Silken prospects
Narendra Modi as an agreement signed with the US, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, Italy and the EU Commission, we have hope that such a modern “Silk Route" can get the better of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. For one, the logic here is trade connectivity, not loan entrapment or power projection by anyone.
For another, apart from serving as a conveyor belt of sea and rail links for output of the industrial age, oil and gas included, it would be digital- ready (with data carriage provisions) and also carbon adaptive (given plans for green hydrogen). It’s clearly a US-coordinated idea, offering India an avenue to the West free of both the Suez Canal and Pakistan’s “land veto" over New Delhi’s western outreach.
Around Partition time, it was suspected that the trade isolation of India was part of a British Raj plot, given how it could thwart the revival of an East-enriching Silk Route. Indian path options since then have been few and risky, but this project, enabled by a US-led Arab-Israeli detente, could grant us wider market access in aid of our ambition to become the world’s next big factory.
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