Opinion - News Analysis

The `Great Game' in the East

By C. Raja Mohan

BANGKOK April 4. As he arrives in Thailand and heads for Myanmar on the final leg of the Asian tour, the External Affairs Minister, Jaswant Singh, is all set to push India firmly into the Great Game that is unfolding in India's Eastern neighbourhood.

The Great Game in the East remains obscure in comparison to the one in Afghanistan and Central Asia that has drawn popular attention. But the geopolitical dynamic in the East is far more important than the replay of the original Great Game to India's North-West.

In Central Asia and Afghanistan, India's ability to play directly in the Great Game has been constrained by lack of physical access to the region. In the East, India's challenge is to create road and rail links to South-East Asia through Myanmar.

Unlike in the North-West, Mr. Singh's power play in the East is as much about internal economic development as it is about foreign policy. The heart of India's Great Game in the East is to remove the physical constraints on the commercial development of India's remote North-East.

If the Partition constrained India's access to its north-eastern region, insular economic policies did not allow the consideration of options to link the North-East to the outside world. And when Myanmar pulled the bamboo curtain down four decades ago, there was no way of connecting North-East to its neighbouring regions in South-East Asia.

But that is the sad past. With all the economies in the region now opening up, it has become an imperative and an opportunity to integrate markets through road and rail links. As it hopes to connect with the rest of the world, India's North-East has a chance to breathe and think about rapid economic advancement.

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The Great Game in the East, too, is about creating access and physical connectivity. Afghanistan and Central Asia — all landlocked and some of them doubly so — are desperate to gain access to ports, not just in warm waters but anywhere.

In the East, no country is land-locked except Cambodia and Laos. But each one has remote regions that do not have quick and easy physical access — India's North-East shares the problem with China's South-West, Myanmar's North and its bordering regions in Thailand. Now all of them want to build highways that cut across national borders and connect their respective remote regions.

If you are talking about highways, can oil and gas pipelines be far behind? Like in the North-West, there are many proposals to build natural gas pipelines in the East to link up India, the biggest market for natural gas, with the sources of sup ply in India's North-East, Bangladesh and Myanmar. Thailand and Myanmar already have a pipeline connecting them.

When you think of pipelines in Central Asia and Afghanistan, you inevitably think of the American energy company, Unocal, that tried to ship natural gas from Turkmenistan to the subcontinent through Taliban's Afghanistan.

The spirit of adventure and a willingness to confront political risks has always been the hallmark of American oil companies. No one represented that spirit more than Unocal. It is no surprise then to find Unocal already well entrenched in the East and looking for more.

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Who are the big powers trying to shape the Great Game in the East? China and India. Many analysts have found it tempting to describe the Indian and Chinese political and economic activity in South-East Asia as being directed at the other. Their stepped up efforts to build roads and transport corridors through Myanmar are already being called a renewal of rivalry between the two Asian giants.

But not necessarily. A healthy economic competition between India and China to integrate the region and promote economic interdependence could in fact turn out to be a non-zero sum game.

The remote regions of India and China as well as the smaller countries in South-East Asia could all grow prosperous by linking together.

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