Ghost road to boost India-China trade

Overgrown and disused for much of the last 60 years, a ghost road, known as the Stillwell Road, that connects India to China via Burma, will soon reappear on maps of the region. The construction of the road claimed the lives of 1,100 US servicemen and many more local laborers during the second world war. But it helped bust a three-year Japanese land and sea blockade of China and hastened the end of the war. (There was a movie made of it, The Stillwell Road, narrated by Ronald Reagan.)

Reopening has been discussed for years. But as recently as 2004 it was reported: Despite their pleas, India and Burma have made it clear that they are not willing to meet the demand to have the road reopened any time. Militant groups dominate a huge area of the road, and leaders from India and Burma believe that if the road were opened, it would help the insurgent groups to carry forward their subversive activities in the region.

Now India and China are restoring the historic highway.

China has already converted its own 680km stretch into a six-lane highway and is helping to rebuild much of the road inside Burma. India is further behind, expecting to complete the transformation of a single-lane track ridden with pot-holes into a two-lane highway by March.