The Kunming Initiative

There are powerful reasons why India should maintain the status quo and keep its northeastern borders closed. However, there are even stronger reasons for opening these borders.

P.V. INDIRESAN

It was agreed that regional cooperation should be guided by the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, emphasising equality and mutual benefit, sustainable development, comparative advantages, adoption of international standards, and infrastructure development in order to enhance connectivity and facilitate widest possible economic cooperation.

- excerpt from the Kunming Initiative.

ON August 17, 1999, the Conference on Regional Cooperation and Development among China, India, Myanmar and Bangladesh held in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province in the southwestern region of China, approved by acclamation what was called the Kunming Initiative. The main thrust of the exercise was to exhort the governments concerned to improve communications between the southwestern region of China and the northeastern region of India by developing appropriate road, rail, waterway and air links. Mor e specifically, a call was made to revive the ancient Southern Silk Route between Assam and Yunnan.

Twenty-five years ago, Assam was as peaceful a State as any other. People could move about through the length and breadth of the State without fear or anxiety. All that has now changed beyond recognition, to make the State one of the most disturbed areas in the country. The Assamese people, who were easy-going and peaceable not so long ago, have become resentful, some to the extent of becoming violent.

Not only Assam, the whole of the northeastern region of India is in turmoil. It does not require a genius to realise that unemployment among the educated is at the root of the trouble and that the unemployment problem is aggravated by the isolation suffe red by the region. Geography being what it is, within India the northeastern region will ever remain an isolated outpost. However, once India removes its national blinkers, it can see that, while the northeastern region will always be a corner of India, it can at the same time become the gateway of India to the East and, thereby, the hub of international commerce between India and the fastest-growing economies of the world.

Yunnan has a self-interest in reviving these links with Assam as that will provide direct access to Indian and Western markets, which otherwise would involve a 7,000-km detour round Hong Kong and Singapore. Myanmar and Bangladesh too have their own self- interest and are keen to reap the economic benefits of entrepot trade.

Will India accept the hand held out by all these eastern neighbours? Or will the Kunming Initiative be rejected, worse, will the idea be bled to death by bureaucratic objections and delays, the way some Assamese leaders fear it will be? There are several reasons why policy-makers in Delhi are wary. Much of the frontier in the northeastern region is aflame. Many border communities such as Nagas have their ethnic cousins living across the border in large numbers.

Making it easy for outsiders to enter India can strengthen rebellious elements among such tribes. Smuggling is another vexing problem. A significant part of this smuggling involves drug trafficking. Such smugglers do not stop at damaging the country's tr ade; they actively support lawlessness on both sides of the border. It is feared that opening up the frontier will make it easier for smugglers to step up their activities.

There are political problems too. The Indian government cannot be happy with the military dictatorship in Myanmar and the decade-long incarceration of the popularly elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Neither can India forget or forgive the Chinese for thei r intrusion in the northeastern region. Further, the Chinese have been aggressively taking over trade in Myanmar. If the Silk Road or Stillwell's Burma Road is re-opened, they may take over the markets in the northeastern region of India as well. They ma y also increase their influence over disaffected people in the region. In any case, the terrain is so mountainous and hostile that road construction (let alone building railway lines) is expensive - so expensive that it is feared that it does not make ec onomic sense to revive the road Stillwell built.

All these are powerful reasons why India should maintain the status quo and keep the borders closed. However, there are even stronger reasons for opening these borders. Basically, Indian policy-makers suffer from a fortress mentality: they believe that t hey will be safe behind high, impenetrable walls. In this era of high-speed communications, fortresses are obsolete; they offer no protection. Even if they do, they can do so only when the fortress wall is easily accessible from within but difficult to s cale from outside. The fortresses that India builds are exactly of the opposite kind: India's boundaries are virtually inaccessible from within but are easily reached from outside. Just imagine a fortress wall that is 100 feet tall and unscalable looking from inside but only five feet high from outside and therefore easy to climb over! India's frontiers are like that - difficult to defend but easy for outsiders to nibble at with impunity. That is how India has lost much in the Kashmir Valley, in Ladakh and in Arunachal Pradesh. Unless India realises the futility of keeping its frontiers inaccessible, it is liable to lose control of more territory all along its northeastern borders the same way it has lost elsewhere.

It is also not wise to overreact to political differences. Politics changes from day to day; today's enemies are tomorrow's friends and vice versa, but geography remains the same all the time. The Chinese and the Burmese may be friends sometimes, may be enemies at other times but at all times they are going to be India's neighbours. Further, people on both sides of the border are bound to have common cultural affinities and close commercial contacts. Preventing intercourse between them is unnatur al. Imposing unreasonable restrictions on border people only because India does not get along with neighbouring governments will not at all help the country. In the bargain it only loses goodwill both within and outside its boundaries.

THE fear that China will flood the Indian markets with its goods is a very real one. That is not going to be resolved by making conditions ideal for smuggling. While fearing a Chinese take-over of its markets, India forgets that it is equally possible fo r it to flood Chinese markets. There are many consumer goods that India makes in plenty that are not available to the Chinese people. It appears that the fears of economic domination by China are exaggerated. The same can be said of the economic cost of rebuilding the road to Yunnan. Yunnan is already importing annually over half a million tonnes of iron ore from India and exporting to it about a million tonnes of phosphatic ore. All this will be diverted to this short route. So substantial goods traffi c is already there to sustain this link.

There are two alternatives: One, reconstruct the Stillwell Road from Ledo in Assam to Mytkina in Myanmar - an admittedly difficult, mountainous 403- km-long road. However, for Indian engineers who have just completed the equally arduous Konkan Railway th at should be no great deterrent. Another possibility is to extend the road India is already building from Moreh in Manipur to Tamu to Kalewa on the Chindwin river. If that river is bridged, a link will be established with Mandalay which is on the railway system of Myanmar. The first will provide the shortest link to China and the second a better link to South-East Asia. As both links are important, it would be useful to take up both projects. In addition, Mizoram could be linked to Akyab (now called Shi twe) in Myanmar, and if Bangladesh agrees, Agartala in Tripura could be connected to Chittagong. That will open up the entire northeastern region of India, making it the commercial outlet for its eastern trade.

The Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) has already done considerable spadework in preparing the alignment of the Trans-Asian Railway. It has identified seven international conventions that the four governments will have to ac cede to in order to promote trade and tourism. There is as yet little progress on that front. But there should be little difficulty to start charter flights immediately. Currently the atmosphere is conducive. If India is receptive to overtures from China , Myanmar and (to a certain extent) from Bangladesh too, these projects can be started soon. No doubt they will cost a few thousand crores of rupees, but the amount will still be significantly less than what the Delhi Metro is costing the country. It is worth considering whether the opening of the northeastern region is not as crucial for national welfare as the Delhi Metro has been accepted to be.

FOR nearly three decades, India has not stinted on resources on security forces to contain disaffection in the northeastern region - without much success. The harsher the government has tried to impose its authority, the more bitter have the people becom e. Considering the futility of this approach, India's policy-makers would do well to investigate whether it would be better to inspire hope rather than fear. For this isolated region, nothing can generate hope of prosperity as much as communications infr astructure can.

According to some Assamese participants in the Kunming seminar, the obstacle now is not the issue of national security, not even lack of finance but lack of political will, the absence of political will in Delhi and in Delhi alone. Incidentally, an Assam Minister and a Rajya Sabha member from the same State accompanied the Indian delegation to Kunming. Normally, in any exercise of Track II diplomacy, officials, certainly Ministers, do not get involved directly. So, their participation was a matter of su rprise. Apparently they joined the non-official group because they had lost hope that anybody in Delhi would listen to their plea.

Policy-makers in Delhi should ponder where they have gone wrong if even Ministers in States feel that much disillusioned, that much alienated. The Minister from Assam was particularly bitter about bureaucratic obstructionism. Such negativistic behaviour is not necessarily due to ill-will. Not only in India, but all over the world, bureaucrats are paranoid about the cost of change - even though they are unfazed by uncontrolled escalation of existing costs.

That is a systemic fault. As a corrective, India needs a bureaucratic equivalent of the "positive vote of no confidence" that has been advocated in Parliament as a cure for political instability. In a positive vote of no confidence, the incumbent Prime M inister cannot be removed unless a more acceptable alternative leader is presented simultaneously so that no vacuum is created. Similarly, a rule may be enforced that whenever officials object to any proposal, they should at the same time suggest a bette r alternative. Then, instead of each and every official exercising veto power (the way it is at present), a constructive debate will ensue on the several choices that are possible. If that principle is accepted, anyone who objects to investment in improv ing communications between the northeastern region of India and East Asia will be constrained to put forward better alternatives to improve both the economic and psychological state of the people of the northeastern region.

As for the economic argument of viability, most of what is being spent in the northeastern region does not yield an adequate internal rate of return. Often, the return is negative. For instance, all evidence indicates that the more the State spends on su bduing the people, the more insecure the countryside becomes. Such expenditure is also addictive. So the cost of investment in communications between the northeastern region of India and the southwestern region of China as also with South-East Asia shoul d be evaluated not in absolute terms but in comparison with the alternative of escalating the cost of policing disgruntled people.

In this connection, there is something to be learnt from China. In that country, they have invested their resources mainly on infrastructure such as roads, and very little on private goods such as cars. India has done the opposite. They have wonderful ro ads and relatively few vehicles. India has lots of vehicles but no roads for them to ply and no place even to park. Both are unbalanced approaches. Nevertheless, China seemed to have erred on the right side - vehicles can be added with little difficulty once the roads are in place but the opposite is very difficult to do. Hence, India's policy-makers would do well to pick up enough courage to invest in communication infrastructure, and try to generate employment that way rather than by expanding the sec urity forces.

EXCEPT during the initial years of Independence, when India gave the world the concept of Non-alignment, Panch Sheel and actively brokered peace in Vietnam, India's foreign policy has been more reactive than active. Indians are overawed by Chinese prowes s and by their rapid progress. Surprising as it may seem, Chinese visitors to India are no less awed by the vibrancy of the Indian bazaar; they cannot easily get over the consumption standards commanded by the Indian middle class. There is nothing for In dians to fear more than their own lack of self-confidence. India has contributed a lot to countries on the eastern borders for 2,000 years and more. India has much more to give. It is time India became active again, took over the initiative instead of be ing merely reactive. It is time that India started a Guwahati Initiative to succeed the Kunming one.

No doubt, weighty diplomatic, political, financial and security reasons can be produced to assert why the northeastern region is best left isolated. At the same time, it is time that India learnt to get over its fears and learnt to look towards the East not with fear but with hope and confidence. As a former Indian Ambassador to China explained to the delegates in Kunming, it is best for them to be patient and wait until India gets over all possible objections. Let not their patience be tried too much.