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Soumik Dey
Soumik Dey

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India-Myanmar-Thailand friendship car rally: Bagan to Mandalay

car-ral The India-Myanmar-Thailand friendship car rally under way

With the break of dawn the plains of Bagan, an ancient city in central Myanmar, became bright, hot and humid. Early in the morning, the rally drivers headed out for a small drive around the rural terrain whose landscape is filled with thousands of pagodas.

“It took me more than three months to explore Bagan properly and discover about all its history,” said 67-year old rally enthusiast and scout for this India Myanmar Thailand (IMT) rally, Ejji K Ummahesh, from Chennai.

“The best way to go around visiting the pagodas in Bagan is by bullock cart as not all roads are motorable,” said Thet P, a participant and member of the Mynamar Motor Sports Club.

The caravan of 21 cars started rolling out of Bagan at 9:30 am. What lay ahead was 180km of two-lane rural highways leading up to Mandalay—the former capital and cultural nerve center of Myanmar.

The scenery around the NyngYu-Myingyan road is very similar to India’s rural landscape, dotted with paddy and sugarcane fields and small eateries (quite like our dhabas) at long intervals along the road. Wherever the rally stopped, Myanmar cinestar Vailu, also a participant in the rally, became the centre of attention.

While the drivers were cribbing about the run down dusty road ahead, it was Vailu’s presence that brought smiles to the rural folk. Usually a crowd would immediately surround him. Women looking at him with awe, hands on their cheek, the men breaking into wide smiles and the teens and kids queuing up to have their photos taken with him.

The journey was uneventful and reached Mandalay after about five hours. At first, Mandalay looked like any other small town in India with people moving about more in cycles and mopeds than cars. On reaching the destination for the night's halt, it was time to attend the first business seminar in Myanmar (conducted by Asian Development Bank) and meet with with Myanmar’s ministers and government officials. The venue of the seminar was the spectacular Mandalay Hotel at the foot of the historical Mandalay hill.

“We are rich in many natural resources like oil, gas, gem stones, copper and a host of other agricultural produce,” said U Myo Thit, minister of natural resources and environment conservation, Mandalay region government. “We welcome Indian business houses to come here and exploit these.”

There is, however, a problem. “The region is suffering from poor infrastructure and also unfortunately unrest in some places,” said Nandakumar Nagendran, consul general of India in Mandalay. “One way to address this is creating infrastructure for connectivity and business.”

Every participant in the business seminar were of the view that there were a lot of potential on building connect between northeast India and Mandalay. But the potential, though being discussed for years now, still remains largely untapped. The situation was aptly summarised by Sabyasachi Dutta, director of think tank Asian Confluence and one of the sponsors for the rally.

“Through the ebbs and troughs of relationship between Indian and Myanmar, it has always been a case of so near, yet, so far,” said Dutta. “Going beyond our usual diplomacy and announcements for big ticket projects, there is also a need for some soft understandings and building trust between the two countries.”

While direct flight and road connectivity between India and Myanmar remains yet to be reestablished, Maung Maung, secretary general of Mandalay Region Chamber of Commerce, identified the ‘hot sectors’ for doing business with the region. “Telecom, textile, real estate and agriculture are some of them,” he said.

“Road connectivity will remain the centre of all development for the Mandalay region. While conducting the rally, we have been asked by Government of India to give a feedback about the actual road conditions from northeastern India to here, which we will do on our return,” said Praveen Chandra Bhanj Deo, chairman of Kalinga Motor Sports Club and BJD legislator from Odisha.

On the sidelines of the big ticket business event were in attendance some Indian origin businessmen who are settled in Mandalay for generations now. Their experience said the wheels of the economy in Myanmar has just about started rolling slowly now, after a hiatus for many years.

“For years, under the military junta government the businesses set up here by our forefathers had to shut shop. Things are slowly changing now, with the democratic government coming to power. Still, doing any business with India is tough ,” said Surinder Singh, a third generation Punjabi businessman in Mandalay.

Once a hotbed for economic and cultural activity, this past capital of Myanmar is dotted with numerous magnificent monuments and replete with history. Enough for novelists like Amitav Ghosh to find inspiration for literary works like ‘The glass palace’. Still, even tourism has not taken off properly here, and most visitors are from the neighbouring rural areas who want to relive the glorious past of Myanmar’s royal family.

The neglect faced by Mandalay region does not go unnoticed even to a first time visitor. Other than roads built during the second world war era and waterways connectivity, only small six to ten seater planes land in the Mandalay airfield. “Rail connectivity could change a lot of things here,” said Ratan Kumar Sengupta, another Indian origin businessman here.

But for now, all potentials of bringing back the lost glory of Mandalay, remains just that. Many potentials.

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Topics : #Myanmar | #Thailand

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