These ancient bonds are reinforced by ties of blood and new family links transcending borders, nationality and ethnicity. And daily there is much legal as well as informal commercial activity and social interaction across these borders. The region’s geography and history, and the aptitudes and interests of the people make South Asia a natural common market and a integrated though diverse community.
However, ever since the subcontinent’s partition and independence from the British rule, the region has been a theatre of responses contrary to the dictates of geography and history and the people’s natural propensity for amity, kinship and cooperation. Politics driven by vested interests, the search for new identities on the part of the elites, nationalistic passions often fanned by insecure regimes are part of the reason for this sad state of affairs. The asymmetry in size, resources and power potential between India and its smaller neighbours also causes feelings of envy, unease and resentment among the latter.
Since neither neighbours nor India can do much about the latter’s size, the neighbours misinterpret India’s nonchalance concerning this penurious aspect of our relations as India’s arrogance, if not quite its perfidy. They nurse unwarranted suspicious, raise impossible demands and use India as a punching bag to ease their frustrations.
Some in the region even view India as a country to be balanced and countered through liaisons with extra-regional powers. Not that these latter have done much good to the region: in fact, they have only caused rifts within and between countries and militarised some to virtual self-destruction.
Nevertheless, nothing India does is good enough, and even India’s genuine solicitude for its smaller neighbours and its willingness to be of use and help are spurned as condescension, or worse, hypocrisy.
Of course, we have some good and genuinely friendly neighbours too, but overall, India’s 60-year experience of neighbourly relations can be summed up in seven short words: Victim of the Tyranny of Small Neighbours!
Be that as it may, neighbours cannot be changed, and it is for the bigger partner to be patient and modest and remain ready always to offer friendship and cooperation and to seize the opportunity, when it turns up, to prove its goodwill, friendship and sincerity and convert estrangement into truly close good-neighbourly relationship. The best way to alleviate the ill-humour caused by asymmetry is to refrain from seeking reciprocity: for what we can do to enhance our neighbour’s well-being, prosperity and power eventually adds to our own strength also.
In neighbourhood relationships, everywhere there are commonalities as well as differences. South Asia is no exception and even though in our case commonalities outweigh, by far, our differences, we must, one by one, remove the differences from our bilateral agendas. In that task the initiative should rightly be with the big neighbour.
A moment propitious for such an initiative has now arrived for lifting India-Bangladesh relations, stagnant since the tragic assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujeeb in 1975, to a new rising trajectory of cordiality, trust and cooperation. It is a moment of opportunity because after 15 failed military coups and three military governments, democracy has risen phoenix-like to a new stature in Bangladesh.
Moments are rare in South Asian history when a military takes over its country’s rule, rids it of corruption, disciplines the bureaucracy, fights terrorism, restores law and order, curbs extremism, organises a remarkably fair, free and transparent election and hands over power to an elected government.
That is precisely what the Bangladesh Army has done and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina comes to Delhi later this week as Bangladesh’s elected Prime Minister. And she comes to us after doing something which should transform our relations with this good neighbour.
Whereas the previous governments in Dhaka were in denial about sheltering Indian insurgents and turning a blind eye to the activities of Pakistan’s ISI in support of terrorism in India, Prime Minister Hasina has expelled or imprisoned the ULFA leaders. India must respond to this voluntary gesture in a way which strengthens Bangladesh and reinforces Prime Minister Haisna’s personal position as a new leader of democracy’s surge in South Asia.
Bangladesh has a few genuine grievances which we must now redress with promptitude and transparent sincerity. Its very large trade deficit with India has been a source of concern for long. Related to the trade imbalance is the question of non-tariff barriers against meagre Bangladeshi exportable goods.
We agreed to an India-Bangladesh Free Trade Area, but our diligent bureaucrats lost little time in negating that highly desirable measure by pasting on it a negative list of 300 items!
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had spoken sometime ago of “unhindered flow of goods” between the two countries. In implementation of that policy, the negative list of 300 items should be scrapped and a joint mechanism set up to examine and remove non-tariff barriers which continue to hinder trade-flows.
Prime Minister Hasina’s visit should also result in equally solid progress in resolving the important issue of fair and equitable sharing of waters of 54 common rivers. The best way to do this would be to initiate a joint environmental programme to address a whole range of issues, including the issue of sharing of river waters, joint projects to build storage dams, generate hydel power and connect grids of the two countries for power trading etc.
Bangladesh and Sheikh Hasina herself have been targets of terrorism. There is much room for cooperation between the two countries to fight that evil. Regular consultations through frequent formal and informal high level exchanges of visits should be instituted between the intelligence agencies, the police and the militaries of the two countries. The BSF should stop shooting to kill Bangladeshi infiltrators — a cause of much public agitation and anti-Indian propaganda in Bangladesh.
Cooperation in border management will help reduce illegal border crossing and combat cross border crime and terrorism. Joint mechanisms should be established to resolve without further delay the important issues of land and maritime boundaries, bilaterally if possible, on the basis of partnership and mutual accommodation or with the help of World Bank’s good offices.
During this writer’s recent visit to Dhaka, he had difficulty in explaining why an agreement concerning transit facilities for Bangladesh to Nepal, across the Siliguri neck, signed years ago has remained unoperationalised.
In view of the rapidly changing global and sub-continental environment and the growing expanse and complexity of our relations with our South Asian neighbours, the government should consider creating an additional post of Minister of State in the Ministry of External Affairs to deal exclusively with neighbourhood developments and relationships under the overall direction of the Minister of External Affairs.
The writer is a former Foreign Secretary of India
Source: The Tribune, Chandigarh, India.
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