Asian highway to nowhere

The concept of an Asian passage to Europe, symbolising the soul of Asia, is no longer a popular one and raises no emotional waves

Fifty-three years ago, in 1960, when the idea of Asia was still a welcome dream and pan-Asianism a cherished pursuit, the concept of a super-highway cutting across the region and uniting nations into a common bond of trade and friendship wasn't at all a strange one. In fact, it was seen as a visible assertion of the Asian spirit that awaited the world to wake up and take note.

Since then, the pan-Asian idealism has faded and the concept of a glorious Asian passage to Europe, symbolising the soul of Asia, is no longer a popular one and raises almost no emotional waves. Lack of funding and political interest has dimmed the vision, slowed the urgency, and reduced the project to an unwieldy mesh of national highways (NH) that have yet to get fully interconnected. It's a network that consists of numbers for you to join the dots and figure out how to negotiate your way from one point in Asia to another. Even the highway from Gwalior to Bangalore is a numbered Asian highway (AH) route, and so is West Bengal's rotten NH34. Sure one can trudge up that road and get eventually to, say, Tehran or Istanbul, but that's not travelling the Asian highway or capturing the Asian spirit.

Taken up by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) in 1992, after work had stalled for years, it's supposed to be a cooperative endeavour of the 32 countries that have so far signed up for it. But the evidence of cooperation so far has been hardly inspiring. Highway links are patchy. The Trans-Asian Railway is yet to appear on the map. Road classifications and designs have yet to be standardised and synchronised. Paperwork and customs formalities haven't been simplified to ensure easy passage. Restrictions still remain on what can and can't be transported across borders.

The problem lies with the very approach to the project that ESCAP has adopted, making the maximum use of existing national highways in order to avoid building new ones. And national highways often aren't in the best of state and upgrading them is certainly not always a governmental priority. They are also susceptible to all kinds of local hurdles and cross traffic and often are little better than two-lane regional roads. ESCAP, having to work at the behest of governments, can do nothing about it. When a highway is deemed passable, it can only assign to it an AH number and flaunt a new addition on its map.

So, mile by mile, over five decades, a jigsaw puzzle of an Asian highway network has come to exist on ESCAP's map, but has it brought Asia any closer? Are India and Pakistan closer? Or India and Bangladesh? Yes, there are buses to Pakistan, but there's also the border crossing at Wagah, the only crossing between the two countries for international travellers, where the gates are opened to let vehicles pass and closed religiously before sunset with elaborate military fanfare. Terrorist attacks have often disrupted the services, or political tensions between the two countries have shut them down for months.

And yes, there are trains and buses to Bangladesh, too, but there are no signs of any booming trade or tourism. Nobody, for example, thinks of getting into a car in Kolkata and drive across the breadth of Bangladesh to go to Tripura or Shillong. On either side, the feeling is just not that friendly. Trade and commerce? Only a detailed study can reveal if even the fragments of national highways so far interconnected have made any real difference.

Yet, there are evidences of mini Asian corridors emerging around the region that create some hope for the future. One good example is the North-South road and railway corridors being developed between China's Yunnan province, cutting through Laos and Vietnam, and Bangkok and further south to Singapore. But in this case China is the moving spirit, with help from the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Obviously, China isn't guided by any unselfish motive, but its push is throwing open new development opportunities in an otherwise impoverished part of Southeast Asia.

India could have played a similar role in the subcontinent where its influence is as big as China's in Southeast Asia. But it seems to have lost its courage of conviction, the power of vision, and even a sense of what's in its best self-interest. If India had shown the leadership, ADB would have been only too glad to chip in to build a broad East-West passage across the subcontinent connecting Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Myanmar and extending all the way to Vietnam. That would have changed the entire subcontinental equation in a dramatic way. But that's not to be. Between the idea and the reality falls the ever-darkening shadow of India's deep suspicion of its neighbours.

rbarun@gmail.com