Narendra Modi’s Dhaka visit was undoubtedly a success and there is little doubt that India-Bangladesh relations are qualitatively much better today than they have, perhaps, ever been barring for the first couple of years after the emergence of Bangladesh. It is, however, also undeniable that the visit could and should have been even more productive and has not succeeded in irreversibly placing ties between the two countries on an upward curve.
The centrepiece of the visit clearly was the concretisation of the India-Bangladesh land boundary agreement of 1974 by the exchange of the instruments of ratification pertaining to it and its 2011 protocol. This puts at rest a long-standing contentious issue between the two countries, constitutes a humanitarian solution to the problems of the thousands of nationals of the two nations located in their respective enclaves, and above all enormously facilitates border management which is critical to national security. While the Modi government must be credited for hammering out a consensus in Parliament for ratification of the agreement equally, the BJP must also be blamed for opposing the same initially which led to delay in its concretisation. Similarly, while the UPA did a lot of the heavy lifting in developing the 2011 protocol it must also be faulted for not being able to develop the required consensus for ratification.
But apart from the concretisation of the land boundary agreement, the success of the visit can be gauged from the fact that as many as 20 other bilateral documents were signed, exchanged, adopted and handed over. Some of the more significant outcomes of the visit were a meeting of minds on terrorism-related issues and understandings to enhance cooperation to address them, India’s accord of a fresh $2 billion line of credit following the $1 billion given in 2011, a series of connectivity-related understandings like commencement of the Kolkata-Dhaka-Agartala and Dhaka-Shillong-Guwahati bus services and decision to consider additional such services, access for India to Mongla and Chittagong ports, agreement to commence negotiations on a multimodal transport agreement etc., agreement to engage in comprehensive energy sector cooperation including putting in place systems to rapidly enhance power supply from India to Bangladesh by a series of measures such as doubling the transmission of power on the Bheramara-Baharampur grid interconnection from 500MW to 1,000MW, and a series of trade facilitation measures such as renewal of the bilateral trade agreement, conclusion of a coastal shipping agreement, allocation of land in Bangladesh for Indian SEZs, conclusion of a bilateral cooperation agreement between the Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institute (BSTI) and the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). It is also significant that during the visit, Adani Power and Reliance Power signed MOUs valued at $1.5 billion and $3 billion respectively with the Bangladesh Power Development Board for setting up plants generating 4500MW of power. The latter constitutes the largest single investment in Bangladesh.
Despite these impressive outcomes, as well as the enormous goodwill earned by Modi, the result of the visit was less than optimal. One should not be overly influenced on this account by either the length of the joint declaration issued at the end of the visit or the fact that Sheikh Hasina broke protocol in personally receiving and seeing off Modi at the airport. She also did so in September 2011 during Dr Manmohan Singh’s visit. As to the joint declaration like the one issued during Dr Manmohan Singh’s visit this one is also exactly 65 paragraphs—perhaps the spin doctors in government missed a point on this score and failed to make it longer!
An objective assessment of the Modi visit must take into account the fact that the groundwork undertaken by Sheikh Hasina on the one hand and the UPA government on the other hand had already placed the India-Bangladesh relationship on a sound footing. Indeed, credit must go primarily to the former who laid the foundations for the upturn in India-Bangladesh ties by unconditionally addressing all our security concerns. Her government not only put an end to the earlier practice of providing succour and support to separatist elements from India but has also been unremitting in its efforts to stamp out fundamentalism and terrorism in Bangladesh. The UPA reciprocated by way of a generous assistance package, endeavours to meet Bangladesh’s power requirements, easing of trade restrictions, the spadework to make possible the concretisation of the land boundary agreement, and striving to alleviate some of Bangladesh’s concerns on water-related issues. The UPA’s contribution to improved India-Bangadesh ties was, of course, marred by its failure to deliver on the land boundary agreement and on the sharing of the Teesta waters, both of which are dear to Bangladesh.
In the context of the foregoing, for the Modi visit to have been transformational he should have even have gone beyond delivering on both the land boundary and on Teesta. His failure to deliver on the latter has been commented upon adversely in Bangladesh and this issue will continue to bedevil ties between the two countries. Non-delivery of successive Indian prime ministers on this issue is unfortunate as Indian and Bangladeshi experts had arrived at an interim agreement in this matter in 2011. Surely, this should have been done if nothing else but as a quid pro quo for the moves made by Sheikh Hasina to address our security-related concerns. It is also a pity that successive Indian prime ministers have chosen to be influenced by Mamata Banerjee in not moving ahead on the Teesta water sharing arrangement, as agreements in this regard are a central government prerogative.
An optimal visit would have required not only the resolution of all major differences like on the Teesta but, in addition, the initiation of a time-bound process to ensure that India-Bangladesh ties are never again hostage to the vagaries of regime change. Such a process demands the close intermeshing of the two nations which can most effectively be achieved through vastly enhanced connectivity and the joint management of rivers. It is on this that the Modi visit should have focussed. While some modest work has been done on connectivity, nothing has been done on the latter though it did get a mention in the 2011 India-Bangladesh Joint Framework Agreement on Cooperation for Development. The joint management of rivers is usually an anathema for upper riparians but it is worth undertaking vis-à-vis a friendly Bangladesh. This may result in our having to undertake time-consuming consultations on major upstream irrigation and hydropower projects but the overall gains in terms of more efficient river management for irrigation, power, flood control and transportation will more than compensate for the same. Above all it will be the strongest single confidence-building measure between the two countries and will bring them much closer.