Bangladesh's generosity when it comes to India is on an upswing since the Awami League returned to office for a second consecutive term following the controversial January 05 elections that the Congress-led government in India backed strongly. The new AL-led government has returned to the same mode of giving India without seeking reciprocity that was set by the three negotiators after the AL came to power in January 2009. One of them, the former Foreign Minister, is not part of the foreign affairs team any longer.
Even those three negotiators, who were not ready to accept any criticisms about India under any circumstances, had to go on the back foot fearing public anger when India defaulted on the Teesta deal during the visit of the Indian Prime Minister in September 2011.
The Bangladesh Foreign Secretary had summoned the Indian High Commis-sioner, when the Indian Prime Minister had landed in Dhaka for his official visit, to inform him that Bangladesh was withdrawing the letters that would have given India land transit on a permanent basis from the table in retaliation for India's failure to give the Teesta deal.
One must wonder now from where Dhaka had mustered the courage to summon the Indian Foreign Secretary. Dhaka did not express even mild disappointment when Manmohon Singh informed Sheikh Hasina on the sidelines of the BMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) Summit in Myanmar that his government would not be able to deliver the Teesta and LBA (land boundary agreement) deals and that Dhaka must wait for a new government in New Delhi after the April/May elections for expecting the deals to be delivered. Dhaka was not even concerned that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that objected to the LBA deal could lead the next Indian government.
To make that worse, the Trinamool that opposed the Teesta deal could be an ally of the BJP-led government. Instead, Dhaka sent its top career diplomat, the Foreign Secretary to New Delhi who also did not raise with his hosts any concern over the Congress-led Indian government's failure to deliver the deals.
Instead, the Foreign Secretary conveyed gratitude to the Indian government for its role in enhancing Bangladesh-India relations that has helped millions in Bangladesh find a better quality of life!
The Foreign Secretary's visit raised questions in Bangladesh because it did not make sense why Dhaka would send its top career diplomat to a government that was on way out and going by polls, was not expected to return.
It did not make sense either why the Bangladesh government would set itself in a mode where it is not just not expressing anger/disappointment at India's failure to deliver commitments while accepting from Bangla-desh huge concessions but eager to please India even more without caring for its own interests and pride.
Therefore, it has surprised and perplexed many that Dhaka has now allowed India another type of connectivity, the permission to take 6000MW of power from Assam to Bihar through Dinajpur. The permission was given at the recent Secretary level meeting of the power ministries of the two countries. There are two more major such "power connectivity" in the pipeline!
The Bangladesh Power Secretary was unable to give any satisfactory answer when asked by journalists how Bangladesh would benefit from such a deal. However, sources in the ministry said that Bangladesh could expect some of the 6000MW but was not sure how much when the project is implemented by 2017. The Indian Power Secretary, however, promised much more. He said that there was vast scope of production of hydro-electricity in the Seven Sisters and Arunachal Pradesh alone could produce 50,000 MW of hydro electricity. He added that India would need this future production of electricity to be carried to mainland India through Bangladesh and that Bangladesh would also get a share of it.
However, the Indian Power Secretary made promises the same way as it has done in the last five years without any guarantee of delivery thus establishing a pattern of dealing with Bangladesh of getting major concessions from Bangla-desh on just promises!
The AL-led government has now granted the "power corridor" without considering what it is stepping into or caring about delivery thus establishing a pattern of believing in New Delhi's promises without asking for any firm commitments for publicly inexplicable reasons.
However, the strange pattern of conducting bilateral relations between the Congress-led government in New Delhi and AL-led government in Dhaka notwithstanding, there is something unbelievable about the Assam-Bihar power corridor.
In granting it, the AL-led government has dispensed with common sense that should have dictated it to take a wait and see policy because of pending elections in India to find out how the new government, if led by the BJP, would deal with the Teesta and the LBA
deals.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Commerce has stated that steps are being taken for improving the road infrastructure to make Bangladesh ready for the Bangladesh-Myanmar-India- China Economic Corridor (BMIC-EC) that is the new terminology for land transit. Clearly,
these developments are ominous.
The AL-led government is showing too much inclination to make India happy to the extent that it could not care less that in Bangladesh-India relations, since the AL came to power in January 2009, it is Bangladesh that is delivering to India what is vital to India's national interests while India is promising to deliver what we are interested in, like sharing of waters of the common rivers, but defaulting on such promises without even an apology. In the process, Bangladesh has already wasted its hugely powerful security card, now wasting the land transit card and a new "power connectivity card" for not even peanuts thus literally pushing Bangladesh to become powerless in negotiating with India any of its interests with India in future.
In turning its playing cards impotent, the AL-led government is placing Bangladesh at India's mercy. The AL-led government is not even considering that in India, if a deal such as the "power corridor" were signed between two provinces where the power corridor would be through a third province, there would have been protracted discussions so that the public of the province giving the corridor would be aware about what was being done.
The Bangladesh Power Ministry signed the deal without showing the concerns that even an Indian province would have.
Therefore, serious concerns are arising even among those in Bangladesh who believe that Bangladesh and India have a lot of mutual benefit to achieve from reciprocal bilateral relations. These people are becoming increasingly worried that the Bangladesh government is showing no concern at India's failure to deliver its commitment and instead giving it benefits, some even without being asked for and without considering its national interests and playing away cards for free, cards that it could use to further its national interests.
What is equally, if not more, perplexing is that New Delhi is accepting these benefits while being aware that such one-sided relationship is not going down well with the people of Bangladesh.
With Teesta drying up and Mamata Banarjee threatening to do the same to the flow of the Ganges, the power corridor and land transit could become literally explosives in destroying the future of Bangladesh-India relations. The AL-led government is giving India major concessions for its interests and not that of Bangladesh.
One just hopes the next Indian Government would see the dangers of relations between New Delhi and a political party in Bangladesh and bring back Bangladesh-India relations to one between the two countries and their
peoples.
Therefore, the Indian High Commissioner's recent assurance that the new Indian government would not change its stance towards Dhaka was very hollow indeed because it was to the ruling party and not the country.
The writer is a retired
career Ambassador.
© 2024 - All Rights with The Financial Express
