Make border areas of shared prosperity: Veena Sikri

Interview with Former High Commissioner of India to Bangladesh

Veena Sikri, a former Indian Foreign Service officer, who served as India’s High Commissioner to Bangladesh from 2003-06, tells  Archis Mohan that the Land Boundary Agreement between India and Bangladesh is a historic milestone. Edited excerpts:

West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee had refused to accompany Manmohan Singh to Dhaka in 2011. But she is in Dhaka with PM Narendra Modi. How crucial is this Mamata factor to India-Bangladesh relations?

I would call it the Modi factor, for having delivered on the Land Boundary Agreement (LBA). It is a historic milestone, a game changer in South Asia. It’s been pending since 1947 when Cyril Radcliffe hastily drew the boundary, ignoring the ground situation and leaving so many problems for India and what was then Pakistan. There were attempts, like the Nehru-Noon pact of 1958 to resolve it. The 1974 Indira-Sheikh Mujib accord was a comprehensive agreement. Bangladeshis will tell you how they ratified it immediately, but in India we were required to table the map of what we were changing, ceding or getting, on the floor of Parliament and only then ratify it. It was only in 1996, when Sheikh Hasina became the PM; the list of enclaves was exchanged for the first time. In 2011, the strip maps and the protocol were signed. This was the time when Manmohan Singh should have got the LBA to Parliament, he didn’t do it.

Modi has overcome all problems related to state governments and with his own party’s Assam unit and worked to get the LBA passed unanimously in both the Houses. This has created an atmosphere in Bangladesh and all of South Asia that he is walking the talk on his ‘neighbourhood first’ policy.

How far will the LBA go to resolve problems on the India-Bangladesh border and help India’s northeastern region?

Modi realises the internal prosperity he wants for India cannot materialise without its neighbours being a part of it. The idea is now that LBA’s been solved, our border areas which have become dens of illegal activities and are poverty ridden, can now be transformed into areas of shared prosperity. This we have to achieve through connectivity-driven economic growth in the BBIN (Bhutan, Bangladesh, India and Nepal) sub-region. There are already bus services. But more promising is water and coastal shipping. Indian companies must invest in joint ventures in Bangladesh, so it becomes your partner.

But Bangladesh complains of an adverse balance of trade with India?

They have a much worse balance of trade with China, but they don’t talk about it. It is no issue at all because you don’t tell China that. Secondly, the bulk of India’s exports are actually inputs for Bangladesh garment industry — cotton yarn, polyester yarn, denim fabric, textile machinery, etc. And we give duty waiver to Bangladeshi goods to come back. Their garment industry is now topping the world. We need to build synergy.

There is this constant complaint that Indians are slow to execute projects while the Chinese are efficient.

There is no people-to-people contact between the Chinese and Bangladeshis. It is true that China has a huge hold there, for example much of Bangladeshi military equipment is from China; they are into mining and have built power plants. We gave Dhaka $ 1-billion line of credit in 2011 which was later converted into a grant. Unlike us, they don’t give grants, only credit lines which you have to pay back.

China supplied fighter jets to Bangladesh at friendship prices but the spares are prohibitive. Bangladesh Air Force officers would tell you how they cannibalise one aircraft to service another. However, India need not be that apprehensive but go on strongly with its own cooperation and quickly implement its projects.

We also need to help Bangladesh strengthen its democracy, particularly its institutions like the Election Commission and the bureaucracy which is deeply politicised.