Indeed part of the challenge is that what is involved is not just integration, but the reintegration of economies torn asunder by history and politics. It would be of historic and sentimental value, as well as practical, if increasing South Asian integration served to reverse the severe economic damage inflicted by Partition in 1947. At that time, the stroke of a British pen severed road, rail and river links that had flourished in united India under the British Raj. Natural ports were cut off from their hinterlands, as Kolkata was from East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) and as Bangladesh’s own Chittagong has been from India’s north-eastern states. Mumbai and Karachi were once siblings, twin commercial cities that mirrored each other; today they are estranged neighbours. Political developments on the subcontinent since 1947 and the eruption of conflict have made the new barriers all but impenetrable. Their gradual easing, initially through economic cooperation, could produce significant benefits, including eventually in the area of security. But it is far from easy to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
India’s rise is no threat to any of its neighbours, but that is not enough; it must also afford them opportunities for their own growth and advancement. If it fails to do so, weak and unstable neighbours will constitute a threat to India itself, as our experience with terrorism, extremism and cross-border insurgency has demonstrated. For India to help promote development and strengthen the states in its own neighbourhood is a ‘no-brainer’, even if this is more difficult than making speeches at the UN about global risks emanating from distant lands. We have a shared history to build upon, and cultural affinities with every one of our neighbours that should be a source of commonality rather than of division. SAARC deserves more attention today than the Non-Aligned Movement; a water treaty with Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan deserves as much political energy to be expended on it as the Indo-US nuclear deal received.
India has a vital national responsibility to build its own infrastructure and extend it to our neighbourhood. Building more and better roads in the border areas and enhancing air, rail, river and sea connectivity with our neighbours must become more of a priority than they already are. This means devoting both resources and greater political attention to this objective. Pursuing economic integration with our neighbours is nothing less than a strategic goal, since the alternative is resentment at best and conflict at worst. The Chinese have made significant progress in building up their infrastructure up to their borders; there is a case for India to do the same and to connect the two together, to take advantage of the synergies that would result. (However, the atavistic fear remains, in some quarters, that this would facilitate a Chinese invasion, both metaphorically and literally.) Equally, India’s broader engagement with the region and the globe could benefit all countries in an integrated South Asia: they should be invited to share the opportunities that their association with India makes possible, while understanding that distancing themselves from India would also deprive them of wider possibilities.
By the same logic, we must also cease insisting on bilateral solutions to our issues with our neighbours where they prefer regional ones. It is understandable that smaller countries sometimes feel that a purely bilateral negotiation with such a huge neighbour would place them at a disadvantage. Doing things with three or four neighbours at a time, or in the SAARC framework, would help even out the perception of Indian dominance, and should be welcomed by New Delhi for precisely that reason. Indian diplomacy in South Asia must evolve a new paradigm that suggests no hint of hegemonism but that is still capable of exercising leverage, no easy task but one well worth pursuing.
Several specific ideas have been mentioned in the present chapter; many more exist or can easily be developed. In a March 2012 speech, India’s National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon urged the region to ‘move forward much more rapidly on connectivity, including energy and grid connectivity, tourism, people-to-people, trade and economic links that can make such a major contribution to improving our future’. A regionwide energy market could be created, building upon the example already mentioned of cooperation with Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal on hydropower. (The politician Mani Shankar Aiyar has even called for an Asian Oil and Gas Union, going beyond South Asia to embrace West Asian suppliers and East Asian consumers.) The process given a fresh thrust by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Dhaka in September 2011 could result in reuniting Kolkata with its vast natural hinterland in Bangladesh, from which it has been cut off for decades. More trade and tourism among SAARC countries could help dispel misunderstandings which have led to major problems in the past. Easier availability of Indian visas, rather than insisting initially upon strict reciprocity, would facilitate people-to-people contact that could help dispel tensions. India’s ‘soft power’—Bollywood cinema, books and music, educational opportunities, health care (offering specialized treatment for South Asian nationals at discounted rates in Indian hospitals), sporting exchanges, tourism and cultural schemes built on shared history and heritage (like the joint celebration of the 1857 Revolt, which turned out to be a damp squib, or the more successful combined commemoration with Bangladesh of Tagore’s 150th birthday) — must be consciously leveraged in the subcontinent as a source of goodwill. And adding substance to ‘Look East’ will transform India’s own North-East as it drives its reach into the heartland of ASEAN, with which it has already signed a free trade agreement.
Shared management of the region’s ecological resources is another possibility. Our environment is shared blessing and its future our shared destiny. The South Asian countries partake of a common geography, and the subcontinent’s glaciers, mountains, river systems, rainfall patterns and even forests recognize no man-made boundaries. Managing these cooperatively could bring benefits vastly exceeding the costs of the diplomatic efforts required.
One of the most important challenges for Indian diplomacy in the subcontinent is to persuade its neighbours that India is an opportunity, not a threat. Far from feeling in any way besieged by India, they should be able to see it as offering access to a vast market and to a dynamic, growing economy which would provide their own economies with far greater opportunities than more distant partners (or even their own domestic markets) could provide. This would go beyond economic benefits: as David Malone argues, ‘Economic cooperation represents the easiest “sell” to various constituencies within the countries of the region. Were this to prove successful, cooperation on more divisive and sensitive issues, such as terrorism, separatism, insurgency, religious fundamentalism, and ethnic strife, could be attempted with greater chances of success.’ For these reasons, Delhi clearly should do more to make greater economic integration politically attractive and administratively feasible. Imaginative and major new projects to integrate India’s north-eastern region with neighbouring countries — such as building efficient rail and road connectivity with Nepal, with and through Bangladesh, into Myanmar and on to Southeast Asia — will help create the physical integration from which economic integration will flow. (We will return to this in Chapter Five.) Winds of change are blowing in South Asia. There is a definite consolidation of democracy in all the countries of the region, every one of which has held elections within the last three years. Some of our neighbours have made significant strides in surmounting internal conflict and others are in the process of doing so. A subcontinent no longer bedevilled by mutual suspicion and distrust, and committed to democracy, economic cooperation and improved regional integration, is no longer a pipe-dream. If India has to fulfil its potential in the world, we have no choice but to live in peace with our neighbours, in mutual security, harmony and cooperation. Our stellar economic growth has added to the confidence with which we can approach our neighbours; the insecure are always less magnanimous. We have entered an era in which India can see borders not as barriers but as portals, and border areas not as buffer zones but as gateways of opportunity.