“The Beijing Swift” - By Prof. Samitha Hettige

Indonesia is the world’s most populated Islamic nation. It has approx. 14,000 small islands in its territory. 700 years ago, Chinese Admiral Zheng He stopped over in Java, Indonesia many times during his famous voyages. The ancient Silk Road contributed to economic development of the main islands Java and Sumatra but later it was the Dutch who colonized the islands and made the country we see today. Being an active member of the 21^st century maritime Silk Road Indonesia has a ministry in charge of Maritime Affairs and Investment. The subject combination is a good point to study by anyone who would want to study the process of scientifically allocating responsibilities to ministries of a country. When subjects of higher education and highways was assigned to one ministry it was different to the Indonesian way of allocating ministerial responsibilities. Indonesia hosted the Bandung conference in the 1950s which has contributed immensely to the socioeconomic development of many developing countries including Sri Lanka. The Peoples Republic of China (PRC) also was part of the Bandung Conference. The PRC is working closely with Indonesia as partners of the Belt and Road Initiative.

As part of that bond the construction of Jakarta-Bandung High Speed Railway project started in 2016. It is a 142 km-long high-speed railway project which connects the present capital Jakarta and Bandung in West Java which was the location of the famous Bandung conference. Indonesia is having long term plans to move its capital to another location in few decades but still Jakarta will remain a busy metropolis due to centuries of human activity. The new railway built with Chinese technology will connect the two cities with a speed of 350 km per hour and cut the journey from more than three hours to around 40 minutes as per engineering sources. The longest tunnel in the new railway was successfully holed through few days back. The tunnel is 1,885 meters in length and plays pivotal role in the completion of the construction. Once completed it will certainly become a modern infrastructure project and will meet people's transportation needs, increase productivity and positively influence to the economy and the Indonesian society as per Indonesian sources.

Sri Lankans can learn many lessons from this project. How to allocate subjects to ministries and how to develop the rail network etc. are good lessons as ours is a small island with an existing railway network. Focusing on developing the existing network will be a practical solution to resolve our socioeconomic issues using transport as a tool specially at a time when there is talk about free shuttle services to the city to reduce traffic and ideas about extending the highway network to more destinations. The Bus lobby and the Lorry lobby may try to obstruct the development of the railway network since it will be financially negative to them but if done it will save space, environment and precious time of the people.

The writer is an Academic and a Broadcaster. Views expressed are personal and may not necessarily be the views of his affiliations.