From Greece...to Kolkata

The land-based “New Silk Road” will begin in Xi’an in central China before stretching west near the border with Kazakhstan, then as before will run southwest from Central Asia to northern Iran before swinging west through Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. From Istanbul, the Silk Road will cross the Bosphorus Strait and head northwest through Europe - Bulgaria, Romania, the Czech Republic, and Germany – to move further north to Rotterdam in the Netherlands. From Rotterdam, the path will run south to Venice, Italy, where it will meet up with the equally ambitious Maritime Silk Road.

The Maritime Silk Road will begin in Fujian province; then hit Guangzhou before heading south to the Malacca Strait. From Kuala Lumpur, it will head to Kolkata, then crossing over (at times after touching Sri Lanka) through the rest of the Indian Ocean to Nairobi, Kenya, to swing north around the Horn of Africa and move through the Red Sea into the Mediterranean, with a stop in Athens before meeting the land-based Silk Road in Venice. Note in passing that Kolkata is an important point in the projected maritime Silk Road.

Ambitious? I am sure. Imperial? Perhaps not, because such plans of creating new zones and corridors in global spaces must depend on inter-country and inter-people collaboration. They are exactly opposite of old style global designs sponsored by Pax Americana. They hold out promises of win-win situations for all involved. These new logistical spaces to be successful must have an idea of commons beneath their dreams.

Logistics is not only about connectivity. It is about envisioning collaborative spaces. Yet the fact is that it is also an industry. Investment in this industry calls for modernisation of the institutional framework, such as in the case of Greece turning the entire national rail network double-track and electrified; establishing a “freight village” in the area of Piraeus for companies to rent storage space and offering services; to upgrade existing road corridors with more fuel stations and parking areas, etc. 

Greece’s economic crisis has helped focus domestic policy makers’ attention and raised hopes in them on the potential benefits of being a regional transport hub in the way the Netherlands is in northern Europe. According to the Athens-based Greek Logistics Association, the logistics industry including transportation contributes around 10 percent to 12 percent to Greek gross domestic product, which has shrunk by about a quarter since 2008, and can help revive economic growth. Logistical planners think that in this background the importance of making Greece a transit route for goods has increased. Because Greece is a small market, the idea is to take advantage of the shipments that can come to Greece not as a final destination. A range of industries can develop around Piraeus looking to more container traffic. 

But here is the snag in the Piraeus story.

Logistical hubs near Athens were created during the phoney boom before 2008 on empty calculations of future demand. Banks competed with each other to lend money for construction of container holdings, other storage houses, etc. Then the balloon busted. And as one goes around some of the well built and some half constructed roads, where the stretch of 17 km link from the port to the logistical hub ends, one can see the empty storage houses and buildings, forlorn roads, idle trucks, empty containers, and giant cranes with their looming shadows on the hills whose sides are adorned by these ghostly dens.     

Logistical ambitions thus must have feet firmly on the ground. Logistical expansions cut across regions, populations, societies, and networks. Such expansions, if not proven win-win for all involved, will create animosities, antagonisms, and conflicts as seen in the case of the ambitious plans world around for oil and gas pipelines, airport expansions, or road widening. To know this you do not have to be an expert on Nigeria or what is called “carbon economies”, you have to see only James Bond movies.

Is this story of Piraeus an allegory for Kolkata supposedly condemned by present history to lag behind the rest of productive India? Whatever be the answer, clearly there is lesson to learn: finding win-win possibilities from the global conditions that are opening up, new friendships, discovering new commons, logistical explorations, and intermodal flexibilities and compatibilities, and finally planning boldly for new avenues of growth. If the factory was the site of production, growth, and dense social conflicts in the nineteenth and greater part of the twentieth centuries, today logistical spaces like zones and corridors are like social factories symbolising circulation, growth, production, and conflicts. There is no way we can escape logistical realities. In all these it is important not to lose sight of political choices as well as ground realities.    

Let me turn to Greece therefore for one last time. The recent EU elections marked a turning point for Greece with voters giving a resounding victory for the radical left party Syriza while sending at the same time three neo-nazi Golden Dawn members to Brussels. The anti-austerity Syriza won the ballot by a margin of nearly four points over the ruling conservative New Democracy party led by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. Greece, as the country on the frontline of Europe’s debt crisis, was forced to accept excruciating spending cuts in return for rescue packages of the EU and IMF. Syriza led in capturing the nationalist space against imperial pressure, though the Golden Dawn also spoke in ultra nationalist terms committing murder, racial violence, illegal weapons possession, extortion, and xenophobic violence against immigrants.

Any parallel, any lesson?

The writer is Director, Kolkata Research Group

This concludes the two-part series