[Assam] Fwd: Re: Los Angeles Times on Northeast India

Mon Jun 2 21:02:16 PDT 2008

what is this "male river"

any misprints?  :-)

Umesh

Manoj Das <dasmk2k at gmail.com> wrote: I was thinking this all along!

When I shared this news with a Japanese thinker from ADB, he was stunned..
There are many players in this. Number one is Bangladesh, which is
constantly frustrating India's efforts to get transit through the male
river. Secondly a grand politics of undermining Assam's destined position as
the land bridge between giant Asian land and economic masses.

mkd

On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 9:33 AM, Dilip&Dil Deka  wrote:

> Forwarding.
>
> Dilip&Dil Deka  wrote:  Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2008
> 20:58:13 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Dilip&Dil Deka 
> Subject: Re: [Assam] Los Angeles Times on Northeast India
> To: baruah at bard.edu, cmahanta at charter.net
>
>  Dear Sanjib,
>  You said, "But are they  producing or is it only assembling products. I
> don't know the answer. "
>  Even Assembling products is better than not doing anything. Mexico is
> making a lot of money assembling products for USA. Assembling products
> eventually leads to local production if the local entrepreneurs mean to take
> part in the process.
>  Car battery industry is a good example. As I understand, back in seventies
> batteries were assembled in Assam. I heard that most of the parts are now
> made in Assam. Is it true?
>  Dilipda
>
> baruah at bard.edu wrote:
>  Dear Dilipda and Mahanta,
>
> Good hearing from you. I am skeptical, as Mahanta has noted. But not
> because a lot new is not taking place -- but because things that are
> crucial for a breakthrough are not happenning. There is a much more
> affluent India, and many in Delhi are genuinely committed to doing
> more. So if earlier we talked about 100 crores, now the language is of
> 1000 crores. But is money enough? Domestic policy and foreign policy
> cannot be separated when it comes to Northeast India. Our relations
> with China may be improving in many ways, but not when it comes to
> Arunchal Pradesh. Only last summer China has begun referring to AP as
> China's Southern Tibet. So long as the Burmese military regime is
> there, huge amount of foreign funds are not going to move in to build
> infrastructure in Burma. Indian money or Chinese money can do a little
> bit of this and that, but not the funds that could be mobilized for
> Northeast india to benefit from India's Look East policy. No matter
> how much we shout about Bangladesh's animosity, the burden of normal
> relations is on the bigger neighbour as in all such cases of a country
> that is far more resourceful than the aggreived smaller neighbor. We
> may be landocked by India, said a Bangladeshi foreign minister, but
> Northeast india is landlocked by us. So the military man's vision of
> the Look East policy -- linking up with the Burmese or the Bangaldeshi
> army to get support for their anti-insurgency operations--is a very
> poor substitute to the huge leap of resources -- material as well as
> intellectual -- that is needed for the task. At the same time I am
> willing to say that we do not know the implications of some of the
> huge amount of money that is being spent. There are about 15 daily
> flights from Delhi to Guwahati -- more than any other comparable city.
> There is much more energetic road-building (and the massive
> disappearance of trees and of the familiar surroundings around the
> trunk road) etc etc. I know the planes carry many businessmen taking
> advantage of the tax benefits of investing in the region. But are they
> producing or is it only assembling products. I don't know the answer.
> But we surely need a new language to talk about the region --
> certainty "neglect" is not what is happenning any more.
>
> Hope all is well.
>
> With warm regards,
>
> Sanjib
>
>
> Quoting Chan Mahanta :
>
> > Thanks for sharing the article Baruah.
> >
> > But I share your skepticism. We have heard these for decades on end
> > now. The politicians attempt to take credit for imaginary
> > achievements and establishment spokespersons paint rosy scenarios, in
> > the air. But what has the reality been?
> >
> > m
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > At 8:33 PM -0400 5/30/08, baruah at bard.edu wrote:
> >> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-india29-2008may29,0,6712115.story
> >>
> >> From the Los Angeles Times
> >> Northeast India is poised to tap economic potential
> >> The eight-state area plans multiple projects to increase its trade
> >> with Southeast Asia.
> >> By Shankhadeep Choudhury
> >> Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
> >>
> >> May 29, 2008
> >>
> >> NEW DELHI - India's remote northeast region has been both blessed and
> >> cursed by its geography. The region is rich in natural resources but
> >> is landlocked and surrounded by China, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Bhutan,
> >> leaving it impoverished.
> >>
> >> The eight-state region may finally get a chance to start living up to
> >> its economic potential with several projects to enhance connections
> >> with Southeast Asia and to increase outlets for such commodities as
> >> organic foods, orchids, tea, coal and oil.
> >>
> >> Now, the only way to move major quantities of goods between northeast
> >> India and Southeast Asia is through Bangladesh.
> >>
> >> But authorities in Myanmar and India are nearing final approval of a
> >> $100-million river project giving northeast India direct access to the
> >> Indian Ocean through Myanmar, said Abhijit Barooah, chairman of the
> >> northeastern chapter of the Confederation of Indian Industry, India's
> >> premier business association.
> >>
> >> The project envisages facilitating movement of cargo from India's
> >> Mizoram state to Myanmar's port at Sittwe, via the Kaladan River.
> >>
> >> In addition, talks have begun between companies in northeast India and
> >> Thailand after a trade-promotion conference in Bangkok in October,
> >> said Lemli Loyi, assistant general manager at the state-run North
> >> Eastern Development Finance Corp. Loyi expressed hope that the talks
> >> would result in increased business and possible joint ventures.
> >>
> >> India first enunciated a "look east" policy, an economic and strategic
> >> orientation toward Southeast Asia, in 1992. It had its genesis at the
> >> end of the Cold War, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Having
> >> lost the Soviet economic and political support on which it had relied,
> >> the Indian government embarked on a program of free-market
> >> restructuring at home and sought new markets and economic partners
> >> abroad.
> >>
> >> Officials envisaged that the eight northeast states -- Assam,
> >> Meghalaya, Manipur, Nagaland, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura and
> >> Mizoram -- would emerge as a trading hub for two dynamic regions
> >> connected by a network of highways, railways, pipelines and
> >> transmission lines. The region is home to about 40 million people.
> >>
> >> But progress has been slow. The region's isolation dates to the 1800s.
> >>
> >> "Nineteenth-century British colonial decisions to draw lines between
> >> the hills and the plains, to put barriers on trade between Bhutan and
> >> Assam, and to treat Burma as a buffer against French Indochina and
> >> China severed the region from its traditional trade routes -- the
> >> southern trails of the Silk Road," said Sanjib Baruah, a professor of
> >> political science at Bard College in New York and an expert on
> >> northeast India.
> >>
> >> The British built railways and roads mostly to take tea, coal, oil and
> >> other resources out of Assam and into the rest of India and also to
> >> Europe.
> >>
> >> The problems increased with the partitioning of India and Pakistan in
> >> 1947. Bangladesh broke away from Pakistan in the 1970s.
> >>
> >> Barooah said trade would be boosted by an expected move by the Indian
> >> and Myanmar governments to expand the list of mostly agricultural
> >> commodities allowed to be traded by land between northeast India and
> >> Myanmar, from 27 to 42 items.
> >>
> >> "The northeast is the closest land mass connecting the dynamic
> >> economies of south and Southeast Asia," said Pradyut Bordoloi, Assam's
> >> minister for power and industries. "Besides deep-rooted cultural
> >> linkages, we can reap multidimensional benefits in this era of
> >> regional economic cooperation."
> >>
> >> Bordoloi is closely associated with a campaign to reopen the World War
> >> II-era Stillwell Road, connecting Assam's town of Ledo to southwest
> >> China.
> >>
> >> "If reopened, this would be the shortest surface route to Yunnan
> >> province of China and other Southeast Asian countries hooking onto the
> >> trans-Asian highways," he said.
> >>
> >> The road served as the supply line into China during Japan's wartime
> >> occupation, but it was shut after India's independence from Britain in
> >> 1947.
> >>
> >> Bordoloi said his campaign to reopen the road, initiated after he
> >> became a state legislator in 1998, scored a victory when India
> >> upgraded the road to a full-fledged national highway, developing it up
> >> to the Indo-Myanmar border.
> >>
> >> Officials say infrastructure development, power, bamboo-based
> >> industries, orchids and organic foods are prospective areas of
> >> cooperation with Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand.
> >>
> >> But significant hurdles remain, including concerns that booming trade
> >> relations may fuel rises in insurgency, narco-terrorism and AIDS, all
> >> of which plague the northeast. Security in the region is tight, with
> >> the army out in force to combat armed groups battling for greater
> >> autonomy or independence from India.
> >>
> >> "The official restrictions that prevail in northeast India -- in terms
> >> of travel, land and labor markets -- are hardly conducive to intensive
> >> cross-border economic relations," said Baruah, the political science
> >> professor.
> >>
> >> "Both the reality of insurgencies in the region and the security
> >> anxiety of the government of India . . . are major obstacles to
> >> dynamic cross-border economic ties," he added, calling current efforts
> >> hardly more than "a bare beginning."
> >>
> >> Also, Baruah said, it was difficult to imagine a big increase in trade
> >> given the political situation in military-led Myanmar.
> >>
> >> India's relations with China, a country it has long regarded with
> >> distrust since a 1962 border war, would also have to become much more
> >> relaxed, Baruah said.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
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> >
> >
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>
>
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