India-Myanmar-Thailand road agreement on construction of a 1,400 km-long road running from India to Thailand via Myanmar is in the pipeline. When completed, the highway project could give India’s ‘Act East’ policy a shot in the arm. Besides the obvious benefits of boosting overland travel and trade, the road will expand economic opportunities for the people of India’s Northeast. Special Economic Zones to spur business enroute is also on the anvil. Additionally, the highway is expected to improve people-to-people contact between the three countries. Geographic proximity paved the way for India, Myanmar and Thailand to benefit from a long history of trade and cultural exchange. In recent decades, however, interaction between them has been limited as politics, policies and poor physical infrastructure have stood in the way of overland contact. This is expected to change once the highway, which will run from Moreh in Manipur up to Tak in Thailand, is completed. India will have to do some heavy lifting in the project. Besides upgrading the Moreh to Tamu stretch of the road, it has to undertake repair of 73 bridges in Myanmar. The three countries are also negotiating a Motor Vehicles Agreement to facilitate seamless travel.
The India-Myanmar-Thailand project has immense potential. But this potential can be tapped only if the three countries act swiftly to finalise and sign agreements and complete the project on time. India’s infrastructure projects, especially in the insurgency-wracked Northeast, are notorious for unmet deadlines and cost overruns. Its performance on infrastructure projects abroad is abysmal especially in comparison to Chinese projects. The snail’s pace at which the country builds roads was laid bare during the construction of the Stilwell Road, a World War II road running from India’s Northeast through Myanmar to Kunming in China. China swiftly built a 640-km-long, six-lane highway linking Kunming to Myanmar and then went on to construct the Myanmar leg (1,035 km) of the Stilwell Road. Meanwhile, India struggled to upgrade just 63 km of road running through Assam and Arunachal Pradesh up to the Myanmar border.
Several Southeast Asian countries such as Myanmar and Vietnam are looking to India for trade and investment in order to reduce their dependence on China. Thus, there is opportunity for the country to expand its footprint in the region. The planned India-Myanmar-Thailand highway is just one corridor of many that could be built through which it can reach out to Southeast Asia. But India will need to speed up delivery on infrastructure projects if it is keen to be taken seriously as a partner of Southeast Asian nations.
Published 12 June 2016, 17:56 IST