The Bangladesh Today - 25th January 2009
Every government of Bangladesh - elected or not - feels its incumbent
upon itself to bring up the issue of transit to India but in the end
nothing really gets done except talks which inflame the passions of
the people of this country, moving them to resist any moves by any
government to offer infrastructural facilities to India such as
transit and the use of ports. This has been going on for the last 2
decades but in the last couple of years it has assumed urgent
proportions for India because of their need to get to their states
bordering Bangladesh to the north and east, it being much more time
consuming and costly to travel all the way round than through
Bangladesh. Consider, for example, the fact that right after the
Emergency was declared on 11 January 2007, the Indian Government
invited the Chief of Army Staff to India and gave him a "royal
treatment" in order to elicit some form of commitment regarding the
transit issue - it is of note that the Indians did not invite the
President or the Chief Advisor but the man holding the gun and the
power who got all the attention. Similarly, even before the 29
December election, the Indian Ambassador in Bangladesh was busy
shuttling between the BNP and AL, hedging his bets. When the AL won
the election, the Ambassador came on strongly setting up a visit by
the Indian Foreign Minister whose main agenda undoubtedly would be the
transit, the port and the off-shore exploration of gas in the Bay of
Bengal.
Much has been talked about the issue of transit and there is nothing
new to add as far as the perceptions and view points of the people of
Bangladesh are concerned. On 14 July 2008, The Bangladesh Today
carried a commentary on the issue; it would be worthwhile to reproduce
the major aspects of it here.
The Indian High Commissioner in Bangladesh, HE Pinak Ranjan
Chakravarty, spoke to the press on 10 July 2008, after his meeting
with our Foreign Advisor. Mr. Chakravarty had this to say: "We are
raising the issue at every forum but it is yet to come into effect.
Bangladesh considers the issue as political but it is not that; we
don't see it as political. Both the countries should consider the
issue of transit facility for the development of the overall economy
and trade". Well, from this statement its pretty clear what India
wants and why but perhaps India and its High Commissioner (HC) are yet
to understand what Bangladesh wants and why. So let's get down to the
crux of the business.
Starting with the economic aspects on which the Indian HC seems to be
so insistent, we would like to mention that both Bangladesh and India
have access to each other through various land, river and sea routes
and therefore trade and commerce between the two countries can go on
and increase to any extent that the two countries want. As a matter of
fact India has a huge trade surplus over Bangladesh, which means that
India is exporting far more than importing from Bangladesh. Therefore
it is difficult to see how a "transit" through Bangladesh is going to
further improve the economic aspects, when trade is already heavily
weighted in favor of India.
India has to bear tremendous costs to get to its south-eastern states
all the way round; a transit through Bangladesh would make that access
easier both economically as also militarily because these
south-eastern states are all plagued by insurgencies of one type or
another. No, Mr. Chakravarty it is not Bangladesh which is going to
benefit from the transit - except for the paltry sums to be realized
for the passage through - it is India which is going to benefit,
leaving Bangladesh with a permanent security hazard much like the 25
years Indo-Bangla treaty signed just after the independence of Bangladesh.
While we are on economic issues, what about equitable distribution of
river waters which India is denying us, turning huge tracts of our
agricultural lands into deserts during the dry seasons; what about
damming of rivers upstream and releasing those waters during monsoons
turning the whole of Bangladesh into an ocean; what about trying to
grab some of our Exclusive Economic Zones in the Bay of Bengal; what
about denying our people access to many of our "enclaves" in India and
finally what about flooding our Country with Indian phensidyl, drugs
and intoxicants of all sorts.
Coming to the far more important political and security aspects which
the Indian HC is so keen to downplay, we would like to mention that a
"treaty of transit" is certainly going to include clauses for
guaranteed continued access to the transit routes by India. Should
those guarantees fail at anytime, India would not hesitate to march in
with its military forces to ensure that transit, citing reasons of
"national interest" much like they did in Sikkim, Maldives and Sri
Lanka. So, Mr. Chakravarty, every Bangladesh Government understands
these things and that's why India never got the transit and it never will.
If India wants transit through Bangladesh, we want transit through
India to Nepal and China - this makes more economic sense to us. So by
all means let's have transits, both through Bangladesh and India with
equal guarantees and conditions of access through these routes. Better
still, let's have the historical "Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Assam" in
one powerful Nation-State of Bangladesh so that India doesn't have to
bother about transit to those areas.
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