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Chapter 6: What Odisha Has Done

On January 28, 2025, Prime Minister Narendra Modi walked onto the stage at Janata Maidan in Bhubaneswar to inaugurate Utkarsh Odisha — the fourth iteration of the Make in Odisha conclave. Behind him, a digital screen displayed the number that would dominate the next day’s headlines: Rs 16.73 lakh crore. That was the total value of investment intents — not committed capital, not signed contracts, but expressions of interest — that the Odisha government had gathered from 145 memoranda of understanding. The number was almost incomprehensibly large: roughly two hundred billion US dollars, more than the GDP of most countries, more than double the Rs 10.5 lakh crore announced at the previous conclave in 2022, which had itself been more than double the Rs 4.19 lakh crore from 2018.

Singapore was the first country partner. Eleven countries participated. The Prime Minister was there not because he had a special interest in Odisha’s industrial development — he was there because, for the first time in the state’s post-independence history, Odisha was governed by his own party, and the signal mattered. Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi, who had been in office for barely seven months, stood beside the Prime Minister and announced that Odisha would become a “trillion-dollar economy.”

Three days earlier, at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in the same city, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar had offered a different framing. “The Look East policy has its historical roots in this state,” he told the assembled delegates from seventy-five countries. “The Bali Yatra, which linked India to South East Asia, actually originated in Odisha.” It was the first time PBD had been held in Odisha, and Jaishankar was doing something deliberate: connecting India’s Act East foreign policy to Odisha’s ancient maritime identity. The sadhabas, the Bay of Bengal, the civilizational link to Indonesia and beyond — all of it compressed into a diplomatic soundbite.

Between the two events — the investment conclave and the diaspora conference — lay the full range of what the Odisha government has attempted in its engagement with Southeast Asia. One was about attracting capital. The other was about claiming heritage. The question this chapter asks is whether either of them, or everything in between, amounts to a strategy.

The Conclaves: Attracting Capital, Not Building Trade

The Make in Odisha conclaves tell a clear story if you read them as a time series.

Year	Investment Proposals	Notes
2016	Rs 2.03 lakh crore	First edition under Naveen Patnaik
2018	Rs 4.19 lakh crore	Japan as partner country
2022	Rs 10.5 lakh crore	741 companies, 11 countries
2025	Rs 16.73 lakh crore	Singapore as first country partner, PM Modi inaugurated

The numbers double every cycle, which is satisfying if you are writing a press release and alarming if you understand what “investment intent” actually means. An intent, in the vocabulary of these conclaves, is an expression of interest — a company saying “we are considering investing this amount in this sector in this state.” It is not a financial commitment, not a board-approved capital allocation, not a check written. The conversion rate from intent to actual investment is never published by any Indian state, for the obvious reason that publishing it would be embarrassing. National estimates suggest that 15-25% of such intents convert to ground-level projects within five years. Some analysts put it lower.

This does not mean the conclaves are theater. They serve a real function: they signal to the corporate world that a state government is investment-friendly, they create a competitive dynamic between states vying for the same pool of industrial capital, and they provide a structured occasion for senior bureaucrats and CEOs to meet and negotiate. The 2018 conclave, with Japan as partner country, led to road shows in Japan, Korea, and China. The 2022 edition attracted 741 companies from 11 countries. These are genuine contact points.

But — and this is the distinction that matters for the Southeast Asia story — the conclaves are designed to attract investment into Odisha, not to facilitate Odia trade with foreign markets. The directionality is entirely inward. When Singapore was the partner country in 2025, the question on the table was: “What can Singaporean companies build in Odisha?” Not: “What can Odisha sell in Singapore?” The difference between the two questions is the difference between being a destination for foreign capital and being a participant in foreign trade. Odisha has consistently pursued the former. The latter requires a different set of institutions, relationships, and products — and it has barely been attempted.

The conclave model also reveals something about how Indian states think about foreign economic engagement. The template is borrowed from Vibrant Gujarat, Narendra Modi’s signature investment summit from his chief minister days, which itself borrowed from Davos and Singapore’s investment forums. It is a proven template for attracting FDI into manufacturing, mining, and infrastructure. It is not a template for building outward-facing trade relationships. For that, you need trade offices abroad, buyer-seller meets in target markets, participation in foreign trade fairs, export incentive schemes, and logistics infrastructure for moving goods out of the state, not just into it. Odisha has done the conclave. It has not done the rest.

The Singapore Partnership: Something Genuinely New

If the conclaves are a familiar pattern repeated at higher volumes, the Singapore engagement of January 2025 was something different.

President Tharman Shanmugaratnam of Singapore made a two-day visit to Odisha — a sitting head of state visiting a state capital for economic partnership discussions. Eight memoranda of understanding were signed, and the specifics matter more than the number:

Sembcorp Industries: An industrial park and a green hydrogen corridor. Sembcorp is not a speculative investor — it is one of Singapore’s largest integrated energy companies, with operational assets across multiple countries.
Surbana Jurong: Master planning for the Paradip-Chandbali Petroleum, Chemicals and Petrochemical Investment Region (PCPIR), and urban infrastructure development. Surbana Jurong is the firm that planned much of modern Singapore’s urban landscape.
NTU-GRIDCO-IIT Bhubaneswar: A three-way research collaboration on energy systems, linking Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University with Odisha’s power grid corporation and its leading technical institute.
Global FinTech Network (GFTN): Fintech capacity building and ecosystem development.
ITEES (Institute of Technical Education Education Services): Semiconductor skilling — training Odia workers for the semiconductor manufacturing supply chain.

This is not the normal MoU-signing spectacle. The Sembcorp and Surbana Jurong agreements involve companies with the financial depth and project management capacity to actually execute. The NTU research partnership creates an institutional link between Odia and Singaporean technical communities. The semiconductor skilling MoU, while modest in isolation, connects Odisha to one of the most critical global supply chains of the coming decade.

More importantly, the Singapore partnership represents the deepest formal bilateral engagement between Odisha and any Southeast Asian country — ever. In seventy-eight years of Indian independence, no SE Asian government had engaged with Odisha at this level of institutional specificity. Biju Patnaik flew Indonesian leaders to safety in 1947, but that personal heroism produced no institutional Odisha-Indonesia partnership. The Dhauli Shanti Stupa was built by a Japanese Buddhist order in 1972, but that spiritual connection produced no Japan-Odisha economic corridor. The Singapore MoUs are different because they are institutional, specific, and backed by entities with track records of delivery.

The honest caveat: MoUs are still MoUs. Singapore is skilled at signing partnership agreements with Indian states — it has done so with Andhra Pradesh (Amaravati capital city), Rajasthan, and several others, with mixed execution records. The test of the Odisha-Singapore partnership will not be the signing ceremony but whether, three years from now, Sembcorp has broken ground on the green hydrogen corridor and ITEES is actually training students. The structural difference between this MoU and the Rs 16.73 lakh crore in conclave intents is specificity — the Singapore agreements name companies, projects, and sectors. That is a better foundation. But it is still a foundation, not a building.

Bali Yatra: Can a Festival Become Foreign Policy?

Every November, on Kartik Purnima, women and girls across Odisha walk to the nearest river or pond at dawn, light small oil lamps, place them in miniature boats made of banana stems and paper, and set them afloat. This is Boita Bandana — the ritual farewell to the sadhabas, the ancient mariners who sailed east on the northeast monsoon. In Cuttack, on the banks of the Mahanadi, the Bali Yatra trade fair follows — a seven-day affair that draws approximately seventy lakh visitors, making it one of Asia’s largest open-air fairs by attendance.

The Odisha government has, over the past decade, progressively escalated Bali Yatra’s profile. The trajectory is clear:

Budget: The allocation increased fivefold, from approximately Rs 2 crore to Rs 10 crore, between the early 2020s and 2025.

Diplomatic presence: In November 2024, ambassadors, high commissioners, and heads of mission from fourteen countries attended the fair. Cultural troupes from six countries performed. This was not an accident — it was the result of deliberate invitations coordinated through the Ministry of External Affairs.

National recognition: In February 2025, the Government of India granted Bali Yatra “National Fair” status — a formal elevation that makes it eligible for central government funding and promotion.

International partnership: The 2025 edition featured Indonesia as the first-ever partner nation, with a special Indonesian pavilion showcasing crafts, textiles, and artworks. This was the first time any foreign country had an institutional presence at Bali Yatra.

Prime ministerial mention: Modi referenced Bali Yatra at the G20 Summit in Bali in 2022 as a symbol of India’s maritime connection with Southeast Asia. Jaishankar linked it to the Look East Policy at PBD 2025. Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s bilateral conversations with Modi reportedly included a mention of the festival.

All of this is real. The question is whether it is sufficient.

Walk through Bali Yatra and what you encounter is overwhelmingly a domestic trade fair. The stalls sell local goods — handicrafts, sweets, textiles, household items. The visitors are from Cuttack, Bhubaneswar, and nearby districts. The Indonesian pavilion in 2025 was a welcome addition but, in the context of a fair with sixteen hundred stalls serving seven million visitors, it was a boutique gesture, not a structural presence. There are no trade negotiations happening at Bali Yatra. No bilateral agreements are signed there. No SE Asian buyer delegations walk the stalls sourcing Odia products. The diplomatic attendance, while growing, is ceremonial — ambassadors visit, take photographs, make speeches about ancient maritime connections, and leave.

Compare this with how other events have been converted into foreign policy infrastructure. The World Economic Forum in Davos began as a modest management conference and became the global forum for economic diplomacy. Singapore’s Shangri-La Dialogue started as a defense conference and became the Indo-Pacific’s premier security forum. Even at a more modest scale, Pushkar Fair in Rajasthan, which draws roughly 200,000 visitors, has developed a genuine international tourism segment with targeted marketing to specific foreign demographics.

The challenge for Bali Yatra is fundamental: a festival built around nostalgia for a lost maritime connection is not the same thing as a platform for building a new one. The Boita Bandana ritual is beautiful and historically resonant, but it commemorates departure, not trade. The fair’s seven million visitors come for shopping and entertainment, not for business networking. To convert Bali Yatra into a genuine vehicle for Odisha-SE Asia engagement, you would need elements that currently do not exist: a curated international trade zone with SE Asian importers and Odia exporters; a conference track focused on Bay of Bengal economic cooperation; direct charter flights from SE Asian cities during the festival period; an international marketing budget that reaches travel agents in Bangkok and Jakarta, not just Odia newspapers.

The gap between what Bali Yatra is and what it could be is not a criticism of the event. It is a measurement of the distance between cultural heritage and economic strategy. The heritage is genuine. The strategy is nascent.

The Ports: Bulk Power, Container Weakness

Odisha’s ports are, by one measure, the state’s greatest asset in any eastern engagement. By another measure, they are its most revealing limitation.

Paradip is India’s number-one port by cargo throughput — 150.41 million metric tonnes in FY 2024-25. This is not a trivial achievement. No other Indian port handles more tonnage. Paradip sits at the Mahanadi estuary, the same stretch of coast where ancient Kalingan ports once loaded goods for the Bay of Bengal crossing. Its hinterland includes India’s richest iron ore belt, the IOCL refinery, and major coal deposits. The port’s throughput is dominated by iron ore, coal, crude oil, and petroleum products — the raw materials and energy commodities that define Odisha’s extractive economy.

Dhamra, operated by Adani Ports, handled 46.08 million tonnes in 2024-25, with a capacity to expand to 80 MTPA. It can accommodate super cape-size vessels and has been explicitly positioned as an ASEAN gateway.

Gopalpur, a smaller all-weather port, handles approximately 6 MTPA and is expanding.

In the development pipeline are several more: Bahuda Muhana in Ganjam (Rs 21,500 crore investment), a shipbuilding cluster at Kendrapara (Rs 22,700 crore), an international cruise terminal at Puri (Rs 500 crore), and additional ports at Astaranga, Jatadhari Muhan, and Subarnarekha. At India Maritime Week 2025, Odisha signed Rs 50,000 crore in maritime MoUs. The state’s Port Policy 2022 and its 2025 update, administered through the Odisha Maritime Board, aim for 500 million tonnes of annual throughput by 2047.

The numbers are impressive. The composition is the problem.

Paradip handled only 12,711 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units — the standard measure of container traffic) in the period for which data is available. To put this in perspective: Chennai port handles millions of TEUs annually. Mundra in Gujarat handles over seven million. Singapore, the global container hub, handles nearly forty million. Paradip’s 12,711 TEUs is, in container shipping terms, a rounding error.

Why does this matter? Because containers are how the modern world moves manufactured goods. Bulk cargo — iron ore loaded by conveyor belt, coal dumped by crane — moves on bulk carriers. But handicrafts, processed food, textiles, pharmaceuticals, electronics, machinery parts, consumer goods — everything that represents value addition — moves in containers. A state that dominates bulk cargo but has no container infrastructure is a state that exports raw materials by sea and manufactures nothing that needs a box.

This is Odisha’s port paradox in concentrated form. The state has India’s busiest port, positioned perfectly for Bay of Bengal trade, and it cannot use that port to ship a crate of Sambalpuri sarees to Singapore. To do that, you would currently need to truck the goods to Chennai or Visakhapatnam, find a container slot on a feeder service, and ship from there. The infrastructure that makes Odisha a powerhouse in iron ore exports is precisely the infrastructure that makes it irrelevant in high-value goods trade.

The government is aware of this gap. Container terminal development at Paradip and Dhamra is in the planning stages. But developing a container ecosystem is not just building a terminal — it requires customs infrastructure, container freight stations, inland container depots, regular shipping line services with fixed schedules, and enough export volume to make those services commercially viable. Chennai did not become a container hub overnight. It took decades of automotive and manufacturing cluster development to generate the export volumes that justified container shipping investment. Odisha’s equivalent — a manufacturing ecosystem that produces containerized goods in sufficient volume — does not yet exist. The ports are ready for the bulk economy that exists. They are not ready for the value-added economy that the government says it wants.

The POSCO Saga: A Parable of the Gap

No story better illustrates the distance between announcing foreign investment and actually building it than POSCO.

In June 2005, the government of Odisha signed a memorandum of understanding with POSCO, the South Korean steel giant, for a 12-million-tonne integrated steel plant at Jagatsinghpur. The value: $12 billion — Rs 52,000 crore at the time — making it the largest single foreign direct investment proposal in Indian history. The plant would have its own captive port, a dedicated railway line, and access to iron ore from the Keonjhar mines. Naveen Patnaik’s government presented it as transformational. POSCO presented it as the anchor of their India strategy. The central government gave its blessing. The MoU was signed with the ceremony and optimism that Indian investment announcements specialize in.

Then reality intervened.

The plant required 4,004 acres of land in Jagatsinghpur district, including the villages of Dhinkia, Gobindpur, and Nuagaon. The residents were not consulted before the MoU was signed — this was standard practice in 2005, and it was about to become the standard practice that broke the project. The POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (POSCO Resistance Struggle Committee) formed in August 2005, barely two months after the MoU. The resistance drew on a deep well of grievance: betel vine cultivators who would lose their livelihoods, fishing communities whose access to the coast would be cut off, and villagers who had seen what “development” meant for displaced communities elsewhere in Odisha — broken promises, inadequate rehabilitation, poverty after displacement.

What followed was twelve years of struggle. Environmental clearance was granted, revoked, re-granted, challenged, upheld, and challenged again. The National Green Tribunal, the Supreme Court, and multiple government committees weighed in. The forest rights of tribal and traditional forest-dwellers under the Forest Rights Act of 2006 became a legal battleground. Land acquisition proceeded in fits and starts — by 2016, only about a third of the required land had been acquired. POSCO scaled down the project from 12 MTPA to 8 MTPA. Then it scaled down its ambitions further. In March 2017, POSCO formally withdrew from the project.

Twelve years. $12 billion in announced investment. Zero tonnes of steel produced.

The POSCO saga is not primarily a story about community resistance versus corporate interest, though it is often told that way. It is a story about what happens when a state’s investment attraction machinery runs far ahead of its capacity to actually execute — when the MoU gets signed before the land acquisition strategy is developed, before the environmental assessments are complete, before the affected communities are consulted, before the legal framework for displacement is tested. The announcement economy, as it might be called, produces headlines at signing and embarrassment at execution.

In November 2024, a new chapter opened. JSW Group and POSCO signed a fresh MoU for a steel plant — at the same Jagatsinghpur site. The announced capacity is lower, the structure is a joint venture rather than a wholly-owned POSCO subsidiary, and the political context is different (Odisha is now governed by the BJP, which controls the central government). Whether this iteration succeeds where the first failed will depend on whether the lessons of the first failure have been internalized: that the gap between signing and building is not a gap in paperwork. It is a gap in institutional capacity, community consent, and the willingness to do the slow work that precedes the big number.

There is something almost poetic in the fact that the largest FDI proposal in Indian history was a South Korean company proposing to build in Odisha. A Southeast Asian neighbor’s steel giant, investing in the state that sits on India’s richest iron ore deposits, adjacent to the Bay of Bengal. The geography was perfect. The economics were sound. The institutional capacity to convert the announcement into reality was not there. If Odisha cannot learn from POSCO, it cannot learn.

The Diamond Triangle: Heritage Without Infrastructure

Ratnagiri, Lalitgiri, and Udayagiri — three Buddhist monastic sites in the Jajpur and Cuttack districts, collectively known as the Diamond Triangle — sit on UNESCO’s tentative list for World Heritage Status. The name comes from the Vajrayana (Diamond Vehicle) sect of Buddhism that flourished there. The sites span over a millennium of Buddhist development: Lalitgiri is one of the earliest Theravada centres, dating to the second or third century BCE; Udayagiri was a Mahayana and later Vajrayana establishment; Ratnagiri was a major Vajrayana epicentre under the Bhaumakara dynasty, with two large monasteries, multiple stupas, and an excavated collection of bronzes and stone sculptures that would anchor any national museum.

The archaeological significance is not in question. What is in question is whether anyone outside a small circle of Buddhist scholars and dedicated travelers knows these sites exist.

Here are the numbers that matter: In 2024, the total number of foreign tourists who visited all of Odisha — every temple, every beach, every festival, every site — was 53,392. The top source countries were Japan (4,423), Italy (3,830), Germany (3,722), the UK (3,715), and France (3,008). Notice what is missing from this list: Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Indonesia — the Buddhist-majority or Buddhist-significant countries of Southeast Asia whose citizens form the backbone of Buddhist pilgrimage tourism in India. They do not come to Odisha in statistically meaningful numbers.

For comparison: Bodh Gaya in Bihar, the site of the Buddha’s enlightenment, drew approximately 250,000 foreign visitors in 2024. The Buddhist circuit in Uttar Pradesh (Sarnath, Kushinagar) drew over 350,000 foreign tourists in the same year. These sites have Thai monasteries, Japanese cultural centers, Burmese temples, and dedicated pilgrimage infrastructure. They appear in every Buddhist travel itinerary produced in Bangkok, Yangon, and Colombo.

The Diamond Triangle has none of this. A visitor to Ratnagiri will find an ASI-maintained site with entry tickets (Rs 15 for Indian/SAARC nationals, Rs 200 for others), a small on-site museum, and very little else. There are no hotels within walking distance. No restaurants. No guide services in Thai or Burmese or Japanese. No gift shops selling Buddhist literature or religious items. Visitors — the handful who come — report carrying their own food and water. The road from Bhubaneswar is approximately 90 kilometers, serviceable but not tourist-grade.

The Odisha government has taken steps. In 2025-26, an MoU was signed between the state’s Odia Language, Literature and Culture Department and the Light of Buddhadharma Foundation International for annual prayer ceremonies at the three sites, enhanced visitor facilities, digital engagement technologies, and cultural events aimed at establishing Odisha on the international Buddhist pilgrimage circuit. The Odisha Tourism Amendment Policy of 2026 specifically mentions the Buddhist circuit for eco-tourism and adventure tourism development. A second Prayer Ceremony for Guru Padmasambhava and International Buddhist Conference was held at Udayagiri, drawing 1,700 Buddhist monks, scholars, and devotees from across India and several foreign countries.

These are starts. But the arithmetic is stark. If even 5% of the 350,000+ foreign Buddhist tourists visiting UP and Bihar could be directed to Odisha as part of an extended circuit, that would represent approximately 17,500 additional visitors — roughly a 33% increase in Odisha’s entire foreign tourist count. The sites are there. The history is extraordinary. What is missing is everything between the history and the tourist: the roads, the hotels, the restaurants, the marketing in SE Asian languages, the partnerships with SE Asian travel agencies, the monasteries and cultural centers that give Buddhist pilgrims a reason to stay. Bihar built this ecosystem over decades. Odisha has not started.

OIMSEAS: The Academic Infrastructure

The Odishan Institute of Maritime and Southeast Asian Studies — OIMSEAS — was established in 1986-87, directly under the Chief Minister’s office. This was not an arbitrary bureaucratic creation. It was the institutional acknowledgment that Odisha’s maritime heritage with Southeast Asia was real, significant, and worth studying systematically.

OIMSEAS has produced genuinely important work. Its excavations at Manikapatna — the same excavations described in the opening of this series — revealed the most diverse assemblage of international ceramics found at any single site on India’s east coast. It investigated Pushpagiri Vihara, one of the great Buddhist university sites. It identified a 4,000-year-old settlement at Durgadevi. It traced an ancient maritime route at Aragarh. The academic contributions are real, documented, and have been published in scholarly journals.

Utkal University established a Southeast Asian studies program as early as 1978 — one of the few in India outside the national institutions. The program offered courses on the history, culture, politics, and economics of Southeast Asian countries. But it was discontinued due to a lack of qualified faculty. The program collapsed not because there was no interest in the subject but because there was no pipeline of scholars trained in Southeast Asian languages, history, and contemporary affairs to teach it. The irony is painful: the state with perhaps the strongest historical connection to Southeast Asia could not sustain an academic program about Southeast Asia because it lacked the human capital to staff it.

More recently, KIIT University in Bhubaneswar has hosted conferences on India-Southeast Asia relations, and the Kalinga Institute of Indo-Pacific Studies has been established to research the broader strategic context. These are positive signs, but they remain conference-level activities — valuable for networking and idea exchange but not the same as sustained academic programs that produce graduates with Southeast Asian language skills, fieldwork experience, and the kind of deep knowledge that translates into diplomatic and commercial capacity.

The gap OIMSEAS and Utkal University reveal is an institutional one. Odisha has the raw material for a world-class Southeast Asian studies program — the archaeological sites, the maritime heritage, the living cultural parallels, the geographic position. What it lacks is investment in the human infrastructure: faculty positions, student scholarships, language training, exchange programs with Southeast Asian universities, and the patient, unsexy work of building an academic pipeline over decades. The ASEAN University Network (AUN), founded in 1995, has 30 core members and 184 associate members — none in Odisha. Nalanda University in Bihar has joined the ASEAN-India Network of Universities. No Odia institution is part of either network.

The Patnaik Era vs. the Majhi Era

Naveen Patnaik governed Odisha for twenty-four consecutive years, from 2000 to 2024. During that period, the “gateway to ASEAN” rhetoric became a standard feature of the state’s investment pitch. The Make in Odisha conclaves were his initiative. Bali Yatra received consistent government attention. Industrial corridor planning, port expansion, and mineral-based industrialization were priorities. The state’s GDP grew, fiscal discipline was maintained, and Odisha’s image shifted from a state defined by the 1999 super cyclone to one associated with industrial potential.

What Patnaik did not do was build a standalone Southeast Asia strategy. There was no Odisha trade office in Singapore or Bangkok. No state-funded SE Asian tourism marketing. No dedicated program to connect Odia products to SE Asian markets. The engagement with Southeast Asia was, under Patnaik, a subset of the broader industrial investment pitch — one line in a PowerPoint deck that began with minerals and ended with ports. The ASEAN connection was invoked for its rhetorical value, not operationalized as a policy.

The Mohan Charan Majhi government, which took office in June 2024, has — at least in its first year — escalated the engagement. The Singapore partnership, the Indonesia-as-Bali-Yatra-partner initiative, the higher budgets for cultural diplomacy, the first PBD in Odisha, the Rs 50,000 crore maritime MoUs — these are all Majhi-era developments. The critical structural difference is that the Majhi government is run by the BJP, which also controls the central government. This alignment, which Patnaik’s BJD never had (its relationship with the center was transactional rather than organic), gives Odisha access to central government platforms and high-level diplomatic muscle in a way it has not previously enjoyed. When the External Affairs Minister says “Look East has its roots in this state” at PBD in Bhubaneswar, that is not a state government talking to itself. That is the national foreign policy establishment incorporating Odisha into its narrative.

Whether this alignment produces structural outcomes — not just statements and MoU signings — is the test. The early signals are mixed. The Singapore MoUs are specific and involve credible partners. The maritime MoUs follow the familiar pattern of large numbers with uncertain conversion rates. The Bali Yatra upgrades are genuine but incremental. The rhetorical escalation is unmistakable. The institutional capacity to convert rhetoric into outcomes has not yet been demonstrated.

One way to think about the transition: Patnaik built the industrial foundation — the port capacity, the mineral economy, the investment-friendly regulatory environment. Majhi has the political alignment to build on that foundation with central government support. The question is whether the building takes the form of more of the same (bigger conclaves, bigger MoU numbers, more bulk cargo) or something qualitatively different (container terminals, trade offices in SE Asia, SE Asian tourist infrastructure, outward-facing export promotion). The first path extends the extractive economy eastward. The second begins to transform it.

An Honest Ledger

The assessment that follows is not cynical. The initiatives are real. The political will, at least at the level of announcements, is genuine. But the principles that govern this analysis require distinguishing between what has been built and what has been proclaimed, between infrastructure and intent, between movement and progress.

What Is Real

Port capacity. Paradip is India’s largest port. Dhamra is expanding. New ports are in the pipeline. Odisha has genuine, world-class bulk cargo infrastructure on the Bay of Bengal. This is not rhetoric — it is concrete, cranes, and 150 million tonnes of throughput.

The Singapore MoUs. Eight specific agreements with named companies (Sembcorp, Surbana Jurong, NTU) and defined project scopes. These are the most concrete bilateral commitments Odisha has made with any SE Asian partner. Their specificity makes them testable — within three years, either Sembcorp has started work or it has not.

Bali Yatra’s rising profile. National Fair status, fivefold budget increase, diplomatic attendance from fourteen countries, Indonesian partnership. The festival’s transformation from a local fair to an event with national and nascent international recognition is real.

The IOCL petrochemical complex. The Rs 61,077 crore expansion of Paradip refinery — IndianOil’s largest-ever single-location investment, with a 1.5 MTPA naphtha cracker that will produce polypropylene, PVC, HDPE, and other petrochemicals. This is the single largest value-addition project in Odisha’s history, and when operational (projected 2029-2030), it will give the state something it has never had: petrochemical products that SE Asian markets actually import.

Marine product exports. Odisha exported 91,930 metric tonnes of marine products in FY 2024-25, worth Rs 4,708 crore. This is an existing trade, not a projected one, and SE Asia is already part of the market.

What Is Rhetoric

The Rs 16.73 lakh crore in investment intents. These are expressions of interest, not committed capital. Every Indian state plays this game. Vibrant Gujarat, Invest Karnataka, Make in Odisha — the headline number is always staggering, the conversion rate is always undisclosed. The number tells you about the state’s marketing capacity, not its industrial future. It would be wrong to dismiss it entirely — some fraction will materialize — but it would be equally wrong to treat it as a measure of what Odisha has “achieved.” It is a measure of what has been proposed.

“ASEAN gateway” positioning. This phrase appears in every Odisha government document about ports, industry, and foreign trade. It is geographically accurate — Odisha does sit on the Bay of Bengal, which is the body of water between India and ASEAN. But gateway to what? Without container shipping, the gateway is open only for iron ore and coal. Without direct flights to more than one SE Asian city (and that one flight is subsidized and below breakeven), the gateway is open only on paper. Without a trade office in any ASEAN country, the gateway has no one standing at it to welcome visitors.

Investment conclave MoU totals. Even the Singapore-specific MoUs, while more credible than the general conclave numbers, remain untested. India is littered with signed MoUs that produced nothing. The Surbana Jurong master plan for PCPIR is a consultancy deliverable, not a construction project. The distinction matters.

What Is Missing

A trade office in Southeast Asia. Tamil Nadu has institutional connections across SE Asia through its living diaspora. Kerala has a tourism brand recognized in the region. Gujarat has merchant networks. Odisha has no permanent presence in any ASEAN country — no trade representative, no investment promotion office, no cultural attache. This is the single most conspicuous absence in the state’s SE Asia engagement.

Container shipping infrastructure. Without it, Odisha cannot export high-value goods by sea. This is not a detail. It is the infrastructure that would convert the state from a raw material exporter to a participant in manufactured goods trade.

SE Asian tourist infrastructure at Buddhist sites. The Diamond Triangle needs hotels, restaurants, multilingual guides, road improvements, and partnerships with SE Asian travel agencies. It needs Thai and Burmese monasteries, the way Bodh Gaya has them. It needs to appear on the itinerary of a Thai pilgrim planning a trip to India. Currently, it does not.

Direct shipping lines to SE Asian ports. Container routes from Paradip or Dhamra to Singapore, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, and Jakarta do not exist. Goods must route through other Indian ports or through the transshipment hub at Colombo.

GI product marketing in SE Asian markets. Odisha has eighteen GI-tagged products, including Sambalpuri textiles, Pattachitra paintings, Cuttack silver filigree, and Kandhamal turmeric. None of these has a distribution channel in any SE Asian market. No Odisha pavilion appears at Singapore Art Week, Jakarta Fashion Week, or Bangkok’s home decor trade fairs. The products exist. The market exists. The connection between them does not.

A diaspora. This is the most structural absence of all, and it is not something a government can manufacture. Tamil Nadu’s SE Asian engagement is facilitated by millions of Tamils living in Malaysia and Singapore. Gujarat benefits from Gujarati merchant communities across the region. Odisha has no Odia diaspora in any SE Asian country. The sadhabas vanished centuries ago, and no merchant class survived to carry the connection forward. This means that every institutional link Odisha builds with SE Asia must be built from scratch, without the organic social infrastructure that other Indian states take for granted.

The Pattern

Stand back from the individual initiatives and a pattern emerges. It is not a pattern of failure. It is a pattern of asymmetry.

The Odisha government has consistently invested in attracting foreign capital into the state while neglecting the institutions that would enable Odia goods, culture, and people to flow outward. The conclaves bring investors in. The ports ship raw materials out. The cultural diplomacy celebrates a past when goods flowed both ways. But the actual machinery for outward engagement — trade offices, export promotion, container logistics, product marketing, tourism infrastructure — is either absent or embryonic.

This asymmetry is not unique to Odisha. It reflects a broader Indian pattern in which state governments compete ferociously for FDI while treating export promotion as a central government function. But in the context of the Across the Bay story, it matters particularly, because the original Kalinga-Southeast Asia connection was fundamentally about outward flow. The sadhabas sailed out. They carried goods, culture, religion, and technology to Southeast Asian shores. The return was commercial — gold, spices, tin, aromatic woods — but the initiative was outbound. Modern Odisha has inverted this: the initiative is inbound (attract investment), and the outbound flow (trade, tourism, culture) is left to emerge on its own.

It has not emerged on its own.

The 2025 acceleration — Singapore partnership, PBD in Bhubaneswar, Indonesia at Bali Yatra, maritime MoUs, BJP-center alignment — represents the most concentrated period of SE Asian engagement in Odisha’s post-independence history. Whether it represents a turning point or another cycle of announcements will depend on something the conclaves do not measure: the willingness to invest in the slow, institutional, outward-facing work that turns a state with ports into a state that trades.

The sadhabas did not wait for Indonesian investors to come to Cuttack. They built their boats, loaded their cargo, and sailed east. The wind was the same wind that blows today. What is different is everything else.

Source Research

The raw research that informs this series.