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Reaching out to Dhaka

Why don't you supply us gas?" I asked Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in Dhaka a few days ago. "Both India and America have the same question," she said. "We shall first find out how large our reserves are. If we come to the conclusion that we can export, keeping our needs in view, we shall do so." Opposition leader Khaleda Zia gave me the same reply, more or less in the same words, in the same tone.

Yet, the two seldom agree on anything. This is the bane of Bangladesh. The two main political parties, Hasina's Awami League and Khaleda's Bangladesh Nationalist Party are at war all the time, even losing sight of what is best in the country's interest. The Ganga Water Treaty and the Chittagong Hill Tract Agreement are perhaps two of Hasina's leading achievements. But the BNP finds holes in both treaties and characterises them as "a sell-out to India."

This may be the reason why Dhaka has been slow in starting first a bus service and then a goods train between Bangladesh and India. A little more leeway can facilitate reaching out to the northeast states, physically and tradewise. The old routes before Partition can be revived. In the process Bangladesh can benefit a lot. But that would require firmer relations between Delhi and Dhaka than the one prevailing today. Economically, Bangladesh feels "exploited." At least there is a widespread feeling that India should have helped it progress when New Delhi contributed to its liberation.

After a long wait, India agreed to allow 25 items from Bangladesh to come in duty-free. That was two years ago. Our Foreign Office or some political considerations have seen to it that the agreement remains on paper. I have not been able to think of one reason why Delhi should be dragging its feet because Hasina, who is fighting bravely on many fronts, is weakest when she is asked what India has done to assist Bangladesh after its secession from Pakistan.

On the other hand, the bazaars of Dhaka are full of Indian goods. The unofficial trade is worth about $ 2 billion. Bangladesh wants it to be legalised. Since it limits avenues of earnings within Bangladesh, most of the illegal migration from across the border into India is because of large-scale unemployment. Leaders of both parties admit that hundreds of Bangladeshis are leaving the country in search of work, many of them land in India.

"You make Bangladesh economically liveable and the infiltration into your country will automatically stop," a leading businessman told me. I recall there was a proposal to issue work permits to the Bangladeshis seeking jobs in India. Home Minister L K Advani made the statement two years ago at his ministry's consultative committee meeting. Either the proposal has been dropped or it is not considered proper to go ahead with it. Maybe, Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh has put his foot down.

Whatever the reason, a worthwhile alternative to the illegal influx has been abandoned. Delhi will serve its interests if it revives the proposal. The Bangladeshis are going to come to India anyway. It is better they do so legally and for a fixed period through work permits. Their main interest is employment, not living in India.

The poverty is exploited by the anti-Hasina forces, which comprise both pro-Pakistan elements and fundamentalists. Islamabad is said to have given currency to another idea. Although it is not in good shape economically, Pakistan is telling Bangladeshis that they were better off when they were part of East Pakistan. Some people have been take in by the propaganda. This has only added to the anti-India feelings because Delhi is seen as an 'exploiter'.

For the Bangladeshis, the dream of being economically viable has not come true even partially. With 40 per cent unemployment among the educated, the disappointment in the country about not making good is deep. But there is vicarious satisfaction that Pakistan is in more economic trouble than Bangladesh is.

To my dismay, I discovered that Delhi was not far enough to escape the fallout of the enmity between the Awami League and the BNP. The election for the Sangsad (the Bangladesh parliament) is due later this year. Already, India is being dragged into the fray. Pakistan too figures because of its "support" to the BNP.

Hasina has launched a scathing attack on those who sided with Pakistan during the liberation struggle in 1971. She has had no hesitation in naming Zia ur Rahman, Khaleda's late husband, among those responsible for the assassination of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and her family. Hasina has not minced words in assailing fundamentalists for trying to communalise the polity. She has arrested under the Public Safety Act some fundamentalist leaders, for agitating against the ban on fatwas, edicts by Islamic clerics, commanding women not to mix with men outside their family, either at work or otherwise.

Khaleda refutes the charge of exploiting religion. But both fundamentalist organisations, the Jamiat-e-Islami and Islami Oikya Jote, are her electoral allies. "I have more freedom fighters in our party than the Awami League," she told me. But there is no doubt that the anti-liberation forces proliferate on her side.

It is taken for granted that if Khaleda returns to power, the extremists and pro-Pakistan forces would come to the fore. This prospect is not good for India which is bound to be hurt, particularly when Pakistan's ISI uses Bangladesh as a conduit to foment trouble in the northeast. Liberal forces in Bangladesh will also be hurt because they do not want the anti-liberation elements and fundamentalists to be strengthened. In a way, the liberals and India sail in the same boat.

Kuldip Nayar