By
Praful Bidwai
Monday,
September 19, 2011
Did
India snatch defeat from the jaws of victory during its prime minister’s first
visit to Bangladesh in 12 years? The answer is largely yes, although the visit
also registered some gains. On balance, the Indian leadership squandered a
historic chance to overcome mutual distrust and transform the India-Bangladesh
relations to a point where they reflect the potential for exemplary cooperation
between the two neighbours, with huge benefits to both and to the South Asian
region.
The
visit’s biggest vitiating factor was West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata
Banerjee, who adopted an unreasonable and parochial stand on sharing the waters
of River Teesta and pulled out of the trip. Could her obstinacy and
temperamental behaviour have been anticipated? Was enough groundwork done to
prepare her for an equitable sharing of the river’s waters? There are two
divergent accounts of this. One says Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s
representatives, including National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon, tried
hard to convince Banerjee that the interests of her state, in particular, the
North Bengal districts, were being taken care of in the Teesta agreement with
water shared in a 52:48 ratio between the two countries. Banerjee first agreed,
but suddenly raised micro-level issues, such as sharing the flows during the
lean season. During that season, West Bengal, she insisted, would concede no
more than 25 percent of the flow at a barrage called Gazaldoba, which lies 90
km inside Indian territory. Menon took this proposal to Bangladesh for
discussion.
But
meanwhile, Banerjee abruptly decided to boycott the trip. She is reportedly
extremely keen to build a base for her Trinamool Congress party in North
Bengal, where the Left and the Congress are traditionally strong. According to
the second account, the Central government failed to reassure Banerjee
sufficiently, and could have done so had it worked harder on the larger
picture. At that picture’s centre is the historic wrong India committed by
unilaterally diverting the waters of the Ganga by building a barrage at Farakka
in 1975. This was grossly unfair in and of itself. Worse, the diversion caused
enormous losses of food and fisheries production in Bangladesh for almost two
decades. According to Ashok Swain of Sweden’s Uppsala university, Farakka
changed the river’s hydrology, “disrupted fishing and navigation, brought
unwanted salt deposits into rich farming soil, [and] affected agricultural and
industrial production ...”, causing an annual loss estimated at 2 to 2.5
percent of the GDP. This is equivalent to the effect of the entire Information
Technology sector being taken out of the Indian economy! Even worse was the
human tragedy, including large-scale displacement, destitution and forced
migration.
Farakka
became a symbol of Indian domination and stoked anti-Indianism in Bangladesh,
which the Right cynically exploited. Anti-Indianism entered the mainstream.
Banerjee could have been persuaded to understand the importance of undoing this
blunder. She might even have comprehended the inequity of the current Teesta
water-sharing pattern, under which India reportedly has access to about 32,000
cusecs (cubic feet per second) of water during the lean season for eight
million people, while Bangladesh must make do with just 5,000 cusecs for 20
million. Unfortunately, such a focussed effort was not made. Even if it had
been, it’s conceivable that Banerjee would still have been obstructionist – for
wholly narrow, short-term political reasons. As a last resort, the Centre could
have asked for more time to negotiate a satisfactory Teesta accord, and still
tried to get Banerjee on board. That didn’t happen. The Teesta failure is a
huge setback to the cause of radically reforming Indo-Bangladesh relations.
Singh’s
Dhaka visit was billed as a game-changer, which would pave the way for a Bay of
Bengal community, including Burma, and provide greater linkages with Nepal and
Bhutan, thus promoting South Asian integration. It would also greatly
facilitate transit and trade between India’s northeast and the mainland.
Transporting 45 percent of all goods to the region through waterways, roads,
rail and air links via Bangladesh would yield enormous savings in fuel and
time. The advantages of developing this backward and restive northeast cannot
be overstated. India must reverse the damage by negotiating fair and equitable
agreements on all the shared rivers with Bangladesh as quickly as possible.
India must acknowledge that Bangladesh has legitimate concerns about some Indian
dam projects such as Tipaimukh in Manipur. These must be addressed in a
cooperative spirit. The Bangladesh government has acted positively on India’s
demands on transit and security. It has refused to provide sanctuaries to
insurgent groups from the northeast, enabling the agreement now being reached
with the United Liberation Front of Asom.
Prime
Minister Sheikh Hasina has gone out of her way to meet Indian requests, often
at the risk of being branded unacceptably pro-Indian. India should do more than
reciprocate all this. Indian policymakers need to remind themselves of the
Gujral Doctrine, a worthy principle which held that India’s dealings with all
her neighbours barring Pakistan must go beyond strict reciprocity, to
generously unilateral gestures. (I would argue this should apply to Pakistan
too, especially in trade and people-to-people exchanges, but that’s another
matter.) The Gujral Doctrine created goodwill for India, and helped counter the
charge that India has a Big Brother-like attitude towards its smaller
neighbours and doesn’t hesitate to interfere in their internal affairs, as it
did by sending troops to Sri Lanka, imposing an embargo on goods going to
Nepal, and militarily intervening in the Maldives. It’s imperative that India
rectify not just the image, but the object (its relations).
As
India-Bangladesh relations go, it is not enough for New Delhi to rest on the
small gains made through the various agreements signed in Dhaka on the land
boundary, biodiversity conservation, economic cooperation, and a $750 million
loan for trade infrastructure, etc. India must correct the huge imbalance in
bilateral trade, with a deficit of $4.5 billion vis-à-vis a country that’s 15
times smaller in economic size. Readymade garments make up 80 percent of Bangladesh’s
exports. In 2008, India started giving “duty-free” access to them, but still
levied a countervailing duty of 4 to 12 percent, thus taking away with the left
hand what was given with the right hand. The garment quota was raised from
eight million pieces to 10 million last year, but Bangladesh exhausted this
year’s quota in the first six months.
India
still has 480 items on its “negative” trade list for Bangladesh. But if all
these were to be given true duty-free access, it would cost India a paltry $5
million loss in revenue, according to a 2008-09 estimate by the Centre for
Policy Dialogue in Dhaka. Such access would greatly boost investment, growth
and employment in Bangladesh, with immense benefits for regional integration.
India must develop imaginative strategies in trade, economic and cultural
cooperation, education and action to combat climate change. Bangladesh is one
of the world’s most climate change-vulnerable countries. Parts of India’s East
Coast are equally vulnerable. Cyclone Aila, which devastated large swathes in
Bangladesh and India’s Sunderbans, showed this in 2009.
As
a precondition for this change of stance, India must stop seeing itself
primarily as part of the global Big League and relate seriously to the South
Asian region to which it belongs, geographically, culturally and strategically.
The
writer, a former newspaper editor, is a researcher and peace and human-rights
activist based in Delhi. Email: prafulbidwai1@yahoo.co.in
http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=68341&Cat=9
