Delhi summit a sign of productive bilateralism
ON balance, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's official visit to India can be characterised as an exercise in productive bilateralism. A crucial point here is that the visit, the first for a Bangladesh leader in a long number of years, has provided the heads of government of Bangladesh and India with the opportunity to engage in summitry to review the ties between the two countries. There is hardly any question that these ties have in recent years often been marked by acrimony generated by a number of issues affecting especially Bangladesh. Issues such as trade, transit, water-sharing and suspicions on the harbouring of criminal and even terrorist elements in each other's territory have created quite a few barriers in the way of cooperation between the two nations.
Against such a background, the summit in Delhi can be considered a determined step toward a revitalisation of relations between Bangladesh and India. How such revitalisation can be made substantive has come through the agreements, three in all, which Delhi and Dhaka have reached on jointly battling terrorism and organised crime and on a mutual transfer of convicted prisoners. Add to these the memoranda of understanding (MoUs) penned on cooperation in the power sector and in the field of cultural exchange. India's willingness to export 250 megawatts of electricity to Bangladesh is a significant step considering Bangladesh's present difficulties in the sector. Moreover, Delhi's offer of a line of credit to the tune of $1 billion to Dhaka as assistance to the latter for infrastructure development provides yet another dimension to bilateral ties.
Clearly India's affirmative approach to the removal of 47 Bangladeshi products from Delhi's negative list as a way of facilitating increased, duty-free entry of Dhaka's goods in the Indian market is welcome and hopefully more items would be added to the basket. At the same time, Delhi's agreeing to cater for Bangladesh's need for transit to and from Nepal and Bhutan would help connectivity in the region. On the cultural plane, the fact that the two countries have decided to observe the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore in 2011 is once more reflective of the common bonds of tradition Bangladesh and India are heir to.
With all the controversy and indeed fears generated over the long-term effects of the Tipaimukh dam on Bangladesh, we expect that Bangladesh's concerns will be fully met. As it is, the Indian Prime Minister has assured our Prime Minister of not doing anything that will harm the interest of Bangladesh in any manner. That said, there is yet the unresolved issue of a sharing of the waters of the Teesta and other common rivers, a point the Bangladesh leader raised with her Indian counterpart. Rivers being an integral part of life in Bangladesh, it is simply not enough to say that water-sharing has been discussed. It is critically important that substantive discussions on the issue begin in light of the just-concluded summit in Delhi. The goodwill generated by Sheikh Hasina's visit should facilitate satisfactory resolution of the water-sharing issue.
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