Myanmar
sits at Asia’s crossroads, sharing a western border with India, and a northern
one with China. Thailand is its neighbour to the east and the Malacca Strait is
on its southern flank. The country of nearly 60 million people has emerged from
a half-century of military rule. However, certain old features continue to
reign in Myanmar. First of all, the country has not fully accepted liberal
parliamentary democracy. Then as Reuters journalists on a recent trip to the
Myanmar-India border in Manipur found, the region continues to be a place where
rebel groups deeply influence politics and business. Opium poppies are grown
openly. Cross-border gun-running remains big business. Recent elections in
Myanmar were chiefly dictated by the need to court with the West while trying
to wean itself from dependency on China for trade and investment. In a way,
Myanmar has opened its trade and the country continues to be a land of
opportunity for many. But when it comes to India, despite a recent flurry of
high-level visits between the two countries, India appears ill-placed on the
ground to exploit Myanmar’s openings. This is in spite of the fact that the
Indian state of Manipur and three others share a 1,640- km (1,020-mile) border
with Myanmar, which were supposed to be India’s “Gateway to the East” and the
much promised “border trade” between the two countries. Instead, the area has
become India’s Wild East.
Advantage China
India,
which fought a border war in 1962 with China, has watched with mounting concern
as Beijing steadily increased its influence around the rim of the Indian Ocean,
especially in Myanmar. Ten years ago India’s foreign minister proposed
reopening a World War II highway to the north of Manipur called the Stilwell
Road, which connects India’s far eastern region, known as the Northeast, with
Myanmar and China.Worried that the road risked strengthening China’s influence
and the flow of militants and arms to the region, India dragged its feet and
Myanmar turned to China’s Yunnan Construction Engineering Group instead. India
also missed out on the natural gas from two fields in Myanmar it has a stake
in, when the government chose to pipe it to China.
During
long years of self-imposed isolation, Myanmar’s only major economic partner was
China. India realised in the 1990s that Chinese investment in Myanmar’s
military and infrastructure was giving Beijing a strategic advantage in a
nation that borders five countries, straddles busy Bay of Bengal shipping lanes
and has large oil and gas reserves.
New
Delhi quietly dropped its backing for the opposition party of Nobel peace
laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who went to school and university in India.Ties have
strengthened since then, with President Thein Sein just the latest of Myanmar’s
leaders to call on New Delhi on a visit to India last year.Rajiv Bhatia, who
was India’s ambassador to Myanmar until 2005, says India is still more
concerned with its South Asian neighbours, including Bangladesh and Pakistan,
and could miss the moment.
“In
pure geopolitical terms, Myanmar is hugely important to India. We are now
getting a historic opportunity to recover our relationship,” he said. “ But it
is still not a priority for our politicians.
Sorry State of the Border Trade& the
Tragedy of Moreh
While
the bilateral trade between India and Myanmar has witnessed an upswing, the
border trade between the two countries through Manipur has witnessed a
downslide. The bilateral trade had grown steadily in the
1990s to reach a level of US $ 328 million in 1997-98. The trade volume
continued to rise through the 2000s upto US$ 569.17 million in 2005-06. The
trade turnover shot up to US$ 892.99 million in 2006-07 doubling just in two
years. The balance of trade has always been in favor of Myanmar. According to
Myanmar statistics, in 2001-02, India was the second largest- market for
Myanmar's exports. The total trade in 2010-11 (US$ 1070.88) has more than
doubled in the last five years. India is now the fifth largest trade partner of
Myanmar (4th largest export destination for Myanmar and 7th largest source of
imports into Myanmar) after Thailand, China, Hong Kong, Singapore.
On
the other hand, legal trade on the border has dwindled in the last five years
to just about 0.15 percent of total commerce between Myanmar and India.
Checkpoints by security forces and rebel group supporters make the 120 km (75
mile) journey along the rutted Highway 102 through the hills from Manipur’s
capital Imphal to Moreh on the border a painstakingly slow – and expensive,
too, from the “taxes” they impose on traffic.The Highway was supposed to be
part of a road network linking up with Mandalay, Myanmar’s main city in the
North, and on into Thailand. But the only notable improvement on the Indian
side is a short patch running through the Manipur Chief Minister’s home town.
The
sleepy border town of Moreh had dreams of being a major international trading
centre, a key station on the ambitious Trans-Asia Railway that will enable
containers from East and Southeast Asia to travel overland across India to
Europe.
At
first glance, Moreh seems to be a quiet bazaar of traditional wooden stilt
houses, frontier hotels and stores where Myanmarese Buddhist monks and tribes-people
in traditional dress and sandal-paste painted faces mingle with traders from
across India. The town of 15,000 people has one bank.Opened in 1995 to great
fanfare, the Moreh crossing was supposed to be a major trading post by now.
Only some small-scale merchants conduct legal trade. Much of that is on a
barter system, exchanging flour and soy products for betel, a mild stimulant
popular in India.
Moreh
is a major smuggling centre where outlaws move around freely. Heroin from the
Golden Triangle, guns and gem stones go westward; raw opium, tiger bones and
rhino horn move east. The reverse is also equally true. Today, Indian origin
pharmaceutical drugs such as effedrine(in
generic form) find making inroad to Moreh only to be smuggled into Myanmmar
illegally. This is inspite of the fact that there are around 13 Integrated
Check Posts being developed by Central Government and mostly manned by the
Assam Rifles. A U.S. diplomatic cable from 2006
released by Wikileaks described local politicians either in league with the
rebels or supporting them for financial reasons. Involvement of the Security
personnel in the illegal trade is anybody’s common knowledge.
It
wasn’t always this way. Until the early 1990s, Myanmarese flocked across the
border to buy Indian-made consumer goods. But as China’s workshops cranked up
and offered cheaper, more durable products, the market shifted to the other
side of the fence. Today, small traders from Imphal endure the serpentine
journey along bumpy Highway 102 and its checkpoint shakedowns to visit the
Namphalong Bazaar on the Myanmar side of the Moreh border gate.Their pick-up
trucks are piled high with Chinese mattresses, refrigerators and TVs to sell
back in India, returning along the same road that brought Japanese troops in
World War Two through then Burma in an attempt to invade India. The trip from the
border to Imphal carrying such contraband can involve payoffs along the way
amounting to several hundred dollars.
Disenchantment
of the people of Manipur is summed by Lunminthang Haokip, a senior state
government official for Moreh’s Chandel district. “People had plans to open
eateries, motels and shops along the Asian highway. Now, the trans-national
road is imaginary. It does not exist here. The Look East
policy is no more than power-point presentations in Delhi.”
The
complaint is voiced often here by residents in Manipur who have suffered
decades of rights abuses under draconian emergency powers including “shoot-to-kill”
orders aimed at curtailing the insurgencies. Residents say New Delhi acts like
a colonial power, with much of its mistrust of the region stemming from its
relative proximity to China.
“The
overwhelming presence of military, paramilitary and police officers contributed
to the impression that Imphal was under military occupation,” the U.S. embassy
cable said. “The Indian civil servants were also clearly frustrated with their
inability to stem the growing violence and anarchy in the state, feeling their
efforts to effectively control the insurgencies was hamstrung by local
politicians either in league with or at least through corruption, helping to
finance the insurgents.”
Notwithstanding
all the ambitious projects like the much hyped Look East Policy or Trans-Asian
highway or Imphal-Mandalay bus service, Moreh is still every much ill-equipped
both in terms of infrastructure or physical ambience. The sadder part is,
people of Manipur, the home State of Moreh have not been capacitated to
capitalise on Myanmar’s recent opening. What makes things worse, is the
Government of Manipur’s lackadaisical attitude towards Moreh and the
potentially huge international trade
that can be carried out through the border town. Moreh still looks like an 18th
century township bereft of any basic modern amenities. Moreh, at present, is
full of demerits. Its only merit is its strategic location. The tragedy has
been further compounded as New Delhi seemingly planned the Indo-Myanmar cross
border trade by keeping either Kolkata or Guwahati as the principal trading hub
on Indian side. Under this whole scheme of things, people of Manipur have no
place except as by-standers. Myanmar has already awakened, what about Manipur ?
This article was published in The Sangai Express on Sunday, May 13, 2012
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