Asserting that railway linking will help in the “rapid shrinking of South Asia’s geography”, India’s foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla announced that India will soon be connected with Nepal with two railway links while Bangladesh will be linked with six rail links.
Speaking at the inaugural session of the Training Module on India’s Neighbourhood at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie, the foreign secretary emphasised on the role of connectivity in the region.
“Improved connectivity means greater people-to-people contact and greater goodwill”, Shringla said, adding, “Travel between India and three of its neighbours – Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives – does not require visas. Our diplomatic missions in Sri Lanka and Yangon report an increasing trend in the number of visas being issued.”
Currently, India and Nepal are working on railway service between Kurtha-Jayanagar. The test run for the railway service between India’s Jayanagar and Nepal’s Kurtha has already been conducted.
Apart from that, Indian Railway’s Konkan Railway Corporation Limited is helping Nepal Railways in the establishment of the service that will help people from both sides of the border.
As far as India and Bangladesh are concerned, five pre-1965 railway links have been revived. These include Petrapole (India) – Benapole (Bangladesh), Gede (India) – Darshana (Bangladesh), Singhabad (India) Rohanpur (Bangladesh), Radhikapur (India) – Birol (Bangladesh) with Haldibari-Chilahati forming the 5th such link.
On electric grid connectivity, Shringla said, “Indian grid is connected to Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh through high-capacity connections. Trans-national movement of electricity in the neighbourhood is a reality.”
India supplies around 1160 MW of power to Bangladesh, about 700 MW to Nepal, and imports 1.8 GW from Bhutan.
Apart from this, India has been able to create 2100 MW of hydropower capacity in Bhutan and is constructing the 1320 MW Maitree Super Thermal Power Project in Bangladesh.
The top Indian diplomat pointed out that India’s “neighbourhood first policy” requires “us to be proactive in augmenting cooperation with our neighbours in capacity-building and in the implementation of projects”.
India’s Line of Credit to its neighbours have jumped from US$ 3.27 billion in 2014 to US$ 14.7 billion in 2020.
On India-China ties, he said, “We have made it clear to China that peace and tranquillity in the border are essential for the development of our relationship and development of India-China relationship has to be based on three mutuals- mutual respect, mutual sensitivity and mutual interest.”
His remark on China comes just days ahead of the 15th round of military talks between India and China that is scheduled to take place on Friday.
It is expected that resolution on PP15 friction point will be the key focus of this round of talks.