Writing about the Mekong-Ganga Cooperation Initiative (MGCI) a few weeks after its creation, V Jayanth argued that a great "responsibility [rests] on New Delhi to make a success of this venture" (The Hindu, 28 November 2000). Now seven years old, can one call the sub-regional organization founded in Vientiane on 10 November 2000 a success?

Since its creation, the MGCI's institutional evolution underwent four major steps. The Vientiane Declaration placed MGCI on its tracks, referring to common cultural and religious heritage and focusing on four sectors of cooperation: tourism, culture, education, and transport and communications. The Hanoi Program of Action, adopted in July 2001, set a six-year timeframe for implementation.

However, the momentum slowed because of post-9/11 security concerns, preventing the next Ministerial Meeting from being held until June 2003, when the Phnom Penh Road Map was defined, introducing cooperation in the pharmaceutical sector. It took another three and a half years for the fourth Ministerial Meeting to take place, a lapse during which China intensified its relations with the other five countries involved in the MGCI, namely, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam, in its own project called the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS).

While India's exchanges (economic, political, but also people-to-people) with the five members of the MGCI deepened from the turn of the century, India's trade with them shot up from US$1.744 billion in 2001-2002 to US$3.776 billion in 2005-2006, largely due to India-Thailand trade (US$2.287 billion in 2005-2006). Meanwhile, trade among the five grew by a factor of 10, while FDI grew by 140.5 per cent and annual tourist arrivals by 56.8 per cent. However, one may wonder whether this development has anything to do with MGCI, or whether it should rather be attributed to the much more active ASEAN. In any case, trade does not figure on MGCI's agenda and its achievements should, therefore, be measured by the goals set by it in the four sectors of cooperation outlined earlier.

Member countries invoke ancient cultural and religious linkages and their will to revive them. They refer as well to the feeling of acting for an "Asian community" that was present in the liberation movements and in the Non-Aligned Movement. Such political conjunction has certainly not been attained and will not be achieved in the near future either. As part of the MGCI cultural activities, India has granted US$1 million for the establishment of a museum of traditional textiles in Siem Reap in Cambodia. However, the MGCI countries play a relatively secondary role in the revival of Nalanda University in Bihar, unlike Singapore or Japan. Although the Vientiane Declaration placed emphasis on the performing arts, journalism and literature, health, and the conservation of heritage sites, cultural cooperation appears limited to a few projects and there is no broad framework visible.

Concerning education, India offered a hundred scholarships in 2003 and 300 fellowships in the IT sector. In addition, India sponsors English courses. But are a few scholarships here and there really going to transform educational systems and people-to-people relations? Again, cooperation is narrow, and wider options should be considered, such as setting up Burmese, Thai, Khmer or Vietnamese classes in India with the help of the MGCI countries, or developing a course on ancient South and Southeast Asian common cultural heritage.

The sector of tourism has seen nothing but talks and meetings. An Expert Working Group met in Bangkok on 29 May 2001. Mention of a "Mekong-Ganga Tourism Investment Guide" was made as early as 2000, but it never saw the light of day. The Phnom Penh Road Map also talked of convening a reunion of Tourism Ministers in New Delhi in 2004 and taking part as a whole in the 2004 ASEAN Tourism Forum.

Promoting tourism requires an improvement in connectivity. While the MGCI falls far short of its objectives, some achievements have been made nevertheless. The MGCI's intentions concerning transport and communications consisted of two aspects: first, road networks, which implied collaboration in the Trans-Asian Highways, and second, rail connectivity. The India-Myanmar Tamu-Kalewa road was inaugurated in February 2001, followed by the East-West Corridor linking the Bay of Bengal to the South China Sea, a project finalized in December 2006. The South Corridor, linking Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, and the North-South Corridor, linking Kunming in Yunnan to Bangkok, should be completed around 2010-2011. As for rail connectivity, the feasibility study to link New Delhi with Hanoi has been completed, but construction has not yet begun.

Consequently, India's relations with the other MGCI countries still have great potential for development. In their necessary balancing of the two Asian giants, these countries place more trust on India than on China. But paradoxically, the impact of the MGCI is seen more in bilateral relations rather than in multilateral initiatives. Although the MGCI's activity remains insubstantial, India's soft power projected in these countries generates larger diplomatic gains. For instance, India's extensive IT cooperation with Vietnam wins in return Vietnam's support for India's claim for a permanent UNSC seat. Perhaps this is why, in January 2007, India's Minister of State for External Affairs, E Ahmed, labeled the MGCI a "pillar of India's Look East policy."