NO, INDIA, NO!

Photo: Star File

Yes, you have your problems.
Your media has dubbed your country the most unsafe in the world for women after recent gang rapes at New Delhi and Mumbai came to light. That is quite an abomination, albeit self-inflicted, considering that you had the likes of Indira Gandhi, our great friend during our War of Liberation, as your leader, Mother Teresa as a universal beacon, and Razia Sultana the only lady monarch to have ever ruled Delhi.
If the World Bank report can be quoted, one-third of your population are below the international poverty line and around the same number of people earn less than 2US$ per day. Yes, the poor are a problem even for the richest countries in the world.
You have very serious sanitation problems. UNICEF statistics (2008) show that again only about one-third of Indians have access to proper sanitation facilities, the lack of which coupled with poor hygiene are blamed for one in every ten deaths.
Like most countries in the world, corruption is widespread in your country, being ranked 95 out of a 179 countries in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index. Good news is that people only take TI seriously when their index shows a country in the green. Over the decades, your politics, bureaucracy, and the film industry, and now sports, have been victims of dishonesty and depravity at the cost of the mass, who suffer in every square feet of civilisation.
You have recurring difficulty with religious bigots despite being one of the sworn leading advocates of secularism; in fact constitutionally you are a secular state. In the first weekend of this September, police reports that confrontations between Hindus and Muslims killed at least 28 people and gravely injured many more in Uttar Pradesh. You have to tackle the ever so often violence centring religion, and the menace is on the rise despite your best intentions. To that end not all your neighbouring countries are apparently helpful; with terrorism in India often being alleged to be sponsored by countries other than Bangladesh. The dastardly serial blasts are a cowardly act on humanity.
Then there are natural calamities, which as a perilous effect of climate change, are a nuisance in most places across the globe. Most recently, the Uttarkh and floods of June have caused ravaging landslides, destruction of bridges and roads, killing about six thousand people, mostly pilgrims and tourists.
Added to such man-made disasters are those that are perpetrated by the man who do not see eye to eye with the others. Maoist ambush attack in May in the Chhattisgarh'sjunglesof central eastern India left 16 dead, including two senior Congress leaders, and 25 others injured. The Naga insurgency in the northeast being among the world's oldest active insurgencies, has the hands of your defence services full to a some extent. You have insurgency problems all around your frontiers, but the border areas of Bangladesh, you will agree, are no more a safe haven for your trouble creators.
But, unhappily for both our peoples and as a sordid example of poor bilateral relationship, you have more often than not shown your worse side, although we believe you could, and should, do much better as a good next-door neighbour. In fact, on record, we have been one of your best neighbouring and supportive countries, and for a good many years now.
There are reasons for our concern.
Defying all international norms and your repeated assurances (perhaps due to Mamata's lack of mamata) you could not conclude an agreement with us on sharing justly the waters of Teesta. How would you like it if a country upstream refused to share with you the water of a joint river? Sadly for us, we are downstream. Your media reports that though Bangladesh had initially demanded a fifty per cent share of the Teesta water, in recent times the country was agreeable to a twenty-five per cent share for a start. Yes, let us start sharing. The West Bengal Chief Minister claims that her opinion had not been sought in the matter though the Teesta flows through the state. For heavens seek her opinion, show her the international rules, and start sharing. Putting Bangladesh in a geographical disadvantage cannot be to India's advantage, least of West Bengal.
The unimplemented Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) is yet another story of unfairness. According to the 1974 accord, when Bangabandhu was alive, Bangladeshi enclaves (chhitmahal) in India and Indian enclaves in Bangladesh would be exchanged expeditiously, and the people in the enclaves would be offered a choice of citizenship. As a mark of our goodwill we were quick to hand over the Berubari enclave to you. But on the pretext of legal complications you marked timed for nearly thirty years to honour your pledge to permanently lease to Bangladesh an area measuring about four acres near 'Tin Bigha' to reach the Dahagram- Angorpata enclave of Bangladesh. You cannot buy time like that. It hurts the people of both the countries. So we had to wait to for Bangabandhu's daughter to be back in the helm of affairs for the two governments to declare in September 2011 that the long-standing matter shall be resolved by swapping the disputed enclaves, giving again the residents a choice of nationality. Accordingly, India will receive 51 enclaves of 7,110 acres, while Bangladesh will get 111 enclaves of 17,149 acres. While 'good boy' Bangladesh has already ratified the agreement, you are yet to get the nod from your Parliament, where your political opponents have vowed to oppose the constitutional amendment. Opposition, do they have to oppose everything?
Your image in Bangladesh has worsened due to the unacceptable killing spree by your Border Security Force (BSF). By published account the BSF has killed over 1100 people since 2000, 'turning the border area into a South Asian killing fields'. The murder of Felani Khatun in January 2011 has rocked the conscience of civil societies across capitals, shamed your judicial system, and stunned us and others even in your country to see an unfortunate young woman hanging from a barbed wire fence for four hours, and the 'enemy' soldiers having a casual chat and walkabout just yards away. You can show us pictures from the Nazi war camps where Hitler's Germany set the benchmark for barbarism, and that of the Iraq war where some Americans played holi with human blood, but few as derogatory and as mocking. Your military-style mockery of a trial, admittedly the first in such cross border murders, that dragged 15-year old Felani Khatun's father all the way to India, but which also acquitted a BSF constable was not necessary. If you want to clear your conscience, put the killer/s on a real trial in your real court, for they are killing human beings with impunity for a 'crime' as innocent as crossing a border, or trying to. When we share about 2,500 miles of border, these flights are bound to happen. Felani Khatuns are not terrorists. They are unarmed needy people. By international law, they deserve a fair trial.
You may have noticed that I have intentionally avoided calling you a 'big' neighbour, brother is a far cry, oh how much you have changed since 1971! With a population of 1.27 billion you indeed are big compared with us, but calling you as such would suggest that we are 'little'. But no nation in the world, however little it may be in size and population, considers itself small, and justifiably so. For our prides are equal, if not more.