March 9, 2012
M. Serajul Islam
It is a pity that the present Government has to contend with
Mamata Banarjee who has emerged as the proverbial party spoiler for the Awami
League Government. When Sheikh Hasina could have been basking in glory for
taking Bangladesh-India relations by the scruff from the doldrums of stagnancy
to a paradigm shift to mutually
beneficial relations, she has been left high and dry having given India major
concessions on security and land transit without receiving the expected
concessions from India. Failure to get an agreement on Teesta and delay in
executing the enclaves exchange deal, both on account of Mamata Banarjee, has
put Sheikh Hasina in a very soft spot politically.
In 1996, the government of Sheikh Hasina had been able to get then
West Bengal’s support for a water deal more important and more complicated than
the Teesta. The Ganges Water Agreement was reached within six months of Sheikh
Hasina assuming office in 1996. Successful negotiations with Deve Gowde who was
then Prime Minister paved the Centre’s approval to the deal. However it was
Delhi that had then told Bangladesh the a
Ganges water deal would need approval of West Bengal and that Bangladesh would
need to take WB Chief Minister Jyoti Basu on board.
Bangladesh did just that. Then Foreign Minister Abdus Samad Azad
visited Kolkata and met the Chief Minister who also came on an official visit
to Dhaka. At that time, New Delhi, Dhaka and Kolkata were on same wave length.
Things were all over board. However, at that time Devi Gowde was a weak Prime
Minister and Jyoti Basu was a powerful Chief Minister whose party’s influence
was also important for Delhi. Importantly, the government in New Delhi was not
even a Congress Government and Bangladesh at that time had made no major or
minor concessions to India.
This time, it is the Congress in power in New Delhi that returned
to office for a consecutive term more or less at the same time as the Awami
League. Both parties were given major
support by the people in the respective countries. Historically, due to factors
embedded in the events of 1971, the affinity between the Congress and the Awami
League is deep. On top of it, this time
Sheikh Hasina made the first moves with concessions to India that were fulfillment
of Indian dreams.
It is such a positive setting that has been messed up. Two
politicians made major accusations against the Advisers who have led the
Bangladesh negotiations for the mess up. Former President HM Ershad and Rashed
Khan Menon have blamed the Prime Minister’s Advisers, using very harsh language.
Rashed Khan Menon said that the Advisers
have acted as Advisers to the Indian Prime Minister rather than to Sheikh
Hasina. HM Ershad has said that the
Advisers are “in favour of India”. While the accusations are unfortunate and
extreme, such views nevertheless highlight the fact that the India factor
has become a very major political issue
in Bangladesh’s politics as the parties enter into the final stretch leading to
the next general elections in about 2 years’ time.
President Ershad is the
veritable weather cock of Bangladesh’s politics and his remark about the
Advisers has a lot of political meaning. He has already led marches to benefit from
people’s frustrations with India on Teesta, Tippaimukh and recently on the Feni
River. In fact, he is playing the “India card” more strongly than the BNP while
being a partner of the ruling coalition that underlines the fact that the
ruling party is politically in a very tight corner with the poor way it has
negotiated with India thus far.
The Advisers’ role notwithstanding, the real accusing finger is
being pointed both by New Delhi and Dhaka at Mamata Banarjee for the failure of
India to deliver on the promises it made after accepting the Bangladesh
concessions. . When Mamata Banarjee led her party Trinamool to victory in
Paschim Bangla in May last year, she was fondly projected in the Bangladesh
media as an ally to our efforts to get India to agree to our legitimate
interests and rights from India. In fact, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina also
called her on phone to congratulate her on her victory. She was taken for
granted so much so that no one on our side cared that that at about the time of
the Indian Prime Minister’s visit to Dhaka, she was facing the electorate in
the Teesta area in Paschim Bangla. If anyone had done so, it would have emerged
as daylight that there was no way for her to offer Bangladesh 50% of the share
of Teesta water because, first, India had never agreed in the past to give Bangladesh
more than 28% share, and second, the people using Teesta waters had urged
Mamata Banarjee not to enter in to any deal that could affect them adversely.
Facts about how and why she has today turned out to be the major
block in Bangladesh’s efforts are now emerging. Former Foreign Affairs Adviser
Dr. Iftikhar Ahmed Chowdhury who now is a Senior Research Fellow at Institute
of South Asian Studies at the University of Singapore has just written a
research article on Mamata Banarjee. The article has given insight to the
questions our side should have asked instead of taking MB for granted. Then
there are issues of history, culture, etc that Dr. Chowdhury have brilliantly
brought into his analysis leaving readers wondering if our negotiators even
knew a little bit about Mamata Banarjee or had cared to know about her. If they
had, they would have saved themselves from wasting Sheikh Hasina’s vision and
courage because as the cliché goes, “forewarned is forearmed.”
There are some ominous facts that Dr. Chowdhury has revealed in
his paper that our negotiators must read for a grip on reality instead of
fondly hoping some power will emerge from the heavens and turn Mamata and
Manmohon into angels for making Bangladesh smile. Mamata Banarjee is no
ordinary lady or any run of the mill politicians. She has not just taken on
Manmohon Singh and making him dance to her tunes; she is simultaneously
fighting two of India’s most powerful politicians simultaneously and so far, winning.
In choosing her Cabinet, she spurned Pranab Mukherjee by declining
to give a post to his son. Instead, she offered him a lowly bureaucratic post
of Chairman of the State’s Industrial Development Corporation. Most recently,
she teamed up with a few other Chief Ministers and torpedoed a pet project of
the other most powerful politician in New Delhi, Home Minister P. Chidambaram.
They shot down the establishment of the National Counter Terrorism Centers on
the plea that the matter of law and order is a state subject and not a central
one. The major source of MB’s power base is the 19 seats that her party
Trinamool contributes to the Congress led UPA coalition of Prime Minister
Manmohon Singh. The seats are simply put, crucial to the Congress’s survival.
That power of MB was palpably visible when Indian Foreign
Secretary Ranjan Mathai mentioned categorically on the evening of 5th
September last year that as Mamata Banarjee had objected to the Teesta deal, it
was being taken off the table for Prime Minister Manmohon Singh’s talks the
next day in Dhaka with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The Indian Foreign
Secretary flagged for us the power of MB that we should have known weeks and
months earlier instead of being led up the garden path totally unaware of the
perils ahead. In fact, even after Ranjan Mathai’s statement, our side was still
hoping an agreement would be signed the following day!
Mamata Banarjee has now said that any agreement of Teesta must
wait till she knows for certain on how much water would be available in the
river for sharing with Bangladesh. It is
just not the 50/50 sharing that is the only contentious issue. She is also
insisting that the water available on the Bangladesh side where there is
barrage must also be calculated before the sharing formula is agreed upon.
Clearly, the Teesta agreement is caught in the quicksand and with it, our hopes
for a just share of its waters anytime soon.
Mamata Banarjee has also set her sights at the exchange of
enclaves and has objected to the agreement. Recently, our Home Minister has returned
from New Delhi with the assurance that the issue would be placed in the next
session of the Indian parliament for ratification. In fact, she has submitted
it to the cabinet that it is the 1974 Indira-Mujib Agreement that would be placed
for ratification 37 years after it was signed! The way she put it made it
appear like that the ratification would be done easily. She failed to ask the
Indians what they proposed to do with MB’s objection to the exchanges. Her party’s support would be crucial for the
2/3rd majority in both houses of the India parliament that would be
required to ratify the agreement on the exchange of enclaves.
Mamata Banarjee has clearly chosen to use the “Bangladesh card” in
the political game she is playing with New Delhi. With BJP also opposed to the
exchange of enclaves, one must wonder what it is that has led our Home Minister
to be convinced that India would ratify the 1974 Indira-Mujib Agreement. One
element of the Agreement gave Bangladesh “lease in perpetuity” over the Teen
Bigha corridor. Is that going to happen instead of the 24hours’ access to the
Dahagram-Angorpota enclaves? Either this is a fond wish of our negotiators or
someone has got the issues mixed up!
The Congress had expected that elections in the five Indian states,
including UP, would give it some leverage over Mamata Banarjee. In particular,
the Congress was hoping that a good show in UP where Rahul Gandhi staked his
claim to be the next Prime Minister of India on line would send a message to
Mamata Banarjee that the popularity of the Congress is on an upswing.
Unfortunately, the news from UP is not good. Congress fared very badly although
it did gain some seats and did not do its national image any good. Mayabati’s
Bahujan Samajbadi Dal has lost badly but the swing has gone to Mulayam Singh
Yadav’s Samajbadi Dal where his son Akhilesh Yadav has captured the nation’s
attention as the face of the new generation well ahead of Rahul Gandhi.
The state elections are thus not expected to lessen Mamata Banarjee’s
political value to the Centre as no helping hand is expected to come to the
Congress from the state elections. Clearly, the leverage to come out of the
predicament in which Bangladesh finds itself is not with us. Mamata Banarjee is holding the whip hand. We
have lost our handle on influencing events in the way we did our diplomacy with
India. Bangladesh would now be left watching how much and to what extent Mamata
Banarjee plays the “Bangladesh card”.
Nevertheless, in diplomacy there is never a lost case and the
scenes quickly change as they do in a drama. For our own interest, we need to
know more about Mamata Banarjee and take lessons from past mistakes following
the merit in another cliché, better late than never. In this context, those
negotiating should on a priority basis read Dr. Iftekhar Chowdhury’s article.
Better still, they should take his advice for future course of action on how to
deal with Mamata Banarjee.
The writer
is a former Ambassador to Japan.
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