Subir Bhaumik India’s Look East policy, now upgraded as ‘Act East’ by PM Narendra Modi, calls for a double look east. To make it successful and achieve its purpose of situating the country’s under-developed and conflict ridden Northeastern states at the heart of its robust engagement with South-east Asia and possibly China, India needs to first look east from its mainland to Bangladesh. Bangladesh holds the key to India’s overland connection to its Northeast , which is linked by land through a tenuous 21-lms wide Siliguri corridor, often derided as a “Chicken’s Neck” . The access to sea for India’s Northeast is also easily possible through Bangladesh and somewhat more circuitously through Myanmar. So it would be no exaggeration to say that Bangladesh holds the key to India’s ‘Look East’ or ‘Act East’ policy. Boosted by the return of a friendly regime in Dhaka under the leadership of current Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, India undertook a quantum leap in bilateral relationship with Bangladesh in 2010. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Dhaka with several chief ministers of Indian states bordering Bangladesh. Though West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerji spoiled the show by a last minute pullout protesting against an impending agreement on the sharing of the waters of Teesta river, the India-Bangladesh bilateral relations has only gone forward ever since. Narendra Modi’s government has only carried forward the process by developing rail-road-river-cyber connectivity between India and Bangladesh and used it to strengthen such links between the mainland and the northeast through Bangladesh. Dhaka’s decision to allow transit of goods through its territory to Northeast from Indian mainland was a game changer. It may take a while to operationalise and stabilize but there is no going back. It is clear that only if India can firm up its access to Northeast through Bangladesh, the next stage of ‘LookEast’ to link up to south-east Asia and China will work. India’s ‘Look East’ will work not through the Chicken Neck but through Bangladesh. India is therefore prioritizing linking up to Northeast through Bangladesh avoiding the ‘Siliguri corridor’ much as China is seeking to avoid the Malacca straits ( that its strategists see as a chokepoint) and trying to develop multiple land-to-sea access into Myanmar and Pakistan. The success of the Look East is key for India’s future. Not only is the East and Northeast the Achilles Heel of India due to its sustained under-development and proneness to different layers of conflict, but this is also the area where Indian diplomacy has the necessary space to play out a new script of connectivity, culture and commerce that is denied to it in the West by an ever-hostile Pakistan . In fact, if India and Bangladesh succeed in carrying their relationship to a new heights, it will help dispel fears of ‘Big Brother India’ among its smaller neighbours.. An isolated Pakistan may thus feel incentivized to change track and attempt improving relations with India to avoid isolation. The security issues are also closely linked to connectivity as far as India-Bangladesh relations are concerned. If the present spate of Islamist terror spins out of control in Bangladesh and/or encourages the political opposition to plunge the country into a new spell of street violence impacting very adversely on movement of goods and people, it will tell upon the positive connectivity infrastructure already developed. How can trucks plying through Bangladesh stranded for days due to ceaseless strikes (bandhs) or ships unable to offload cargo from Indian ports meant for transshipment to Northeast be seen as reliable mode of transport for carrying goods to India’s Northeast ! One of the reasons India went in for the expensive and time-consuming Kaladan Multi-Modal transshipment project through Myanmar’s Rakhine province was because Bangladesh’s pre-Hasina regime was not willing to even consider the issue of transit. The uncertainties caused by the fluid security situation in Bangladesh would actually justify doing up the Kaladan project, despite time and cost overruns, as an alternative if transit through Bangladesh for India’s Northeast runs into difficulties. Mizoram is surely the major beneficiary of the Kaladan project but other Northeastern states are not much enthused by it, except as treating it as an emergency alternative for transit through Bangladesh.
