The India-Myanmar Kaladan Project: Vision and Reality

Abstract

India’s recent connectivity projects in the East, like the USD 484 million Kaladan Multi-Modal Transport Project, stem from a compulsion imposed by the sub-continent’s post-Partition geography. Pakistan lost its eastern wing in a bloody civil war in 1971 because it was logistically impossible for its army to hold on to an alienated province with millions of Bengalis up in arms and their insurrection fully backed by India. India did not lose its restive ‘Seven Sisters’ in the Northeast, but a spate of violent insurgencies by battling ethnicities (Naga, Mizo, Manipuri, Assamese, Bodos and other tribes) challenged Delhi’s control over the remote region. That has compelled post-colonial India to seek alternate trans-national connectivity to the region to get round the limitations imposed by the 21 km wide ‘Siliguri Corridor’, the only land link connecting the Indian mainland to the Northeast. A combined armoured-infantry-airborne thrust by China through the Zompheri Ridge down the Chumbi Valley and Jaldhaka, cutting off this Siliguri Corridor – this is the worst nightmare scenario for India’s military planners.