His colleagues still remember how former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee ignored the Commerce Ministry’s resistance to enter into a free-trade agreement with Sri Lanka in 1998. This Vajpayee government was to fall after 13 months in office.

The decision, many believe, helped break the deadlock on South Asian Free Trade Agreement, which was signed in January 2004, months before the Vajpayee-led NDA government lost the elections.

If PV Narasimha Rao brought India her economic freedom, Vajpayee envisioned the geopolitical rivalry between India and China way ahead, and planned huge investments in connectivity to ensure India’s broader economic engagement in the region.

“He was the original connectivity man,” remembers Sachin Chaturvedi, Director General of MEA-sponsored think tank Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS) in New Delhi.

It was Vajpayee who envisioned the Chabahar port in Iran and entered into a tripartite agreement to build rail connectivity from Iran to St Petersburg in Russia to reduce the strategic importance of Pakistan. India had lost land connectivity to this vast region after Partition, aiding Pakistan to dictate terms on India-Afghanistan trade and economic relations.

True to Vajpayeee’s plan, the North-South International Transport Corridor is now partly opened. After many years of delay, the Modi government took up the Chabahar project in 2016. The port will be opened in 2019, giving India’s trade a significant boost.

During the long gap between planning and commissioning, China built the strategic Gadwar port (in Balochistan, Pakistan), which is key to the multi-billion dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CEPC) project.

The story is same on the east coast. Vajpayee planned rail and national highway connectivity to all the North-Eastern State capitals so as to connect the ASEAN through the North-East. Both the Sittwe port in Myanmar and thetrilateral highway from Moreh (Manipur) to Mae Sot in Thailand through Myanmar were planned by him.

But before India could act, China went ahead with its One Belt, One Road (OBOR) (now renamed as Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)). China built Kyaukphyu port, a few kilometres away from Sittew, laid gas and oil pipeline from the port to China, and is now pumping in more money.

In comparison, India completed the construction of the Sittwe port a year ago; but the facility is lying unused as the contract for road connectivity to Mizoram, a part of the project, was awarded just last year. The construction of the trilateral highway began this year, 15 years after it was originally planned.

Benefits accrued

But wherever India was quick in implementing Vajpayee’s plan, it has worked — as is evident in India-Bangladesh trade which has attracted sufficient attention from policy-makers.

Vajpayee launched a small rail-link connecting Petrapole (India) and Benapole (Bangladesh), and bus services from Kolkata and Agartala to Dhaka.

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