Can 'kakababu' culture deliver?
Sadeq Khan
The finance minister of India, Pranab Mukherjee is visiting Bangladesh on August 7. An Indian embassy handout said, the Indian finance minister is coming "at the invitation of Bangladesh foreign minister Dipu Moni. During his visit, Pranab Mukherjee will meet with Dipu Moni, finance minister AMA Muhith and call on prime minister Sheikh Hasina.
The Indian finance minister will witness the signing of $1 billion Line of Credit agreement by CMD, EXIM Bank of India and Secretary, Economic Relations Department of Bangladesh."The Indian prime minister had announced a $1 billion line of credit to Bangladesh for a range of projects, including railway infrastructure, supply of BG locomotives and passenger coaches, procurement of buses, and dredging projects during Sheikh Hasina's visit to New Delhi in January this year. The terms of credit, as it turned out, are stringent, requiring 80% procurement of Indian supplies only, and 100% employment of Indian consultants only.
Although the ostensible purpose of Pranab Mukherjee's visit is to lend weight to the signing of the $1 billion credit line between the Secretary, Economic Affairs Division of Bangladesh and the Chief of Marketing Division of EXIM Bank of India, the real purpose of the short visit appears to be political. Mukherjee will return to Delhi the same day to be able to attend the day after celebration of the founding day anniversary of India's ruling Congress party. Before the scheduled visit, Mukherjee remained for weeks together under tremendous pressure from combined agitation of Indian opposition parties inside and outside the parliament for what the agitators termed as unusual and unbearable trends of rising commodity prices.
The Opposition attributed the cause of what the Indian ruling party acknowledged as unhealthy "inflationary trends" to the Finance Minister's poor timing and actions relating to policy measures like withdrawal of energy subsidies, reduction of food subsidies, etc. and other misfeasance. In the changing matrix of Indian power base, challenged on many other fronts like Kashmir trouble, Maoist insurgency, resilience of ULFA resistance, and troubled relations with virtually all immediate neighbours, the position of Pranab Mukherjee, as a veteran politician close to the Indira Gandhi family, appears also to have suffered some demotion. With age he showed signs in Indian parliament on several occasions of being irritable and not in control of his temper.
The heir-apparent of the Indira Gandhi dynasty, Rahul Gandhi has also in the mean time developed his own dynamic leadership circle where Mukherjee may not fit in even as an adviser any more. In Bangladesh, the standing and credibility of Pranab Mukherjee has diminished significantly on account of non-fulfilment till today of his promised Indian rehabilitation assistance to Sidr victims of 2007-08, and failure in rice-supply pledges at that time.
The visit has plainly been hurriedly arranged. Up to August 3 the Director General (South Asia) of Foreign Ministry Mohammad Imran claimed that the foreign ministry officially had not yet received any information about the Indian finance minister's visit to Dhaka on August 7. He said, "There was a discussion that the Indian finance minister will pay a brief visit to Bangladesh regarding signing of an agreement of US $1 billion line of credit. But we have not yet officially been informed the date of his visit."
Officials at the Economic Relations Division in Dhaka, which is looking into the credit line agreement, also could not confirm Mukherjee's visit. In fact, the Bangladesh Finance Minister had nothing to do with the invitation accorded to the Indian Finance Minister, and has little to discuss with the latter as it is an institutional credit, not a state credit.
It has been speculated in Bangladesh newspapers that the visit is more to assuage the unhappiness of the Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina with the lack of implementation from the Indian side of the terms of the joint communique signed between her and the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Visits between the two countries at appropriate levels of respective administration have virtually ceased. Random shoot-at-sight killings preventing normal Bangladeshi traffic at the land borders by trigger-happy BSF continue unabated, despite high-level Indian assurances that the practice of such extrajudicial killings will be abandoned. There is no progress on issues like use of water resources of common rivers, withdrawal of non-tariff barriers for Bangladeshi exports to India, postponement of implementation of Indian Tipaimukh barrage project pending examination of environmental impact and satisfaction of Bangladesh with regard to the project's adverse consequences, or settlement of disputed land and marine boundaries, to name only some broad issues that disaffect India-Bangladesh relations.
Strangely enough, ahead of his visit, Mukherjee has given a press interview to Suparna Chakraborty, the Calcutta representative of the expatriate Bangladeshi newspaper 'Thikana', published from New York. In that interview, Mukherjee has used a peculiar term, 'military boundary' with regard to border troubles between India and Bangladesh. He said negotiations at the ground level have progressed between the officials of two countries in identifying 'enclaves and entrances' in pursuance of Indira-Mujib pact of 1974 and the process will continue. He gave the assurance that at the political level the two countries will sit down to resolve the issue of "military boundary" as soon as possible. To most Bangladeshis, the talk of such 'military boundary' delimitation to be undertaken afresh as pitched by the Indian Finance Minister (who was formerly in charge of foreign relations) is bound to sound scary and ominous, despite the inefficacy of his promises and external performance with neighbours in the past.
Mukherjee continues to be indulged by political leaders of the present ruling cabinet of Bangladesh (including particularly the Foreign Minister and perhaps the Prime Minister) from a hangover of "Kakabau" culture. That culture is being obliterated by generation gap reshaping politics in both countries, and over-indulgence of it is bound to be regarded as demeaning for the national dignity of Bangladesh by the "digital" generation of this country. However, for all its worth, if the prime minister or the foreign minister of Bangladesh could obtain an explicit assurance from Pranab Mukherjee, as a veteran member of the Indian power elite, that our legitimate claim over the South Talpatti island in the Bay will be respected by them, and not pushed aside by "aggressive mapping" and naval sabre-rattling, at least something tangible may be obtained from the visit.
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