ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the Bangladesh China India Myanmar (BCIM) Forum for Regional Cooperation, founded in 1999 and formerly known as 'the Kunming Initiative'. Invoking the rhetoric of the 'Southern' or 'Southwestern' Silk Route, the BCIM Forum aims to restore the historical arteries of overland connectivity that once linked India's eastern seaboard and Northeastern states with China's Southwestern province of Yunnan through present-day Bangladesh and northern Myanmar. The BCIM is an activity that is manifestly consistent with India's Look East Policy (LEP) and also with the long-term demand of India's Northeastern Region (NER) for the opening of trade, connectivity and people-to-people contacts with the neighbouring countries that constitute some 98 percent of the region's borders. The 2013 Dhaka Forum brought a new focus to the 'BCIM connectivity' agenda in the form of an expansion of the idea of 'multimodal transportation'.
