New Delhi, July 02: Thinking out of the box can take you places. For years we imagined that the only way to link up to Southeast Asia was either through the sea — remember those marvellous resin-sealed boats that connected the Kalinga coastline with Sumatra, Java and Borneo centuries ago? — or by air.

Now comes an idea that slipped out of a recent ministerial meeting of the Mekong-Ganga Cooperation Group. Myanmarese Foreign Minister Win Awng was possibly considering only Myanmarese interests when he tried to sell the idea of a rail link between New Delhi and Hanoi to his counterparts at the meeting. But it is all to the good that the Union foreign minister, Yashwant Sinha, was prompt in welcoming it and urging feasibility studies to be carried out at the earliest.
What’s interesting about the proposal is that it is not one of those harebrained concepts straight out of sci-fi. It appears to be eminently feasible and a good part of it entails augmenting existing links, some of which were laid by the British Raj in its single-minded pursuit of Asia’s natural resources. Such a rail link could also docket quite neatly into the Trans-Asian Railway Network — work for which is currently going on apace —connecting the ASEAN markets with the Mekong delta and southern China. The potential benefits of such engineering is therefore mind-boggling. Not only will it connect India with the rapidly expanding markets of Southeast Asia, it would go a long way in ending the land-locked isolation of the Northeastern states, helping them to escape from the slough of despair, drug-running and tribal militancy into which some of them have fallen.
This is not to say that such a project will enjoy an easy run. The logistics are mind-boggling, and the terrain — at least in some parts of this region — is decidedly tricky. But where there is a will there is a rail track. Think, for a moment, about how a rail-link between Great Britain and mainland Europe was only a fantasy a few decades ago. The Channel Tunnel — 23 of its 31 miles running under the sea — changed all that and an idea, first conjured up as a wish in 1802, became a reality in 1994. The multiplier effects of that transcontinental conjoining are felt every time the Eurostar glides out of London and heads for Paris. So if they can have the Eurostar and the Eurorail, what is stopping the nations of this region from coming up with an Asia-rail, where Yangon is just a few stops away from New Delhi with Bangkok and Hanoi just a few hundred kilometres further south? And, who knows, we may still be able to have on board this enterprise our intrepid brand of chaiwallahs, waiting to top up your cup as the train pulls up at a platform in Phnom Penh!