Mamata tantrum a sideshow to India-Bangla landmark deals

 ‘Mercurial’ and ‘brash’ continue to be the apt adjectives to describe her moods and moves. She conveyed to prime minister Manmohan Singh that she would not be able to accompany him on his visit to Bangladesh on Tuesday and Wednesday. For, she is not happy with the final draft of the interim deal New Delhi and Dhaka are likely to sign for sharing of the waters of river Teesta. She believes that the deal was not in the interests of her state.

It was clearly a snub to the prime minister, who had invited her to join him on his visit to the eastern neighbour. It also dampened the spirit in both New Delhi and Dhaka ahead of a visit that was expected to take the bilateral relations to a new height.

To ensure that the opposition CPM-led Left Front does not get a political weapon to criticise her and her party, Banerjee clearly overlooked the big picture of Bangladesh-India relations. No doubt, as chief minister of West Bengal she has to protect the interests of her state, but she could have found other ways to nudge New Delhi to explore if a better deal could be worked out with Dhaka. Instead, she chose to do it in her trademark brusque style, thus not only embarrassing Singh, but also striking a sour note ahead of Singh’s visit in which India-friendly Awami League led government has invested huge political capital.

The stakes are high for New Delhi too. The interim water-sharing deal on Teesta and a protocol on land boundary for exchange of enclaves and adversely possessed land are being highlighted as the most important among the likely outcomes of Singh’s visit to Bangladesh. But New Delhi and Dhaka also have other significant deals to ink.

And most important among them is a framework agreement for regional connectivity in South Asia, which is expected to be one more step towards getting the much-awaited transit facility through Bangladesh for India’s North-East. The ‘transit deal’ will in effect link India’s mainland and its landlocked north-eastern states through road, railways and waterways via Bangladesh. One of the states to be immensely benefit is Tripura, the last bastion of the Leftists and naturally the next big target of Banerjee.

Hotly debated political issue
Transit for India has been a hotly debated political issue in Bangladesh. Though New Delhi has for long been asking for it, there was no forward movement on it when Bangladesh National Party headed by Begum Khaleda Zia was in power. It was only after Sheikh Hasina returned to power in December 2008 that New Delhi and Dhaka started discussing the transit deal again. And the first significant achievement was made in January 2010, when Hasina came to India on a game-changing visit.

The two countries agreed to change the bilateral protocol on Inland Waterway Transit and Trade to declare Ashuganj in Bangladesh and Silghat in India as ports of call, an arrangement that made transit through waterways more useful for India. Dhaka also allowed New Delhi last year to transport huge turbines through waterways and road via Bangladesh to Tripura, where the ONGC is building a thermal power plant. It was indeed a prelude to wider transit facility that New Delhi has been asking from Dhaka.

Despite stiff opposition from the BNP, Hasina led government is now set to firm up the transit deal during Singh’s visit to Dhaka. Bangladesh is also likely to formally allow India to use Mongla and Chittagong ports for movement of goods through road and rail. The Chittagong port – the largest sea-port of Bangladesh – is just about 70 km away from the southernmost town of Tripura and all that India needs to do to link the tiny state to the port is to build a bridge over river Feni.

While this crucial connectivity will surely provide a huge opportunity to spur economic growth and bring prosperity to the landlocked region, its strategic significance cannot be overstated, particularly with China steadily expanding its footprints across South Asia. Beijing also has standing offers for Dhaka to substantially raise Chinese assistance in building infrastructure in Bangladesh.

Just a day before Banerjee cried foul over the deal on Teesta, the United Liberation Front of Assam signed a Suspension of Operation agreement with the Centre and Assam. The deal marked the formal beginning of a peace-process between the government and the larger faction of now-divided ULFA, which led an armed rebellion against India for 32 years.

It would not have been possible to bring ULFA to the negotiation table, had Hasina not reversed the policy of her predecessor to provide sanctuary to the Indian insurgents in Bangladesh. Less than a year after she took over as prime minister, almost all the top ULFA leaders were picked up from Bangladesh and handed over to India.

Hasina did walk the extra miles to counter the opposition BNP’s propaganda and explain to her people that friendly relations with India was in the interest of Bangladesh. Her government tried hard to drive home the point that economic landscape of the impoverished country could be changed dramatically, if the country transformed itself into a trade bridge, not only for India and its North-East, but also between India and rest of the eastern subcontinent.

While Banerjee has to protect the interests of West Bengal, New Delhi cannot be arm-twisted to offer Dhaka a deal, which would not only be difficult for Hasina to sell in Bangladesh, but also give the BNP an opportunity to raise its traditional anti-India pitch.

As she chose political grandstanding instead of going for a rationale approach to make the deal a fair one for all, the stormy petrel of West Bengal just missed an opportunity to rise above electoral interests in her traditional turf and to emerge as a leader of the much larger eastern and northeastern region.