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As Manipur Burns, India’s Connectivity Plans in Southeast Asia Go Up in Smoke

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As Manipur Burns, India’s Connectivity Plans in Southeast Asia Go Up in Smoke

Instability in the state, which is India’s “gateway” to Southeast Asia, will undermine India’s grand plans under the Act East Policy.

As Manipur Burns, India’s Connectivity Plans in Southeast Asia Go Up in Smoke

An Indian army soldier peers through binoculars as he monitors situation in nearby villages in Siden near Churachandpur, in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur, Tuesday, June 20, 2023.

Credit: AP Photo/Altaf Qadri

As the northeast Indian state of Manipur teeters on the brink of civil war, India’s plans to improve overland connectivity and trade with Myanmar and beyond to other Southeast Asian countries as part of its Act East Policy (AEP) have been dealt another blow, with the prospects of peace and stability in the region, which are needed to boost economic activity, rather bleak.

“The current situation of instability in Manipur has cast a long shadow on AEP in two ways,” Angshuman Choudhury, associate fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, told 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 said.

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