THE LAND VS SEA CASE FOR EASTWARD-BOUND INDIA

Narendra Modi's first year as prime minister has seen renewed attention around India's Look East Policy. The economic success of the policy - now renamed Act East - will depend heavily upon how India develops its trade corridors with ASEAN, whose 10 nations offer a combined GDP of nearly $2.5 trillion. In developing these corridors, the politics - local, national, international - will matter as much as the economics.There are two major corridors by which India can strengthen its eastward trade linkages: by land and by sea. The land route extends eastwards to Myanmar via Northeast India and onwards to China and peninsular Southeast Asia. The sea route runs across the Bay of Bengal and extends naturally through the Straits of Malacca towards the South China Sea.From a political standpoint, the land corridor has several drawbacks. For one, it requires building an extensive and secure infrastructure network in Northeast India, both internally and cross-border with Myanmar. The region's roads are sparse and poorly maintained, and its rail lines don't even reach most of the region's states. The Northeast's long-running insurgencies create an unstable and dangerous business environment, and unusually high levels of corruption undermine the implementation of infrastructure projects. Against this backdrop, success will be slow in coming.Two other issues hang over the economic prospects of this land corridor. The first lies outside India's control-the situation in northern Myanmar. Powerful insurgencies and weak government presence in these districts will hamper connectivity initiatives of interest to India for years to come.The second question regards India's relations with China. Act East watchers like Subir Bhaumik have long stressed that the most efficient route to Southeast Asia is not via the rugged hills of Northeast India and Myanmar. It's across the Bay of Bengal, towards ASEAN powerhouses like Singapore. Overland transit makes more sense for traders engaging with inland China. But the legal and physical infrastructure for such trade isn't in place yet. The Chinese have proposed a Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) corridor to develop this infrastructure. India has been hesitant to engage. The rationale is in part economic. BCIM skeptics fear that India, and especially the Northeast, lack the competitiveness to open up in this manner to Chinese goods. But it's also heavily geopolitical-part of broader suspicions about growing Chinese influence in India's neighborhood.Acting East by land doesn't make much sense unless Indian policymakers take a different view of China. Until then, India should focus on strengthening sea-based corridors across the Bay of Bengal. Port reform is a prerequisite here, to bring in public-private partnerships that can revive the sector while protecting the needs of labour. So is a renewed commitment to the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Cooperation (BIMSTEC), a multilateral effort to boost economic integration in and around the Bay of Bengal region. India's ambivalence towards BIMSTEC has slowed its development considerably since its founding in the 1990s, but it can prove a useful platform for cooperation in sectors like energy and connectivity.

Edmund Downie [@ned_downie] is a Marshall Scholar at the University of Oxford, studying for an MPhil in International Relations. His work focuses on regional political economy along the East Asia- South Asia axis