Why Northeast-Kolkata link via Myanmar — not Bangladesh — is significant

“With the help of the Kaladan project, cargo will reach from Vizag and Kolkata to the Northeast, without being dependent on Bangladesh,” a senior official from National Highways & Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL) told The Indian Express.

Fallout with Bangladesh

Ties between New Delhi and Dhaka have taken a nosedive since the ouster of former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, an all-weather ally to India, last August.

The MoRTH sanctioned the Shillong-Silchar highway about a month after Muhammad Yunus, the head of Bangladesh’s interim government, called Northeast India “landlocked”, and referred to Bangladesh as the “only guardian of the ocean” during a visit to China.

For New Delhi, this was a matter of concern.

Currently, rest of India’s only access to the seven Northeastern states is through the narrow Siliguri Corridor, which goes by the apt moniker of “Chicken’s Neck”. Straddled between Nepal and Bangladesh, and only 20 km at its narrowest, this corridor has long posed an economic and a strategic challenge to New Delhi — one that has prompted some experts to call it “an Achilles heel for India”.

Over the last decade-and-a-half, an important element of New Delhi’s engagement with the Hasina government in Dhaka was to open pathways to the Northeast via Bangladesh — as would have been the case pre-Partition. (Note that Agartala, the capital of Tripura, lies less than 200 km from the port of Chattogram in Bangladesh.)

This, experts argue, would boost economic activity across the Northeast as well as in Bangladesh. But with a new, seemingly “anti-India” dispensation in place in Dhaka, these plans have fallen by the wayside, prompting India to “Look [further] East”.

The Kaladan Project

After feasibility studies were conducted in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the KMMTTP framework was signed by India and Myanmar in 2008. This was set to be a major development in India’s strategically vital Look East Policy. (Act East Policy under the Narendra Modi government).

The idea behind the project was straightforward. To create a transit corridor from the port of Sittwe in the Rakhine State in Myanmar to Mizoram, and eventually the rest of Northeast India. This would allow goods to be shipped from India’s eastern ports — primarily Kolkata — to Sittwe and then taken to Mizoram and beyond.

Upon completion, the KMMTTP would effectively shave off 1,000 km in distance between Kolkata and Mizoram, and save a journey time of three-to-four days.

As former Ministry of External Affairs Joint Secretary Sripriya Ranganathan had said during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Myanmar in 2014: “[the KMMTTP is a] totally win-win kind of a project in which we get the access that we seek to ensure to our Northeast, while Myanmar gets an asset which it will be able to use and that will benefit the people of a fairly backward and under-developed [Rakhine] state”.

Express Graphic

As the term “multi-modal” suggests, the project combines several modes of transport.

* Kolkata to Sittwe: This 539 km stretch between the two seaports will be covered by ship via the Bay of Bengal. Although this route has technically been operational for decades, India has invested significant resources to upgrade the Sittwe port to increase its capacity. This part of the project has been completed.

* Sittwe to Paletwa: This 158 km stretch on the Kaladan river in Myanmar will be covered by boat. The MEA has invested in dredging the river, and constructing requisite jetty facilities at Paletwa to handle 300-tonne barges. The river is navigable and all work has bee completed on this part of the project.

*Paletwa to Zorinpui: This 108 km four-lane road will be the last leg of the corridor in Myanmar. Myanmar has granted all approvals for this part of the project, and the Integrated Customs & Immigration Checkpost at Zochawchhuah-Zorinpui has been operational since 2017. But the last 50-odd-km of this highway (from Kaletwa, Myanmar to Zorinpui) is yet to be completed.

*Zorinpui to Aizwal & beyond: While Zorinpui is connected to Aizwal and the rest of the Northeast by road, the NHIDCL plans to eventually extend the high-speed corridor from Shillong all the way to the border town, The Indian Express reported.

Behind long delay

Although work on the KMMTTP began a decade and a half ago, the political situation in the Rakhine State has precluded the corridor from becoming operational. The project was set to be completed in 2016.

Myanmar is among the most ethnically diverse countries in the world, while the Bamar/Burman make up more than 65% of the population, there are well over 100 ethnic minorities spread across the country.

Since 1948, when it received independence from British rule, Myanmar’s many ethnic minorities have been in armed conflict with the Bamar-dominated state (and often each other). This conflict once again picked up after a military coup in 2021 ousted the nominally civilian government that had been in place in Yangon for a decade.

A BBC study published in December 2024 estimated that the Tatmadaw (Myanmar’s military) controls only 21% of territory, with the rest divided among a dozen or so warring ethnic militias.

Much of the Rakhine State — through which the KMMTTP passes — is currently under control of the Arakan Army, now rebranded with the more-inclusive moniker Rakhine Army. To get the corridor operational, New Delhi will thus have to deal with an ethnic militia which Yangon has officially designated as a terrorist outfit.

That, along with the fact that Rakhine State has seen some of the worst fighting in the civil war, has been a major stumbling block for the KMMTTP.

In 2022, India inked a new contract with IRCON International Limited, a public sector undertaking of the Indian Railways. The terms of the deal require IRCON to sub-contract the construction of the incomplete sections of the highway, and finish the project within 40 months. One clause in the agreement, however, adds that this deadline can be extended for reasons including “war, riots, [and] civil disorder”.

While IRCON has signed up some local contractors, the project is yet to make a headway.

Notably, the Arakan Army itself claims to support the construction of the highway. “We have been providing security for the project along the Kaladan since 2021. There is no security threat for the project,” Khaing Thu Kha, spokesperson of the Arakan Army, told The Diplomat in 2024.