As the northeast Indian state of Manipur teeters on the brink of civil war, India’s plans to enhance overland connectivity and commerce with Myanmar and past to different Southeast Asian nations as a part of its Act East Policy (AEP) have been dealt one other blow, with the prospects of peace and stability within the area, that are wanted to spice up financial exercise, relatively bleak.

“The current situation of instability in Manipur has cast a long shadow on AEP in two ways,” Angshuman Choudhury, affiliate fellow on the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, advised The Diplomat. “One, it has physically destabilized a critical transregional, cross-border connectivity route that connects India with Myanmar and onward to Southeast Asia; and two, it has generated social, political and economic volatility, which will in turn, dissuade stakeholders from making crucial AEP-linked investments in the Northeast,” he mentioned.

India’s Northeastern states play a key function in India’s AEP; 4 states share land borders with Myanmar. If the Northeast is India’s “land bridge to Southeast Asia, Manipur is the main gateway to Southeast Asia,” an official in India’s Ministry of Development of North East Region (MDONER) advised The Diplomat.

Choudhury factors out that the Moreh-Tamu border crossing in Manipur-Sagaing Region, and the Zokhawthar-Rikhawdar border crossing in Mizoram-Chin State are “historical entrepôts to Southeast Asia from the South Asia side.”

“Several trading communities are active on both sides of the border,” he mentioned, stressing that it “makes the most sense to leverage these pre-existing local networks to strengthen transregional connectivity within the AEP framework.”

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However, India’s Manipur “gateway” to Southeast Asia is now in flames.

Since May 3, when clashes erupted between the bulk Meitei and minority Kuki communities, Manipur has been convulsed in violence. Over 130 folks have been killed to this point. Several incidents of rape and gang rape have come to mild. Entire villages have been torched and almost 60,000 folks have been displaced.

Additionally, police armories have been looted and over 4,000 weapons, together with assault rifles, mild machine weapons, mortars and carbines, and ammunition are reportedly nonetheless within the arms of mobs.’

The chance of the revival of militancy on this as soon as insurgency-wracked state can’t be dominated out. Manipur is observing a protracted interval of violence and instability.

Manipur isn’t any stranger to violence. Since 1949, when it grew to become part of the Indian Union, scores of anti-India rebel teams have battled within the Indian state. Manipur was not alone on this regard; all the Northeast was roiled in insurgencies, unrest, instability, rising criminality and a thriving narcotics commerce. The area was trapped in underdevelopment and poverty.

Development of the economies of India’s Northeastern states by enhancing their connectivity and entry to Southeast Asian markets was among the many foremost components behind the eastward drive in India’s overseas coverage because the Nineties. In 1992, India adopted a Look East Policy, which was relaunched in 2014 as an Act East Policy.

Indian efforts to construct overland connectivity with Southeast Asia, nonetheless, did not take off resulting from a number of insurgencies in India’s Northeast and political instability in neighboring Myanmar.

However, issues started to search for over the previous decade, with insurgencies in Northeast India winding down and Myanmar transitioning right into a quasi-democracy. Road-building and different initiatives have been set in movement.

Even then, overland connectivity initiatives moved at a snail’s tempo.  “Except for an unfinished train link and a partially complete Asian Highway that can potentially link Manipur to mainland Southeast Asia through Myanmar” little infrastructure improvement has occurred to take ahead the LEP, Rajen Singh Laishram, professor at Manipur University, mentioned.

Recent developments have hit initiatives onerous. Since the army coup in Myanmar in February 2021, the nation has been roiled in civil battle. And Manipur is now burning. India’s overland route through Manipur and Myanmar to Southeast Asia has been thus rendered unviable.

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Of course, India may discover routes by way of Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh, the three different northeastern states that additionally share land borders with Myanmar.

“The Nagaland and Arunachal borders are way too rough and inaccessible for any government to build heavy-duty road connectivity” into Myanmar, Choudhury mentioned.

Worryingly, the flames of unrest and instability are spreading to different elements of the Northeast.

Recently, India’s Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar mentioned that the 1,400-km lengthy India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway has been a “very difficult project” – its completion has missed a number of deadlines – due to the state of affairs in Myanmar.

The state of affairs in Manipur will make it much more tough.