Imagining the East

How well do India and Bangladesh know each other?
That question struck me several times during the visit, about a week ago, of a multi-party parliamentary delegation from Bangladesh to New Delhi and Guwahati, in their meetings with a variety of stakeholders--including a group of Indian parliamentarians from all political parties, external affairs minister Salman Khurshid, national security adviser Shivshanker Menon, Assam's chief minister Tarun Gogoi, as well as civil society and the press in both Indian cities.
For two nations that have supposedly participated in the highs and lows of the other's birth and middle age, the revelation that this was the first exclusively political delegation from Bangladesh to India, ever, seemed incredible-- especially if you note that the invitation wasn't even from the Indian government or the Parliament of India, but from the Delhi-based Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), whose political outreach programme is prioritised towards improving political engagement with India's neighbourhood.
At the end of five days of intensive engagement with Indians of all colour, you could draw the following three conclusions:
First, the level of India-Bangladesh intimacy is directly proportional to proximity to the border that they share, which is natural, since West Bengal and Assam and Tripura have much more intense feelings towards Bangladesh than Kerala or Punjab or Maharashtra.
Second, despite the truth of the first conclusion, there is a general admission across India that Bangladesh has been deeply wronged by West Bengal's maverick Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee when she, last year, single-handedly blocked the Teesta waters agreement between the two countries.
And third, Bangladesh remains in general denial of the fact that illegal migration, or infiltration, of Bangladeshis across the porous border into India continues until to this day.
There was a fourth achievement wrought by this Bangladeshi parliamentary passage to India: The fact that senior Awami League leaders like Tofail Ahmed and Ashequr Rehman and Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leaders like Moudud Ahmed and M K Anwar sat together, on the same side, and broke bread with parliamentarians like Rashed Khan Menon of the Workers party -- who was, supposedly, named by his father because he admired the Indian Defence Minister V.K. Krishna Menon--and Zafar Iqbal Siddique of the Jatiya Party, was clear evidence that Bangladesh's deeply divisive politics isn't as fractured as it seems from the inside.
BNP leader Khaleda Zia's recent visit to India had, clearly, reassured her party that Delhi was a benign power and would promote the relationship with Bangladesh irrespective of the party that ruled it -- to which Moudud Ahmed more than once pointed out that the BNP returned the compliment. Considering the tense history of the BNP-India relationship so far, both sides seem to have come to terms with the fact that they cannot be antagonists forever; that the nature of the 21st century demands a transformation from pure politics to a political-economic relationship between the two sides.
As for the Awami League, it is par for the course that relations with India will improve when it is in power in Bangladesh, except when Mamata Banerjee wills it otherwise. But now that the Trinamool Congress has walked out of the Congress-led coalition in Delhi, it seems that the ratification of the Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) will be introduced in the Indian Parliament sooner than later, and once that is done, the Teesta waters agreement will also be pushed through.
Salman Khurshid, India's foreign minister, is believed to have already begun informal consultations with the opposition party to win them around to supporting a two-thirds ratification of the LBA.
But it was the visit of the Bangladeshi parliamentary delegation to Guwahati that created the greatest stir. First of all, this was the first ever visit by a group of Bangladeshi parliamentarians to Assam, and its capital city was agog by the fact that they were there.
Security and pilot cars and sirens ensured that they got top protocol. And in response to persistent questioning at the Guwahati Press Club, when the Bangladeshi parliamentarians insisted that "there wasn't a single illegal Bangladeshi immigrant in India," they also got top billing in all the newspapers.
When you have a border that is more than 4,000 km long and which has been so criminalised that it allows everything from cattle-smuggling to illegal export of phensedryl drugs to trafficking in humans, then it is time to transform the old blame-game and consequent denial into an opportunity. As Rashed Khan Menon pointed out, people move for economic gain, it isn't their fault that the grass is sometimes greener on the other side.
It must be time, then, for India's eastern seaboard to begin imagining its own destiny in which neighbouring states like Bangladesh and Myanmar as well as the provinces of southern China are connected with India's north-eastern states like Assam and Meghalaya and Tripura through trade and lines of credit and investment. Assam's rich resources could become the centre around which the criss-cross of commerce takes place, while Bangladesh's intrepid and hard-working people could manpower this transformation. Illegal migration? What's that!
First, though, the transformation must take place in Delhi. For too long Delhi has held sway over its bordering states. Now the time has come for it to let go and allow the fringes to take charge. The political impulse is already moving from the centre to the states and the government in Delhi must move with it.
This means that the governments of Assam and Tripura and Meghalaya and Sikkim must be much more involved in the making of policy with Bangladesh and Myanmar--as well as with other states further east like Thailand and Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. When politicians talk to each other, directly, they will find local solutions. Allowing legitimate, cross-border travel means that people can legitimately seek greener pastures, instead of hiding from smugglers and traffickers. The Indian north-east would regain its pre-partition connectivity, while transit states Bangladesh would reap the windfall of its incredible location between India, Myanmar and southern China.
Can we do it together? Can India and Bangladesh's political classes set aside their fierce political rivalries and come together to debate issues that matter to both our peoples?
If they don't, I think the time has come that we will soon do it, anyway.

The writer is a freelance journalist based in Delhi, India, and helped organise the Bangladesh parliamentary visit to India for FICCI.