Shyam Saran
The recent visit to India by General Than Shwe of Myanmar, his second in four years, underscores the growing salience of our relations with this key neighbour to the east. We have come a long way from the frigidity which marked our engagement in 1997, when i arrived in Yangon to take up my assignment as India's ambassador. Gradually, we were able to establish a degree of trust and confidence among the ruling generals. This stood us in good stead in dealing with a range of trans-border challenges. Good relations have also helped us to pursue several significant economic opportunities as part of our Look East policy.
Why is Myanmar important to India and is democracy in that country unimportant to us? It is easy to explain why Myanmar is an important neighbour. We share a 1,400 kilometre-long land border and four of our most sensitive north-eastern states, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram, lie north to south along this border. We share the strategic waters of the Bay of Bengal.
Since becoming an ASEAN member in 1997, Myanmar also provides us with a welcome geographical contiguity with a politically significant and economically dynamic Asia-Pacific region. It is also a close neighbour of China. This has its advantages in providing a transit route from eastern India to southern China. It has its disadvantages in case India-China relations become tense and the same transit routes are used for arms trafficking by insurgent groups. The geopolitical rationale of good India-Myanmar relations is, therefore, patently obvious and even compelling.
As a democracy, India would welcome the establishment of inclusive and broad-based multiparty democracy in Myanmar. We have not shied away from stating this preference openly. In our private parleys with the military rulers we have urged that Aung Sang Suu Kyi, National League for Democracy leader, should be released and allowed to play what we expect will be a constructive political role in the country.
However, public pressure on the regime is unlikely to yield results. There needs to be an appreciation of the difficult challenges any ruling polity must contend with. All along Myanmar's northern and eastern frontiers are restive ethnic minorities which were engaged in long-standing insurgency against the central government. Since the early 1990s, most have concluded ceasefire or arms for peace agreements with the government, in exchange for significant local autonomy. This has been a positive development though integration of these ethnic groups in a federated structure is already proving a complex challenge in the implementation of the new Constitution.
The groups do not want the de facto autonomy they have enjoyed so far to be restricted. The government is unable to concede, in any formal sense, the continued existence of semi-independent entities, several of whom still have their own armed forces. Since several groups have long-standing links across the border with China and have benefited from extensive border trade and traffic with it, this could be a potential area of conflict between the two countries.
The enduring hostility that the regime has faced from the US and its western allies has also engendered a sense of siege and sometimes even paranoia among the generals. Suu Kyi has unfortunately become, in their eyes, an instrument in the hands of the West to force a regime change. In fact, Suu Kyi is anything but a puppet. I have rarely met a political leader who has such remarkable strength of character and commitment to her people. Loud protestations of support for her without any willingness to go beyond rhetoric have actually worked to her disadvantage. Engaging with the generals, encouraging them to open the country to winds of change rather than reinforcing its isolation, would have paid better dividends. There are signs that this approach is being reassessed. We should encourage this trend.
India has pursued a pragmatic and well-balanced policy towards Myanmar over the past decade and this has yielded good results. General Than Shwe's latest visit took place against the backdrop of a complex and uncertain domestic political situation in Myanmar as also new developments in its relations with China. The country's leaders see their interests best served by a more balanced relationship with its two neighbouring giants. We have an opportunity to significantly raise our profile in the country. This will help us deal with cross-border challenges.
Myanmar has quietly helped eliminate some sanctuaries of Indian insurgent groups on its territory. It has encouraged India to build cross-border infrastructure and transport links across the entire land border. The multimodal transport corridor, with river navigation and road transport in the Arakan province to the south of Mizoram, will give us an alternative access to the north-east from the port of Sittwe, bypassing Bangladesh altogether. Two key roads linking Mizoram and Myanmar's Chin state to the east were also mentioned. There is major potential for generating nearly 2,000 MW of hydro power on the Chindwin river for evacuation to India.
These projects were reaffirmed during Than Shwe's latest visit. And here lies the rub. The same projects were announced during his first visit. We seem unable to move with any reasonable despatch on these projects despite their obvious strategic importance. Our credibility suffers as a result. In securing our neighbourhood, we need to address this weakness urgently.
The writer is a former foreign secretary.