Northeast India and Japan

Engagement through Connectivity

Mayumi Murayama, Sanjoy Hazarika, Preeti Gill, Mayumi Murayama, Sanjoy Hazarika, Preeti Gill

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032250090
• eBook ISBN: 9781000426076
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Development Economics
• Index: Social Sciences

This book examines the complex and connected past, present, and future of Northeast India and Japan. It looks at the intricate political geography and ethnolinguistic diversity of India's Northeast, and its historical and strategic relationship with Japan.

From the theatre of the Second World War to a potential economic corridor to the Indo-Pacific, the Northeast, which shares a border with China, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Myanmar, has emerged as an area of central importance in India–Japan relations. The book highlights the importance of connectivity and cooperation in the North Eastern Region, for sustainable growth, better accessibility, and quality of life. The chapters in the volume look at shared economic, socio-political, and environmental concerns of the two countries as well as the shared legacies between Japan and the Northeast through stories, collective memories and memorials about World War II, and research. They also explore the strategic implications of China's One Belt One Road initiative in the region and for India–Japan relations, India's Act-East policy, provincial politics and ethnic conflicts, and the challenges for sustainable development and greater cooperation for the two countries.

With contributions from both Indian and Japanese academics, this book will be a key resource on understanding Asian politics. It will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of politics and international relations, strategic studies, development studies, and Asian studies.

Part I
CONNECTIVITY FOR THE NORTHEAST FROM AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

1
CONNECTIVITY OF INDIA AND JAPAN’S COOPERATION

Takenori Horimoto

DOI: 10.4324/9781003165026-3

1 Introduction

Since entering the 2010s, connectivity-related agreements and projects related to India have been in full swing. At the concrete policy level, connectivity fundamentally implies the development of intra-territorial and extraterritorial transportation infrastructure with the extension and expansion of roads, railways, and harbours.

Connectivity-related projects are planned and set in motion in the regions where deficient infrastructure remains inadequate in spite of acute necessity. Probably, the Indo-Pacific can be regarded as a typical region, but isolation prevails to an even greater degree on the Indian subcontinent and surrounding seas. The subcontinent is indispensable for greater connectivity. In fact, the area and its maritime locations have positional centrality. They are on the Eurasian continent, extending from the subcontinent into the Indian Ocean and also flanked by the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea.

Therefore, countries in South Asia such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka can look forward to indispensable functions. Among those countries, India has the most subcontinental area and the longest coastline. India therefore represents a centrality of centralities. For that reason alone, connectivity plans and projects in the region must be inconceivable without India. Among India-related connectivity plans, several plans for enhanced transborder connectivity exist on the eastern side of the subcontinent, such as the Bangladesh–China–India–Myanmar (BCIM) Economic Corridor, the Bangladesh–Bhutan–India–Nepal (BBIN) project, and Bangladesh–India–Myanmar–Sri Lanka–Thailand Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC).

In this connection, it is noteworthy to say that Japan cooperates with the development in the North Eastern Region (NER). This is said to be a rare case, since the government of India has not accepted developmental cooperation by any foreign countries.¹ Japan had been cooperating with the NER development of sericulture in Manipur in the late 1990s and gradually expanded into infrastructure development and so on. It is noteworthy to mention that the Japan-India Coordination Forum on Development of North Eastern Region was founded on August 2017 to be dedicated to Japan–India cooperation in the Northeast. It puts together relevant agencies from Japan and India to discuss further cooperation in the region.²

On the western side of the subcontinent, the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project represents a stalwart pillar of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which extends to the Gwadar port in the southernmost part of Pakistan, facing the Arabian Sea. As if competing with the project, India is supporting a harbour project in Chabahar, Iran, located 172 km from Gwadar. Here also, Japan cooperates with the project.

In terms of connectivity in South Asia, India is the key country because of its location. From the beginning of its renewed activity in the region, China has been compelled to take India and Indian interests into consideration. Furthermore, Japan has no small function to fulfil. One must infer that these three countries are all important protagonists in regional connectivity to greater or lesser degrees.

India’s connectivity policy presents two major implications. First, India seeks to expand its economic and political activities beyond its own boundaries. Connectivity would mean facilitation of international supply chains supporting its industrialization. Second, from the 2010s onward, India’s foreign policy has been conducted based upon the Foreign Policy Matrix (Mandala), which exists at the three levels of global, regional (the Indo-Pacific), and local (South Asia) (Horimoto 2017).

Among those levels, the regional and local levels constitute the main diplomatic zones, whereas the global level is expected to be explored further in the future. This has been shown clearly in Ensuring Secure Seas: Indian Maritime Security Strategy published by the Ministry of Defence where Areas of Maritime Interests and Investments and Primary area and Secondary Area are given: Primary Area is the Indian Ocean rim and Secondary Area is the Eurasian Continent and the Western Pacific (Ministry of Defence 2015).

As far as India’s intra-connectivity plans and projects are concerned, its realization might depend mainly on governmental willingness, raising necessary funds, and cooperation of state government, local bodies, and concerned local people. However, in the case of extraterritorial connectivity, in addition to these, cooperation and support of foreign governments is involved. These are the knottiest issues to cope with, but planning and project adjustments among concerned countries must also be accommodated. That is particularly true, depending upon the number of countries involved in planning and projects. It might be readily apparent that the involvement of multilateral countries is more difficult than minilateral involvement of two or three countries that might be more amenable to adjustment. As one might expect, multilateral agreements lead to greater regional impact.

This chapter specifically addresses connectivity issues in South Asia and beyond, mainly from the viewpoint of India’s connectivity and Japan’s cooperation in the backdrop of international politics of South Asia and the Indo-Pacific.

Since such examinations from the standpoint of overall pictures rarely have been found in the past, they would represent the first attempt to delve into the crux of the issue and open the new vista of connectivity.

2 India’s engagements of connectivity

India has been engaging various connectivity projects. But there is a prominent feature among all of them in spite of the centrality of India’s geographical location: none of them connects both sides of the Indian sub-continent – the Southeast Asian region and the Middle East region – through the subcontinental land and the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea.

It would be necessary to take note of the fact that, in a sense, connectivity projects related to the South Asian region are taking the extended form of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) plan. The Asian Highway Network project initiated by the United Nations in 1959 and endorsed by the commission in 1992 still has been under development. The commission’s plan includes the Asian Highway and the Trans-Asian Railway.

2.1 The eastern subcontinent

India’s eastern side, abutting Southeast Asia and East Asia, represents important theatres under the Act East Policy advocated by the Modi government (formerly the Look East Policy). As Yhome (2017) opined, “Forming India’s first geostrategic chain in the Indo-Pacific region, how New Delhi handles its ties with countries in these subregions … will determine the pace and texture of the Act East policy.” To move forward politically and economically in these regions, connectivity matters considerably for India. In addition, the precondition of connectivity is infrastructural development, which holds crucially important implications. Raghuram Rajan, former RBI Governor, observed the three major bottlenecks of India’s growth as a decrepit infrastructure, power sector, and banks and specifically pointed out that “infrastructure creates growth.”³

Apparently, India has been associated with various connectivity projects while having such implications in mind. Modi’s “neighbourhood first” foreign policy means adjacent areas carry importance.

Among the multilateral projects, one is The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), with the participation Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Nepal, and Bhutan. One might think that the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) would be the main mechanism to advance connectivity, but SAARC is almost defunct now. India’s former Foreign Secretary Jaishankar emphasized in October 2017 that, unlike SAARC, the other seven-nation regional grouping of BIMSTEC has aligned and has “articulated similar aspirations.”⁴

With fourteen priority sectors that include transportation and communications, the BIMSTEC free-trade agreement has long been under negotiation. It is understood to be one response of India to China’s BRI (Baruah 2018). However, since its foundation in 1997, two decades have passed without substantial development, except for the establishment of the Secretariat in Dhaka in 2014. Its budget remains $1 million USD. A report suggests funding of $2 billion USD from India and $1 billion USD from other member states to give a fillip to generating meaningful activities in the region.⁵ A glance at its website⁶ reveals its inactivity to date.

On the eastern side of South Asia is another multilateral connectivity project designated as the Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, and Nepal Initiative (BBIN), founded in 1997. As a sub-regional cooperation initiative in eastern South Asia, BBIN has the stated main objectives of planning and implementing water resource management, and connectivity of power, transport, and infrastructure networks.

One breakthrough of the past twenty years is the BBIN Motor Vehicles Agreement (MVA), which was signed by the four countries on June 2015 on India’s initiative. India has approved an ambitious $1.04 billion project for constructing and upgrading 558 km of roads to link it with Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal and thereby ease the movement of passengers and cargo as part of a larger effort to increase inter-regional trade by 70%. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has contributed 50 percent of the funding.⁷

Nevertheless, because of opposition in Bhutan, its ratification has not progressed. Opposition parties of the Upper House of Bhutan claimed that the agreement would cause environmental damage and also jeopardize Bhutanese truckers because of the increment of other countries’ truckers.

Such tardy progress of India in its connectivity projects has been regarded pessimistically.

The real test for India, however, is whether it can make something of the moribund BIMSTEC or BBIN. This will not be easy for New Delhi, which has a commerce ministry that largely believes in economic non-cooperation and which has practiced border development with the idea of blocking foreign trucks and buses. This will have to change as concrete moves in regional cooperation are a geopolitical necessity.⁸

Regarding minilateral connectivity projects, two projects underway have higher probability of materializing. One is the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project, which creates a sea connection linking the eastern Indian seaport of Kolkata with Sittwe seaport in Rakhine State, Myanmar. The project started in the early 2000s. The Indian Cabinet approved the project at a cost of Rs. 535.91 crores in its meeting held in March 2008.⁹ The project looks to move ahead as with the Memorandum of Understanding on the operationalization of the Sit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction: East by Northeast
• Part I Connectivity for the Northeast from an international perspective
• Part II Northeast economy and connectivity
• Part III Northeast and connectivity from people’s perspective
• Part IV Northeast and Japan from the past to the present
• Index