India Sees Rupee Signs as Myanmar Opens

Earlier this month, Naypyidaw, the capital of Myanmar, hosted the World Economic Forum. The event confirmed the unexpectedly swift reassimiliation into the global community of a country that, until five years ago, had remained walled off by the military junta in power since 1962. Now that the regime is at long last liberalizing, and inviting foreign investment to change the landscape of one the poorest regions in Southeast Asia, Myanmar could make enormous strides by taking advantage of its geographical location, with India to the east and China to the west.

Crucially for India, Myanmar's new openness to the world would mean a release not just of that country's dormant energies -- and a spike in India-Myanmar trade -- but also a new lease of life for India's desperately poor northeastern flank. The caprices of postcolonial geography mean that this vast, hilly, landlocked region is linked to the rest of India only by a tiny corridor creeping between Nepal to the north and Bangladesh to the south. The difficulty of the free movement of people and trade across this channel has made the northeast much more economically backward than the Indian mainland. And the intransigence of the Myanmar junta has meant that for half a century its Indian neighbors have been unable to exploit the advantages of the border of more than 1,500 kilometers (900 miles).