The long-awaited re-opening of the Nathu La pass for border trade between Sikkim and Tibet tomorrow pales into insignificance as Beijing unveils plans for rail connectivity across the Sino-Indian border and all along it.While Beijing plans to extend the newly launched Tibet rail line from Lhasa towards Nathu La in the strategic Chumbi valley on the Sino-Indian border, the Government has been sleeping over proposals from Gangtok for rail links into Sikkim.When connectivity is emerging as the name of the geopolitical game in the Himalayas, India appears bereft of any credible vision on transport corridors on the Sino-Indian border. Sikkim Chief Minister Pawan Chamling has been urging New Delhi for the last many years to improve the state’s transport links, including construction of a rail line from North Bengal.Rail Bhawan in New Delhi had promised to study the proposal from Chamling for extending rail network from Siliguri to at least Rangpo on the Sikkim-Bengal border, if not Gangtok itself.Although the Government had decided last year to build rail links between the Siliguri corridor and Bhutan, and expand the existing rail links between India and Nepal, it remains reluctant to extend rail connectivity into Sikkim which incidentally has been an integral part of India since 1975.As it launched the first train service between Beijing and Lhasa last Saturday, the Chinese government was putting out the word that the line will soon be extended to Xigaze (Shigatse), south of Lhasa and from there to Yatung, a traditional trading centre just a few miles away from Nathu La.At the same time, the Chinese media also revealed plans for extending the rail line from Lhasa to Nyingchi, a strategic township being developed by China just north of Arunachal Pradesh at the trijunction with Myanmar. This line will run all along the Brahmaputra river and the Sino-Indian border in the Eastern sector. China has ambitions to extend this rail line from Nyngchi to Kunming in the South Western province of Yunnan.Linking Nyingchi with Kunming, across the steep mountain ranges of eastern Himalayas would be as much of a technological marvel as the rail line across the Tibetan plateau.While China sees the renewed border trade at Nathu La as the first step towards greater connectivity between the markets of Western China and the Gangetic plains, India is paralysed by self-doubt.The low-key ceremony between Tibet and Sikkim officials tomorrow reflects the Indian hesitation in responding to the Chinese grand strategy in the Himalayas.It has been nearly three years since Atal Bihari Vajpayee signed the basic agreement on border trade between Tibet and Sikkim during his visit to Beijing in June 2003.For India, the agreement was more a vehicle to get Chinese recognition of Sikkim as integral part of India. This, India eventually got when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visited India in April 2005.Seeking to expand Tibet’s economic linkages with neighbouring regions, China, on the other hand, was focused on long-term prospects of transit trade across the Himalayas and gaining commercial access to the warm waters of the Bay of Bengal.Amidst bureaucratic foot-dragging here on opening up the Sino-Indian border and wide spread apprehensions in the security establishment, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself had to intervene to push the implementation of the June 2003 agreement.It was the Sikkim government that saw the strategic and commercial significance of the Nathu La. Recognising the inevitable future commercial pull from the north of the Himalayas, Chamling has been demanding deeper economic integration between Sikkim and the Indian heartland. His proposals have included the establishment of an airport at Gangtok, extending the Golden Quadrilateral road network into Sikkim, and rail links with Siliguri. While the airport project shows signs of a take-off, the other proposals don’t seem to have any takers in New Delhi.According to Mahendra Lama, a professor at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University and an adviser to the Sikkim government, “the usual objections on costs and engineering difficulties are defined on the basis of a narrowly conceived framework”. “The costs could look very different, if India were to take into account the development benefits for the border regions as well as the export potential to the 300 million people in Western China”, says Lama.Meanwhile, China demonstrates that it will not let short-term considerations of cost come in the way of its attempts to transform its frontier regions and extend its economic influence across borders.
