India, in June 2018, asserted that any mega connectivity project must respect sovereignty and territorial integrity of the countries. The project referred to above is
- (a)North-South Corridor Project
- (b)Belt and Road Initiative
- (c)Chabahar Port
- (d)Panama Canal Expansion
Correct — B, the Belt and Road Initiative. The occasion was the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit at Qingdao on 9 and 10 June 2018, India's first as a full member. India was the only member state that declined to endorse the Belt and Road Initiative, and the Prime Minister's formulation was that mega-connectivity projects must respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of countries. The joint declaration recorded that Russia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan reaffirmed their support for the initiative; India simply did not join that paragraph. The objection is concrete rather than rhetorical — the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a flagship of the Belt and Road, runs through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, territory India claims.
- (a)North-South Corridor Project — India is a founder of the International North–South Transport Corridor, having signed the agreement with Russia and Iran on 16 May 2002 — a 7,200 km multi-modal route from Mumbai towards Moscow. It is a project India has pushed rather than one it has objected to. The domestic North–South Corridor of the highways programme is likewise India's own.
- (c)Chabahar Port — Chabahar is on Iran's Gulf of Oman coast and is being developed with Indian money and Indian operators; India signed the berth agreement in May 2016 and took over operations in December 2018. It gives India a route to Afghanistan and Central Asia that bypasses Pakistan, and is widely read as India's answer to the Belt and Road rather than a target of its criticism.
- (d)Panama Canal Expansion — The expansion of the Panama Canal opened in 2016 and concerns shipping between the Atlantic and the Pacific. It touches no territory India claims and raised no sovereignty question for India at all.
The Belt and Road Initiative, announced by China in 2013, bundles overland economic corridors and a maritime route into a single infrastructure and lending programme spanning Asia, Africa and Europe. India's objection has never been to connectivity as such — it is a founder of the North–South corridor and a builder at Chabahar — but to a corridor being laid through disputed territory without the claimant's consent, and to what New Delhi calls the debt sustainability and transparency of the lending that comes with it.
The stem gives away more than it looks. A project that raises a sovereignty and territorial integrity objection for India must be one that physically crosses land India claims, and of the four listed only the Belt and Road does — through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The other three are either India's own projects or geographically irrelevant. India's position has not shifted since the September 2018 exam; it had already stayed away from the first Belt and Road Forum in Beijing in May 2017 and has continued to withhold endorsement.
- The Belt and Road Initiative is China's connectivity and infrastructure programme, announced in 2013.
- At the SCO summit at Qingdao on 9–10 June 2018, India was the only member that did not endorse it.
- India's stated objection is that mega-connectivity projects must respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of countries.
- The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a Belt and Road flagship, passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
- India is a founder member of the International North–South Transport Corridor, agreed with Russia and Iran in 2002.
Only one of the four crosses territory India claims — which is what the stem's sovereignty objection points to.
- Reading India's position as opposition to connectivity in general; it is opposition to one corridor's route.
- Confusing Chabahar in Iran with Gwadar in Pakistan — the two ports lie about 170 km apart and belong to opposite strategies.
- Mixing up the June 2018 Qingdao summit with other summits of that summer.
Asked as a current-affairs identification where the phrase quoted from a leader's speech has to be matched to the project it was aimed at.
'Belt and Road Initiative' is sometimes mentioned in the news in the context of the affairs of
- (a) African Union
- (b) Brazil
- (c) European Union
- (d) China
Answer(d) China
Establishes whose project it is, two years before this paper asked what India thought of it. The pair is a good illustration of how a term first appears as bare identification and then returns as a policy question.
‘Belt and Road Initiative’ is a foreign policy initiative of
- (a) China
- (b) United States of America
- (c) Canada
- (d) Japan
Answer(a) China
NDA came back to the same initiative three years later in its simplest form. Between the two, the topic is worth holding as a package — whose it is, what it includes, and why India alone in the SCO will not sign up to it.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a flagship of the Belt and Road Initiative, is objected to by India mainly because it passes through
- (a)Aksai Chin
- (b)Pakistan-occupied Kashmir
- (c)the Wakhan Corridor
- (d)the Siachen Glacier
Answer(b) Pakistan-occupied Kashmir — territory India claims, which is why New Delhi frames the objection in terms of sovereignty and territorial integrity.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The International North–South Transport Corridor was agreed in 2002 between India and
- (a)Iran and Russia
- (b)China and Myanmar
- (c)Japan and Vietnam
- (d)Oman and Egypt
Answer(a) Iran and Russia — the three founding signatories of the 7,200 km multi-modal route in May 2002.