ABSTRACT
The chapter explores three broad themes in the backdrop of the Act East Policy and the interconnectivity paradigm of Asia: the surge in infrastructure development in the region, the linkages between finance capitalism and infrastructure development, and the working of financial institutions in facilitating infrastructure. In the first section of the chapter, I shall discuss the various forms of financial instruments which are thought to be helpful in reducing the gap between demand and supply of infrastructure all over the world. In the second section, I shall describe the working of a particular financial institution which is now being held as the main protagonist of infrastructural funding in Asia – the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) based in Beijing. In the last section, I shall focus on the impact of what we may call the ‘financialisation of infrastructure’ on the development projects in India with reference to the increase of the public-private partnership (PPP) activities in the infrastructure sector. A main thrust of this chapter will be on the notion of a blueprint – a diagrammatic design of projects to be realised in future – as most of the proposed infrastructural development is still at the stage of primary dialogue between different stakeholders. The point of this chapter is not to challenge the actuality of the vision that propels such activities but to show how vital it is for the architects of these plans to get embroiled in the networks of global financial capitalism.
