Kaladan dream amidst Myanmar turmoil

Hoping against hope, India is looking at commissioning the ambitious Kaladan project connecting a port in Rakhine (Arakan) state of western Myanmar with the landlocked far eastern part of Bharat through the water and land routes for regular trading.

- NAVA THAKURIA

But the project involving the Kaladan River continues to face hurdles from time to time. Initially it was a security challenge due to the changing political situation, followed by the Covid-19 pandemic, and finally a civil war-like situation in Myanmar (also known as Burma and Brahmadesh) is posing a lingering snag over the completion of the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Corridor project, which was initially planned to launch by 2014. But the project with an initial budget of Rs 536 crore in 2008 (work started in 2010) has now crossed Rs 3,200 crore because of perennial delays and lately missed another deadline (2023).

Agreed officially between India and Myanmar in 2008, the Kaladan project was initiated by New Delhi's then Look East Policy and later revamped as the Act East Policy, where Sittwe port in the Bay of Bengal is planned to connect northeastern states. The shipment is supposed to arrive in Sittwe from Kolkata, Chennai or any other international ports, and then it will travel through the Kaladan River up to Paletwa in the Chin state of Myanmar. Then the goods will be shifted to land routes and reach Zorinpui in the Mizoram border to connect other important localities in eastern India with National Highway 54. Even though the modernisation of Sittwe port and Paletwa jetty was already completed, the Paletwa-Zorinpui highway remains under construction.