region (essentially along lines of the draft SAARC MVA that had aborted earlier at the summit, and declared that others in the SAARC region (or beyond) could join as and when they were ready. On June 15, 2015, at a Ministerial meeting convened in Thimphu by Bhutan, the Ministers concerned from the four countries signed the BBIN MVA. Trial runs for passenger and cargo vehicles commenced in November, and Standard Operating Procedures tested and completed by end-December 2015. It allows the four signatory countries to move forward with implementation of land transport facilitation measures amongst themselves, exchanging traffic rights easing greatly the rites of passage across borders crossings by passenger and cargo vehicles, thus promoting increased people-to-people contacts, trade and economic exchanges between the four countries. The framework document signed is, ab initio, of a bilateral nature in practice, on the basis of reciprocity. For every vehicle one country allows another co-signatory to enter its territory, makes it incumbent upon the recipient country to reciprocate in equal measure. Passengers will still be subject to prevailing immigration requirements of countries and goods are subject to payment of taxes and levies as exist. Nevertheless, this is a very positive and historic development within the region, and paves the way for progressive easing of restrictions on ease of movement of vehicles, goods and peoples across the borders of the four countries. The BBIN MVA will become fully operational as soon as ratified by the respective parliaments of the signatory states.
BIMSTEC and BBIN
India’s earlier “Look East” policy, now metamorphosed by current Prime Minister Modi’s government into the “Act East” initiative, may be viewed as mirroring ASEAN’s “Look West” aspirations and is aimed to link up with the latter and beyond to East Asia. The BBIN sub-grouping of SAARC and its recent efforts to put in place and operationalize enhanced connectivity amongst them is an essential first step towards actually operationalizing the “Act East” initiative. The BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation), that was formed in the late nineties, and includes the BBIN countries as well as Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand, could well also embrace the ongoing BBIN initiatives and play the bridging role between the SAARC and ASEAN regions. The progression along this pathway has been slow but organically enlarging. The BBIN achievement could not have happened without the upswing in Bangladesh-India relations since 2010 that put in place the critical stepping-stone for forging forward. In other words, it first required Bangladesh and India getting their relations right before meaningful connectivity aspirations, between and beyond them could be envisaged or embarked upon.
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