Suresh Narayanan: The focus of this paper is on physical connectivity; why this was chosen as the topic for the paper above the other two dimensions of connectivity (institutional and people-to-people) that ASEAN has on its plate is left unclear. Chia does not explain her choice, except to argue that it is important. Physical connectivity turns out to be a rather complex topic because it covers several aspects such as transport, information, and communication technology and energy. Even after Chia limits herself to transport, there is still a lot to say because transport includes land, sea, and air connectivity.
The Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity was adopted in October 2010 and set out some ambitious objectives to be achieved by 2015. Given the limited progress made on many fronts, it is clear that this is not going to happen, as Chia herself observes. One wonders how the intelligent officials who...