If and when it is finished, the corridor could give India an important economic boost too, Sreeparna Banerjee, a junior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation think tank based in Kolkata, told VOA.įILE - People on a beach on the Bay of Bengal in the Rakhine region, Myanmar, Oct. “If throwing some money on the Kaladan helps them keep that pipeline open, that’s fine for them.” The intelligence pipeline needs to be open,” he said. “The bottom line is India’s main idea is to make sure the channels with the junta remain open, because they need to know what the Chinese are doing. Compared with China, he added, India has also done relatively little to cultivate the ethnic-minority rebel armies that control much of Myanmar’s borderlands, Rakhine and Chin included.Įven if China continues to dominate relations with Myanmar, Paliwal said India’s investment in the Sittwe port at least helps to keep it in the good graces of the military regime that seized power in 2021. Paliwal said concern over China’s growing sway in the region is an “article of faith” for India, even if it has never invested the money into pushing back with much force. an important element of India’s Indo-Pacific approach and to counter China, because this is a region where China has also been dominant,” he said. “This is the larger aspiration, which has always been couched in terms of the Look East or Act East policy of India. India and Myanmar shook hands on the project 15 years ago, but it actually stems from goals of plugging India’s economy into the bustling markets of Southeast Asia dating back to the 1960s, Avinash Paliwal, a senior lecturer at Britain’s School of Oriental and African Studies told VOA. Once completed with a 158-kilometer shipping route up the Kaladan River from Sittwe and another 210 kilometers of road leading back into India, the ministry said the corridor would slash transport times and costs between Kolkata and Mizoram state by more than half.įILE - Construction of new port at the Kaladan River in Sittwe, Myanmar, May 19, 2012. ![]() In a statement, India’s Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways said the Sittwe port would herald “a new age of transportation” with Myanmar and “unlock tremendous economic potential” across the region by bridging South and Southeast Asia. The Sittwe port is the first node in the $484 million Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project, aimed at connecting greater India with its landlocked northeast through western Myanmar’s Rakhine and Chin states, bypassing Bangladesh. India helped inaugurate a long-awaited seaport in western Myanmar this month amid New Delhi’s efforts to cope with rival China’s growing influence in Southeast Asia and across the Indo-Pacific.Ī maiden delivery of 1,000 metric tons of cement from the Indian metropolis of Kolkata docked May 9 in Sittwe, Myanmar, at a new port funded by New Delhi.
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