Neither the title – Asian Land Transport Infrastructure Development Project – nor its acronym, ALTID, rolls off the tongue. The sombre and somewhat vague designation seems inappropriate for such an ambitious undertaking – nothing less than building a standardised transportation network across Asia, linking the continent to Europe. This colossal stab at creating connectivity is to be achieved through two modes of transport: the Asian Highway and the Trans-Asian Railway. In their final avatars, these will consist of over 140,000 km of road and railroad tracks, each spanning over 32 countries. That is what has long been promised, anyway. After Bangladesh signed on during the past month, all of the countries in Southasia are today, technically, members of ALTID. But even this latest move highlights the difficulty of ever bringing this vision to fruition.
The push to build the two networks first came from the United Nations in the early 1960s. But it was abandoned, after some work had been done, during the 1970s due to a lack of funds. Thereafter, no progress was possible during the two decades of Cold War. Both ideas were then revived in 1992, when the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), the UN's regional development body, launched ALTID. Over a decade later, progress has been erratic. Today, the only stretch where construction work is complete is the so-called North-South Corridor of Asian Highway 3, which runs from China to Cambodia via Burma, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand. That only this sector is complete is curious in itself, considering the fact that most of the construction work on AH-3 entails upgrading dirt roads or repairing stretches of run-down track, rather than building from scratch.
By and large, however, the response of the governments in the region has been less than overwhelming. India is the only exception, in one instance having put together a USD 12 million plan to improve 10,000 km of its highways, many of which would fall on the Asian Highway matrix. Regardless of the lacklustre response overall, however, what is interesting is the level of consensus that is seen in the region's capitals on this issue. Considering the mistrust and acrimony that characterises the relationship between New Delhi and Islamabad for instance, neither has raised a stir over the Asian Highway connecting the two through the Wagah-Attari border. Though that is not to say that politics is entirely absent.
Which brings us back to Dhaka's decision to join the network. Although Sheikh Hasina's government has now made official the country's stance on the issue – despite the strident resistance from opposition leader Khaleda Zia – Bangladesh is far from decided on the routes through which the Asian Highway will pass in its territory. The country's long-standing resistance to joining the network arose not out of opposition to the idea itself, but rather from a fear of serving simply as a transit route for India if the proposed road from the border town of Tamabil in the northeast to Benapole in the southwest was built. While a direct route from the Indian mainland to the Indian Northeast through to Bangladesh should provide ample opportunities for income for the latter, suspicions and counter-suspicions have long muddied the matter. On the whole, Bangladesh joining the Asian Highway would bring to full use the massive Bangabandhu bridge over the Brahmaputra (Jamuna), which was completed in 1998 and sees sparse traffic.