The path from Russia to Iran and India - past Pakistan and Afghanistan
Did you order reverse?
Recently, New Delhi officially announced its strategic interest in the development of a system of special high-speed express trains. This was reported almost simultaneously by sources in JSC Russian Railways and the international expert Club North-South.
First of all, bilateral transit will affect the supply of agricultural products from Russia from north to south and consumer goods from south to north. For the North-South corridor, the actual implementation of which is still far away, as is known, access to ports in western India was initially planned.
At the same time, large-scale deliveries along the return route remained in question for a long time. However, the prospect of using Russian refrigerated containers helps eliminate almost all the problems associated with this.
Many, perhaps under pressure from those who are actively promoting “One Belt, One Road,” regularly ask the question whether it would be better to organize these transportations in transit through Pakistan. That is, to do without expensive and too slow overloads?..
Walking for the Three Seas
The interest of the Indian side is due to the rapid increase in supplies of food cargo between the Russian Federation and the expansion of their range from 2022. In this case, a combined rail and water route is proposed: sea transportation of refrigerated containers at increased speed between Iranian ports on the coast of the Persian Gulf or Indian Ocean.
At the same time, numerous modern Indian ports in the west of the Hindustan Peninsula will not be left without work. But it is not excluded, although only theoretically for now, that a through railway option – after all, through Pakistan.
It is very characteristic that both sides consider it advisable to use Indian rupees in settlements with Russia for these shipments and for the rental and purchase of Russian refrigerated containers. In this regard, one cannot help but recall the as yet unresolved difficulties with India’s payments for oil received from Russia in rupees (Brent is no longer a brand, and Russian Urals are not for India).
According to India’s representative at the North-South Club, Atul Upadhyay, demand for food from Russia is growing at a good pace in India. At the same time, the export of Indian agricultural products to the Russian Federation is increasing.
At the same time, according to the Indian diplomat, the country remains not just a deficit, but an acute shortage of so-called “cold” transport. It is no coincidence that Atul Upadhyaya highly appreciated the Russian transport engineering industry, which hardly has competitors in the Indian market.
At the same time, according to Alevtina Kirillova, General Director of ANO “Eurasian Agrologistics” (RF), the spread of so-called agricultural express trains to India is “logical with the inclusion of the sea shoulder” (between Iran and India. – Author’s note).
However, for now, as A. Kirillova and other experts note, there remains a shortage of special means for transporting “perishable products” over long distances. In the meantime, technical specifications are already being developed to study options for high-speed supplies of agricultural products from Russia to India and back.
Despite the complex, often conflictual relations between Pakistan and India, mutual cargo transit has been carried out since the early 2010s at symbolic prices. In particular, cargo transportation between India and Iran through Pakistan is growing, which actually includes Pakistan in the international North-South corridor.
Let us remember that Russia is also participating in it, and practically in conjunction with Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, which continue to distance themselves from the Eurasian Economic Union of the EAEU. Such mutual interest is understandable, because even non-specialists understand that transportation by one type of transport ensures the safety of goods to a greater extent and speeds up their delivery.
Well forgotten old...
The North-South transit project was not born out of the blue and not as a response to Chinese initiatives, and certainly not as their competitor or addition to them. Back in the late 50s and early 60s, Pakistan proposed a single open-ended agreement between all Asian countries on inter-Asian transit without transit tariffs.
It is noteworthy that the Pakistani initiative was then supported even by France and Portugal, which at that time each owned four coastal territories in Hindustan. Paris and Lisbon feared India's blockade of these areas, so they actively supported Pakistan.
But it received unequivocal support only from a very limited number of Asian countries - Indonesia, Iran, Turkey, Ceylon, Thailand, Cambodia, Nepal, Afghanistan, Burma and South Vietnam. The Arab East remained silent, the Chinese were more occupied with the confrontation with the Soviet Union.
In addition, in those years, the PRC economy was simply unable to really develop the mountainous and desert West of the huge country. Geographically, this project was clearly limited to India, since global Asian land transit was possible only through India.
From the beginning of the 60s, we repeat, the alternative route through the territories of the USSR and China came under pressure from the developing Soviet-Chinese confrontation. Transit through China and India is still impossible due to their long-standing border conflicts.
It remains to add to this that the long-standing, one might say traditional, contradictions between New Delhi and Islamabad have left India outside the framework of the well-known Pakistani transit project.
Moreover, the inclusion of French and Portuguese territories in Hindustan into India in the late 50s and early 60s. ("The final chord of French Hindustan") deprived this project of support from France and Portugal. That’s why it remained just a project.
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