From Our Special Correspondent
Shillong: The 2-day International Seminar on BCIM: Sub-Regional Cooperation for Development of Peripheral Areas organised by ICSSR -NERC with support from Ministry of Home Affairs started off at the ICSSR-NERC campus here on Thursday. Scholars from Bangladesh, China, India, and Myanmar (BCIM) converged to develop a strategy for regional and sub-regional cooperation between the four countries.
Keynote speaker and chief guest, former ambassador, Rajiv Bhatia, currently the Director General, Indian Council for World Affairs (ICWA) said that the concept of multi-dimensional cooperation among the BCIM countries has come a long way since 1999 when it began as the Kunming initiative. Eleven full scale meetings have since been held to develop a framework of ideas and proposals.
Bhatia stated that while the Indian perspective is that BCIM developed as a Track-II endeavour, China, Myanmar and Bangladesh saw it as a government supported exercise. He said the Kunming to Kolkata Car Rally organized in February 2013 with the support of the four governments caught the popular imagination.
Essentially the overarching goals of the BCIM is economic and social development and poverty alleviation and the co-operation would have four components namely physical connectivity through roads, power and telecommunication linkages, trade in goods and services, environmentally sustainable development and people to people contact, informed Ambassador Bhatia.
He said that with the new slogan Act East Policy and under the present Government there is hope for greater progress in a more focussed pursuit for regional and sub-regional cooperation among the four countries. Bhatia suggested that concerns in the security establishment of India about China’s persistent posturing along the borders should be addressed with patience and reason and a message needs to go out that promoting the BCIM goals requires a conducive environment.
Ambassador Bhatia further stated that sources of investment for infrastructure development have to be many and varied and could come through multilateral and regional cooperation. He urged the academics and experts present at the seminar to pay attention to the voices of academics from the North East.
Prof P Shukla, Vice Chancellor, NEHU and Chairman ICSSR-NERC who chaired the inaugural function said when people from two great countries (China and India) meet in friendship and cooperation great things can happen. He pointed to the importance of the North East and Shillong in particular as the hub for the BCIM engagement.
Shukla however disagreed with the word ‘economic corridor’ because he says that wholesome growth cannot take place in a corridor which is essentially seen as a narrow passage for transiting from one point to another. He felt that the peripheries should not be merely the recipients of fringe benefits but of a wholesome growth trajectory.
On the first day papers were presented by academics and experts from India, China and Myanmar who have engaged with the BCIM issue for a fairly long period.
It is obvious that an actionable framework for cooperation would take time to distil even as scholars raised pointed and disturbing questions about China’s ambivalent stance vis-à-vis India and the scholar from Myanmar being at pains to explain that her country which is neighbour to both India and China has to strike a fine balance in its engagement with the two countries.
Other paper presenters pointed at the poor connectivity between India’s North East and South East Asia while others lamented the dominance of Chinese trade and proliferation of Chinese goods in the BCIM countries which they said cannot result in a win-win situation.