WRT: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mukto-mona/message/49110
1. I am afraid the very term "transit facility" has been misunderstood. Here the proposed transit facility will allow India to transport goods from one part of India to another part. It would not be a trade between India and Bangladesh. It would shorten the trade route for India and make the transportation more efficient cost wise and in other ways too.
2. Landlocked countries like Nepal gets transit facilities from India. India allows Nepal to get its imported goods from Kolkata port by trucks and imported Bangladeshi goods by rail. India sometimes uses this transit facility to create political pressure on Nepal. This happened some time in eighties when I was involved in exports to Nepal from Bangladesh. I don't think that in the international arena that was a respectable thing that India, a big country, did to a small country like Nepal.
3. I don't know what our policymakers have in their mind. If it does not cost any thing to Bangladesh, unhesitatingly Bangladesh should provide her friend country transit facilities. What can be the possible negative factors against providing this facility to India?
(i) One factor that immediately comes to my mind is infrastructure. Is it ready to withstand and accommodate the additional huge transportation of goods? If it is not, India should help Bangladesh develop the necessary infrastructure.
(ii) How to be sure what goods are being transported? Are they hazardous? Should arms and explosives be allowed? These are legal issues. These are to be mutually settled.
(iii) Will there be any transshipment? Would Bangladeshi transporters be allowed to carry the goods? Will the Bangladeshi agencies be allowed to work as clearing, forwarding and handling agents? These are the economic issues that Bangladesh and India should settle on a friendly basis and with positive attitudes.
4. Cheap anti-Indian politics and anti-Indian slogan (Jamaatis and some other Islam-pasand parties have already started talking in such terms) should not over weigh the long-term tangible and intangible benefits that Bangladesh might derive from the proposed transit agreement.
---SC
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