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Worried
about its restive northeast, New Delhi is poised to make a major
transport deal with Burma
 Ignoring
continued international pressure to boycott Burma’s ruling
military junta, New Delhi on April 4 will sign an agreement to
develop a port on the western Burmese coast for the benefit of
India’s restive northeast, where a stubborn secessionist
movement has continued its rebellion for decades.
Vice
Senior General Maung Aye, second in command of the State Peace and
Development Council, as the Burmese junta calls itself, is to arrive
in New Delhi to finalize the US$100 million Kaladan project. This
includes development of the Sittwe port on the Bay of Bengal,
connecting it with landlocked northeastern India through the Kaladan
River and road transport system and providing India with a crucial
alternative route for transport of goods to the northeastern states,
bypassing Bangladesh.
Maung
Aye’s arrival is the highest-profile visit to India for a
Burmese leader since Senior General Than Shwe, the junta leader, was
in New Delhi four years ago. Last August and September, the junta
earned worldwide opprobrium with a brutal crackdown on the country’s
restive population, beating and shooting at peaceful protesters led
by tens of thousands of Buddhist monks. Although the junta put total
deaths at 10, unofficial tallies go much higher.
“The
Kaladan project will include shipping, riverine and road transport,”
Jairam Ramesh, the Indian junior commerce minister, said in a press
briefing during a recent visit to the region. “New Delhi wants
to connect the northeast with commercial sea routes. Moreover, with
the development of the Sittwe port and the Kaladan River to make it
efficient for navigation, the region is expected to have another
viable access to Southeast Asian countries.”
India’s
northeast, which is almost cut off geographically from the rest of
the country by Bangladesh, comprises eight states surrounded by
Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, Burma and Bangladesh. The region’s
cumulative population of about 50 million enjoy more affinity toward
China and Burma than with India because of its predominantly East
Asian origin. The area is connected to mainland India through only 2
percent of its territorial boundary.
The
Burmese junta, though providing free land for the Kaladan project,
has been reluctant to invest, which finally compelled New Delhi to
extend a US$10 million soft loan to the SPDC leaders, which critics
characterized as a bribe. The project is anticipated to be completed
within four years and will be executed by the public-sector Rail
India Technical Economic Services organization.
India is
already under fire across the globe after a visit to Burma by its
petroleum minister, Murli Deora, in September at a time when the
world’s media were delivering pictures of massive protests
against the junta and the crackdown. Although Deora witnessed as many
as 100,000 demonstrators on the streets of Rangoon, he made no
statements. Instead, during his visit, he signed three bilateral
agreements for deep exploration in oil blocks. India’s
state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) Videsh pledged to invest
nearly US$150 million for gas exploration in Burma’s Rakhaine
coastal region.
New Delhi
strongly supported the pro-democracy movement in Burma until 1993 but
has become increasingly concerned over growing Chinese influence in
the country. That has forced India to change its Burma policy to one
of greater economic cooperation. Another major concern remains the
relentless insurgencies in India’s northeast. Armed groups
based in the trouble-torn region use the jungles of northern Burma as
their hideouts and training camps. India cannot afford to ignore the
junta’s support in dealing with the situation along the porous
1,600-kilometer Indo-Burmese border.
New
Delhi’s move to invest in the Burmese port assumes additional
significance in view of Bangladesh’s reluctance to give India
access to its Chittagong port, which is nearer to the northeast, and
which is less than 200 km from Agartala, capital of the Indian state
of Tripura.
“It
is unfortunate that we have not been able to develop our relationship
with Bangladesh to the level of making it our gateway to Southeast
Asia,” Ramesh said, although he pointed out that New Delhi is
working on enhancing ties with Bangladesh. (As Asia Sentinel reported
on March 12, Bangladesh’s army chief of staff, General Moeen U
Ahmed, recently spent a week in India in arguably the closest example
of cooperation between the two countries since Bangladesh’s
independence in 1971.)
Burmese
exiles have come out against New Delhi for initiating the project,
saying any money invested in Burma will not reach the common people,
but will go into the pockets of the generals.
“This
is not a right time and [the junta leaders] are not the right persons
to build a long-term relationship, while human-rights abuses have
been claiming many lives every year in Burma,” said M Kim, the
coordinator of the Shwe Gas Pipeline Campaign Committee (India).
In an
interview, Kim said: “India must not bury alive its
extraordinary democratic values and inspiration of promotion of peace
and human rights by dealing in business and building relations with
this barbaric Burmese military junta, which recently not only killed,
tortured and imprisoned its own innocent people and monks but also
violated religious rights by sealing off monasteries and restricting
the basic rights of prayers at pagodas.”
Forced
labor, Kim said, is still rampant in Arakan state, where the Kaladan
project is to be built, with villagers forced to dig and dam
fisheries and prawn ponds for the interest of the authorities. The
only thing they receive from the authorities is mistreatment, he
said.
“It
is inevitable that if [Kaladan] is carried out under the present
regime, gross human-rights violations will follow,” Kim said.
“No development project will be done without committing
human-rights abuses, so India must hold off on the Kaladan project
until the military dictatorship is replaced by a democratic regime,
and local communities have a say in how their natural resources are
used.”
The
Mizoram Committee for Democracy in Burma and the Campaign for
Democratic Movement in Burma in January appealed vainly to New Delhi
to cut ties with the junta as “economic cooperation with them
[will] never benefit the people unless democracy is restored in
Burma.”
But Deepak
Parvatiyar, a former journalist turned Indian government
communication officer now based in Kuala Lumpur, said the mounting
pressure on the military rulers of Burma “should be maintained
at a diplomatic level but not at the cost of development.”
Speaking
to Asia Sentinel from the Malaysian capital, Parvatiyar said:
“Contribution to development is always welcome, even after
taking into consideration the recent happenings in Burma and the
continued regressive policies by its military rulers.
“By
participating in the development of the port in Burma, India has
shown maturity in dealing with her troublesome neighbors,”
Parvatiyar said. “Opening bilateral trade with Pakistan was the
beginning that considerably helped smooth the relationship between
the two countries. By participating in the development of Burma, it
will enhance the reputation of India as a country that cares for its
neighbors irrespective of political differences. Moreover, the
Kaladan project will give the backward northeast region access to
commercial sea routes.”
However,
Tayza Thuria, a Burmese exile based in London, answered that “India’s
doing business with Burma and engaging with Burma’s de facto
military government is not wrong in itself. But the Indian government
needs to be careful to maintain a balanced and ethical approach
towards Burma; ie, while engaging with them in business and security
affairs, New Delhi must also try to persuade, advise and guide the
junta to make systematic democratic reforms in due course.”
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The grim truth of war remains: hearts and minds are lost in the campaign to get the enemy by the balls
Europe falls behind the US in engaging with Asia
Iam an Indian and Proud of it !