India’s Northeast Region (NER) can serve as a pivotal connecting space between India and its neighbours to the east in South Asia, as well as to East and Southeast Asia and beyond, enhancing the country’s diplomatic, infrastructural, and commercial engagements. This paper makes an assessment of NER’s cross-border land connectivity initiatives with Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, and Bhutan—all members of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC). It looks specifically at Japan’s role in developing infrastructural connectivity in the region, and offers recommendations to speed up these initiatives. One way is by finding these projects’ resonance with the northeast’s own developmental priorities and security concerns.
A signboard is seen from the Indian side of the Indo-China border at Bumla, in the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. (REUTERS)
The growing strategic importance of the Indo-Pacific calls for India to play a bigger role, to explore all dimensions of collaboration with the countries of the region. Creating strong and multi-dimensional connectivity networks—infrastructural, commercial, digital, and socio-cultural—lies at the heart of these engagements.
Connectivity matters the most in the immediate neighbourhood. India’s Northeast Region (NER), sharing international borders in the east, has massive potential to become a vibrant link to the country’s eastern neighbours within South Asia as well as in East and Southeast Asia. BIMSTEC can play an important role too, in facilitating these connections, particularly Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, and Bhutan—countries that share borders with India’s northeast. India’s foreign policy priorities, reflected in its ‘Act East’ and ‘Neighbourhood First’ policies, also bring the northeast into focus as a connectivity gateway to the wider Indo-Pacific. Japan, with its long-standing expertise in the infrastructure sector, continues to play a significant role in developing physical connectivity projects within and across the northeast.
This paper explores the dynamics of cross-border connectivity for countries like India in a socio-culturally unique and geo-strategically crucial region like Northeast, and the challenges in the post-globalisation era. It discusses India’s regional connectivity endeavours with its eastern neighbours and the importance of the NER in fulfilling them; examines the nature and progress of India’s territorial connectivity initiatives with Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar; and outlines the challenges for India.
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