Our forgotten border

Indias border with Myanmar is,if remembered at all,thought of as a dead end to trade,porous only to militants and drug traffickers. The reasons for this are many: the long-running insurgencies along Indias north-eastern border; the confused political situation in Myanmar; short-sightedness in New Delhi. But,as this newspaper has reported,things might be beginning to change. In the small town of Moreh in Manipur,where National Highway 39 hits the border,work has begun on truly ambitious border infrastructure. This will,it is planned,link up with a refurbished NH-39 and become,eventually,part of a long dreamed-of trans-Asian road system.

Of course,ambitious attempts to integrate the Northeast have been begun before. It was thought at one point that Myanmar was willing to upgrade the old Stilwell Road that linked it to India,and in the process helping to connect the Northeast to a usable port. That,along with similar hopes from an improvement in Indo-Bangladesh relations,has not exactly come to fruition yet. But India cannot afford to sit back and let its neighbours dictate the pace of this process. If the infrastructure gets built,the incentives for them to do their part will become ever clearer. Nor is it in any way obvious that insurgents in the Northeast will choose to attack such infrastructure in the manner that has become horrifically familiar,thanks to Maoist attacks elsewhere in India. Which is why the move to create an integrated border checkpost,

an airport-like area which will facilitate the movement of goods and people back and forth,is a sensible first step.

There are,therefore,two crucial takeaways. The first is that upgrading border infrastructure in the expectation of greater trade is something that can and must be done unilaterally. The other is that individual projects are not,and will never be enough. The new integrated checkpost a land port,as new legislation intends to classify it will be useless unless NH-39 is similarly upgraded. But the rewards are huge: the creation of incentives for peace in the Northeast; greater commonality of interests with Myanmar; and,not least,the possibility that India and Southeast Asia will draw closer together.