Really Acting East?

Really Acting East?

The Assam government, in collaboration with the Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry, is organizing a two-day India-Bangladesh Stakeholders’ Meet in Guwahati from next Friday. This is part of the Sarbananda Sonowal government’s plan to operationalize the initiatives taken in accordance with the Centre’s Act East Policy. It has been reported that representatives from the Ministry of Shipping and Surface Transport, regulatory bodies such as customs, port authorities, and business bodies such as freight forwarders and transporters will participate in the meet to discuss details of commerce and resumption of the actual physical movement of goods in the routes concerned, as well as to highlight the pending and administrative interventions required from both India and Bangladesh. This apart, a high-level 60-member delegation of leaders and officials from Bangladesh and a similar contingent from various Central ministries are expected to take part in the two-day meet. This means the event is going to be a huge one with the beam of attention focussed on taking the Act East Policy forward with Assam as its pivot in the Northeast and the neighbouring country as a major stakeholder in the grandiose enterprise of trade and commerce. It will be recalled that recently a delegation of Assam MLAs and senior government officials undertook a bus journey from Guwahati to Sylhet in Bangladesh and also from Imphal to Manadalay and Yangon in Myanmar so as to understand the various issues, problems and opportunities that trade offers in the two neighbouring countries as well as beyond – towards the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) – which forms the arc of the much-hyped Act East Policy. In Sylhet, a detailed meeting was held with the Sylhet Chambers of Commerce in which issues pertaining to bilateral trade and investment between Assam and Bangladesh, as also issues related to infrastructure, connectivity and tourism, were discussed – both at the Northeast level as a whole and at the Assam level in particular. Reports say that the discussions were fruitful insofar trade is concerned.

One must, nonetheless, reckon that the Act East Policy must essentially be about taking the whole of the Northeast on board, and not just Assam. The policy – theoretically – is about the development of the Northeast by virtue of its proximity with the ASEAN and its potential to metamorphose into a special trade-and-commerce zone of sorts, somewhat like a special economic zone known famously by its acronym SEZ, so that the nation at large is benefited as well; but the primary goal, as they say, is development, peace, and then progress for a continually development-starved region that has seen enough of bloodshed due to lack of development and employment avenues. States such as Meghalaya, bordering Bangladesh, are a major stakeholder too, and they do have the potential to make it happen in a big and momentous fashion, be it in trade or tourism, if given adequate space in the scheme of things. The meet to be held in Guwahati on July 19-20, therefore, would do well to extend the horizon of the Act East Policy panorama and deliberate as to how each and every State of the Northeast, right from Arunachal Pradesh to Tripura, can play their respective roles and what needs to be done so that their capacities are enhanced to play the roles as expected and as they are capable of. Then we shall, of course, ask again: Are we really on the way to Acting East?

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