01 Introduction: Fostering Cooperation to Connect the Bay of Bengal Region

Of the any development in the Bay of Bengal is five co-sponsors of the Bandung Conference, also intertwined with the destinies of the four were leaders of Bay of Bengal countries: Himalayan states of Nepal and Bhutan, the Jawaharlal Nehru (India), Sukarno (Indonesia), Maldivian archipelago and the Malacca Strait’s U Nu (Burma), and John Kotelawala (Ceylon). [...] From New From the broadest geostrategic lens, the Bay Delhi it is often still faster and cheaper to ship of Bengal is also a constituent of the Eastern a container all the way to Singapore than to the Indian Ocean which connects to the Pacific geographically closer cities of Dhaka or Yangon. [...] The Bay of Bengal was then a pivotal part of global supply chains, a period when These barriers to mobility reflect almost the prosperity of a South-eastern Indian city half a century of economic and strategic like Madras was deeply tied dependent on that divergence between the states of the Bay of of its intra-regional peers such as Calcutta or Bengal, from the late 1950s until the 1990s. [...] Proliferation of connectivity The landlocked Himalayan states of Nepal initiatives and Bhutan have prioritized energy and Reducing the connectivity-cooperation gap transportation links with the Bay of Bengal in the Bay of Bengal is particularly urgent littoral to stimulate exports and access the now that the region is becoming the site of ASEAN markets. [...] The record is mixed, as organization has streamlined and reduced the apparent in the ongoing debate about the number of its focus areas from 14 to 7, adopted a causes of Sri Lanka’s debt, but it is now clear new charter and held more regular summits, and the BRI played a catalyst role in accelerating adopted a more realistic and practical agenda connectivity in the Bay of Bengal.