There is no doubt that India has made significant progress through extensive and efficient transport infrastructure. India has the second largest road network in the world. However, the quality of the roads vary with national highways constituting less than one-third of the total. Furthermore, cargo traffic on the highways is held up at a number of octroi stations at inter-state crossing points. A cargo truck travelling from Mumbai to Kolkata has to negotiate 36 checkpoints along the route. While rail freight in our country is subject to fewer interruptions and volume wise cheaper, the rail network has grown much less than road transport and feeder services have not kept pace. The proposed high speed freight corridor which will run across the country from Mumbai to Delhi and then east to Kolkata is likely to bring about a major improvement in rail transportation within the country. Water transportation falters, even though measures are being taken to revive it.
In this context one should note the communication revolution which the mobile telephone has brought about in India. There are now over 900 million mobile subscribers in the country who grow every year. They offer a platform for connectivity, creating new markets, connecting producers to consumers more efficiently and enabling vast amounts of data to flow seamlessly across communities. This has a multiplier effect on the economy with the closer proximity it creates.
Moving on to our sub-continental neighbourhood, it remains true that our countries are even less connected with each other today than in 1947. Several major transport arteries, including rail, road and water transport, were all interrupted after the partition of India in 1947. Even though cross-border transport linkages are being re-established with both Bangladesh and Pakistan, they are not generating the benefits they should owing to cumbersome procedures at border crossing points. Cargo movement freezes due to lack of accompanying banking, testing and inspection facilities. However, these issues are now being addressed through an ambitious Indian plan to set up a network of Integrated Checkpoints (ICP) on borders with neighbouring countries. These ICPs, being set up by the Land Port Authority of India, will incorporate, at one location, immigration, customs, security, warehousing, phyto-sanitary testing facilities as also banking and exchange facilities, along with adequate parking, boarding and lodging and health facilities for the traders, truckers and other travellers. One such ICP has already been set up at Attari on the India-Pakistan border. Several others are in various stages of implementation on the borders with Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Myanmar.
Leaders of South Asia have declared the decade of 2010-2020 as the Decade of Connectivity in the region. That in itself is a major step forward because it represents a political consensus on the importance of connectivity for shared prosperity. Two landmark agreements have been negotiated and are ready for adoption. One, the Motor Vehicles agreement and the other, a Railways agreement. When implemented, these agreements will go a long way in polishing the movement of goods and people across national boundaries.
India has also given priority to its connectivity with ASEAN countries. The India-Myanmar transport projects are important as Myanmar is India’s gateway to South-East Asia. ASEAN has its own connectivity plan and India works to align its own transport infrastructure development plans with ASEAN. These include cross-border rail and road connectivity, maritime, air and digital connectivity. If accompanied by better logistics and efficient border clearances, would it be possible for India to participate in the high developed regional and global value chains.
Ultimately what is required is a change in the mindset of India. We must start looking at national boundaries as “connectors” that bring India closer to its neighbours and through them, the world. Cross- border links then become transmission belts for the free flow of development impulses. Transport corridors thus become economic corridors. India was a flourishing civilisation, leveraging its geographical location at the cross-roads of the ancient caravan routes connecting to Central Asia. It was also the centre of monsoon-driven ocean routes both to the East and the West. India flourished because it was a connected nation and its future lies in learning the lessons from its own cosmopolitan past.
(Shyam Saran is an Indian career diplomat. He joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1970 and rose to become the Foreign Secretary to the Government of India)
