Every few years, a well-meaning politician stands up in parliament, waxes poetic about the ancient silk routes, and demands the immediate revival of historic overland trade corridors to Central Asia. The latest iteration of this recurring daydream comes from figures like MP Vikramjit Sahney, pushing to reopen historic trade arteries through Pakistan and Afghanistan to tap into the energy-rich and resource-dense Commonwealth of Independent States.
It sounds romantic. It reads well in a Sunday editorial. It is also an absolute economic fantasy that ignores every fundamental rule of modern logistics, security, and geopolitical reality.
I have spent the better part of two decades watching companies and governments burn hundreds of millions of dollars trying to force overland trade through hostile borders, chasing the ghost of a historical map that no longer exists. The lazy consensus among regional planners is that if we just rebuild the roads, commerce will magically flow. They look at a globe, draw a straight line from Delhi to Tashkent, and assume distance is the only variable that matters.
Distance is a vanity metric in international trade. Friction is what actually kills deals.
The Geography of Friction
Let us look at the mechanics of what a transit route to CIS markets actually entails today. To move goods from India to Central Asia via land, you must cross Pakistan and either cross the entirety of Afghanistan or navigate complex arrangements through Iran.
That is not a trade route. That is a gauntlet of political volatility, fragmented customs unions, divergent rail gauges, and infrastructural black holes.
Imagine a scenario where a manufacturer in Ludhiana loads a container of textiles bound for Almaty via the overland route. First, they hit the Wagah border. Because of persistent political animosity and rigid security protocols, through-transportation is virtually nonexistent. Cargo must be unloaded, cleared by customs, transferred to local trucks, moved across Pakistani territory, offloaded again at the Afghan border or the Iranian port of Chabahar, hauled through terrain with active insurgencies, and re-verified at every single international boundary.
Every touchpoint is a delay. Every border is a tollbooth—literal or bureaucratic. By the time that container reaches a warehouse in Bishkek, the transit time has ballooned past maritime alternatives, and the cost has multiplied through countless middlemen and security overheads.
Yet, policymakers keep falling into the trap of historical determinism. They believe that because merchants walked these paths centuries ago with camels and spices, modern containerized freight should do the same. Camels did not require customs declarations, bilateral transit treaties, or insurance underwriters who charge extortionate premiums for war zones.
The Maritime Advantage Nobody Wants to Acknowledge
Trade follows the path of least resistance, and water is almost always less resistant than a heavily militarized border.
When you look at actual trade flows, the smart money moves goods to Central Asia through entirely different vectors. The International North-South Transport Corridor exists, utilizing maritime shipping to Iranian ports like Bandar Abbas, followed by rail links northward. Even that route struggles with capacity bottlenecks, port congestion, and the crushing weight of international sanctions architecture.
If you want to reach CIS markets efficiently from the Indian subcontinent, you do not punch through the Hindu Kush. You utilize global maritime networks to reach European or Georgian ports, or you leverage air freight for high-value goods.
Admitting this hurts regional pride. It is much sexier to talk about a direct highway connecting South Asia to the Eurasian heartland. But romanticism does not balance a logistics ledger.
I’ve seen supply chain executives fall in love with the idea of short overland distances on paper, only to watch their inventory sit stranded in a customs yard for six weeks because a regional skirmish closed a mountain pass. The direct route is the longest distance between two points when every single mile is a potential point of failure.
The Real Bottlenecks Aren't Physical
Proponents of the historic route argue that physical infrastructure will solve everything. Build the asphalt, lay the tracks, and the trade will follow.
This is backward. Infrastructure without institutional trust is just an expensive parking lot.
Central Asia and South Asia do not share a unified regulatory framework, a harmonized customs regime, or a stable security umbrella. Consider the fragmented banking channels alone. Due to strict international compliance and sanctions targeting countries like Iran and financial instability in others along the path, executing a secure cross-border payment for a shipment moving through these corridors is an administrative nightmare.
You cannot run a modern supply chain on historical nostalgia when you cannot even guarantee that a letter of credit will be honored across three consecutive jurisdictions with competing legal systems.
Furthermore, the economic structure of the CIS countries has shifted. They are not waiting with open arms for Indian manufactured goods delivered via truck convoy. They have established supply chain dependencies with China through the Belt and Road Initiative, with Russia through traditional trade pacts, and with European markets. China has already spent tens of billions laying down hard infrastructure, pipelines, and rail networks that physically dominate Central Asian commerce. Beijing did not rely on historical poetry; they used capital, state-backed engineering, and absolute commercial focus.
Trying to muscle into that space with a patchwork overland route through hostile or unstable transit states is strategic malpractice.
The Alternative That Actually Works
If policymakers genuinely want to capture CIS markets, they need to stop looking at the mountains to their immediate northwest and start looking at economic pragmatism.
First, double down on multimodal corridors that bypass volatile land borders entirely. The Chabahar port investment was a step in the right direction, but it has been chronically plagued by underutilization and fear of secondary sanctions. If governments want to make an impact, they need to streamline the operational efficiency of existing sea-to-rail corridors rather than chasing pipe dreams of direct road access through high-risk zones.
Second, focus on high-value, low-volume sectors where transport costs are a minor percentage of total product value. Pharmaceuticals and IT services do not need a four-lane highway through the Khyber Pass. They need reliable digital infrastructure and air cargo access.
Third, negotiate bilateral trade agreements that solve the non-tariff barriers first. Fix the paperwork before you pour the concrete. A smooth digital customs clearance process between friendly nations does more for trade volume than a thousand miles of asphalt built across a geopolitical minefield.
We need to stop treating trade policy as an exercise in historical reenactment. The Silk Road was great for the thirteenth century, but the thirteenth century didn't have global container shipping, swift maritime networks, or international sanctions regimes.
Clinging to the ghost of ancient land routes isn't visionary. It is a distraction from the messy, unglamorous work of building actual, functional trade mechanics that survive contact with reality.
Stop funding the fantasy. Fix the ports, digitize the paperwork, and let the trucks stay home.
