Insight By Sunil Kumar for LankaWeb

The realities and perils of a Land Bridge are explained for the benefit of Sri Lanka’s President and her people who can ill afford any situation as posted here. This dangerous and frightening proposal needs to be discontinued permanently.

ROAD LINK BETWEEN INDIA AND SRI LANKA A BRIDGE TOO FAR AND TOO DANGEROUS.

Courtesy of Don Manu

Sunday Punch

Lanka can and must have more trade bridges, financial bridges, investment bridges, diplomatic bridges and cultural bridges with our Big Brother India. In fact, the more intangible but solid bridges we build with our closest neighbour, the better it will be economically and diplomatically for the two sovereign countries.  But isn’t the plan to build a direct road between the massive Indian subcontinent and this small tiny island of Lanka, going a bridge too far for comfort?

When Ranil Wickremesinghe returned home last Friday after his maiden trip to New Delhi as President, among the many Indian gifts found in his bag was the special Modi project proposal to build a bridge between Lanka and India that would transcend the watery divide and bring the two countries physically closer. It would end Lanka’s long isolation from peninsular India, and the appendix which had broken off would be reunited with India’s corpus.

It was not the first time the proposal had been made. The last time India’s proposal to build a bridge over the Palk Strait to physically link the island to the Indian mainland was raised was during Modi’s second visit to Lanka in 2017. Then Modi expressed the poetic aspirations of an Indian nationalist poet to convey India’s emotional longing for reunion with her breakaway child.

Modi had said: ‘I recall the lines of a famous song ‘Sindu Nadiyin Isai’ composed by the great nationalist poet Subramanian Bharati in the early 20th century: ‘Singalatheevukkinor paalam ameippom’ – we shall construct a bridge to Sri Lanka’.

Modi said, ‘I have come with the hope of building this bridge’.

But fearing India’s dream may become an island’s nightmare, Lanka had soft peddled the plan and it had remained on the draft boards. The seven-year itch has, it seems, begun to scratch again.

Of course, the primordial fears the islanders still bore seem justified. Thousands of years ago, India’s recurring dream had been built in rock and limestone by the monkey brigade led by Hanuman for Rama’s mighty army to invade Lanka on horse, foot and chariot to rescue Rama’s wife Seetha from Ravana’s captivity. The bridge paved the way for easy conquest.

Lanka’s surrounding sea had been her best defesce but the monkey bridge had breached Ravana’s defensive moat. With the bridge a catwalk for troops, the island lay exposed to easy conquest. The virgin island was ravaged, hostage Seetha was saved, Ravana lay vanquished, his brother Vibhishana was installed as Rama’s puppet king, and, in the trail of the triumphant army’s withdrawal, Hanuman’s tail followed a scorch earth policy and set vital installations aflame.

The legendary tale has been chronicled 2800 years ago in Valmiki’s 24,000-verse epic poem the Ramayana – Rama’s journey – and held as India’s greatest classic, next to her Song of Songs, the Mahabharata.

But though held as a legend, photographic evidence taken from above by NASA satellites, show fragments of a 30-mile-long limestone bridge — now known as Rama Sethu bridge — existing in the Palk Strait’s shallow depths.

And its significance may not be lost on Lanka yet.

No doubt, the optimists will pooh-pooh the worst fears, while top economists may hail it as a bridge of opportunity for the local economy to grow faster. Lankan importers and exporters will also praise the reduction in transport costs with a 1.5 billion Indian market just a hop, step and jump away. The tourism sector will rub their hands in glee and drool with delight at the prospect of a tourist invasion of Lanka.

But will India’s gateway to Lanka hold hidden dangers to the island’s wellbeing? With more than a billion people physically on our doorstep, will we risk being swallowed out of existence?

Already plans are afoot to make the Indian rupee a valid currency in Sri Lanka, with anticipated arrangements to facilitate seamless business transactions for Indian tourists whose arrivals are limited to the seating capacity of landing aircraft.  But with the bridge throwing open the doors to an endless influx of Indians and with the world’s fifth largest economy, India, operating as if this island was another of its Pranths, the rupee will come to lose its significance and eventually disappear.

With a road bridge, Lanka’s treasured island status will be lost forever and we islanders will no longer be but citizens of a country whose northern border will be the Indian bridge.

Take the logistics. Can Lanka’s infrastructure cope with an avalanche of Indians swamping the Lankan roads? Do our hotels have sufficient rooms to offer even if just 0.01 percent of India’s population amounting to 1,500,000,000 people used their road pass to drive or ride into Lanka for a sleepover to enjoy Diana Gamage’s dusk to dawn nightlife?

What about customs and immigration at the entry point? Can the officials check each and every car or bus, lorry or juggernaut for contraband, drugs or arms? Can health officials keep Indian disease at bay, can the environment be kept free of pollution?

If the entire Lankan population should descend on vast India, they will still be only a community whose presence among 1.5bn Indians will hardly be felt. But if just 0.1 percent of the population came here, they will be a colony.

And what of ground invasions that are still in fashion as Russia’s overnight thrust into Ukraine has shown? An aerial and sea invasion alone on an island oft runs into delays since tanks and heavy armour have to be airlifted or sea freighted and safely landed at the hot spot. But with a road bridge to Lanka, the Indian army can be right in the nation’s capital within a few hours complete with tanks and heavy equipment. It’s wiser to keep the relationship at a Palk Strait length than be engaged in a physical embrace. And remain as islanders to the last. WHAT THE GODS HAVE PUT ASUNDER LET NO MAN PUT TOGETHER AGAIN!!