Rajeev Bhattacharyya
Every afternoon, about two dozen people cutting across communities and genders gather on the banks of the Kaladan River at Paletwa town in Myanmar’s Chin State. They gaze at all the boats coming in from the border with India; most of them sail downstream to different townships in neighboring Rakhine State.
After a while, a bigger boat laden with commodities and covered with a blue tarpaulin sheet docks nearby. Two more boats over-packed with goods arrive in quick succession at the same spot. A crowd of mostly shopkeepers and traders, heavily dependent on the commodities smuggled from Mizoram in India, heads toward the boats and begins to untie the ropes holding down the tarpaulin sheets. The cargo is transferred to some vehicles and motorbikes that have also arrived to transport the items to other destinations near the town.
As at Paletwa in southern Chin State, people in Rakhine State depend on commodities smuggled from neighboring India and Bangladesh as supply routes from mainland Myanmar are blocked. Owing to a lack of motorable roads in Arakan, the region held by the Arakan Army in Rakhine and southern China states, commodities are mostly ferried in boats.
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