Teesta river issue: India won’t play by the neighbourhood’s rules

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Bangladesh promised much and ultimately ended up delivering little. Breakthroughs were promised wherein Bangladesh would gain significantly from new treaties governing the sharing of Teesta waters and India was to gain what it had long wanted — transit through to the North Eastern states and South East Asia.

Yet the lack of political consensus and any state-centre agreement on these issues meant that neither of those agreements was signed. A post mortem therefore seems warranted.

To be fair the visit wasn’t a complete failure — other important agreements, such as the enclave swap deal and the lifting of Indian tariffs on Bangladeshi readymade garments went through, but what of the primary Indian interests that the prime minister was seeking to consolidate?

To begin with, countering China’s increasing presence would have been a major factor, given that even though it shares no border with Bangladesh, China overtook India as Bangladesh’s biggest trade partner last year. The transit deal was aimed at just such a move but with far greater, grand strategic implications.

This deal, aside from being a foot in the door to increase direct trade, was also India’s passport to developing the North East. This same transit would have also been leveraged into a regional connectivity system with ASEAN, making not just the North East, but also West Bengal an engine of growth. That deal will now have to be postponed — it being made quid pro quo to the Teesta water deal. Bangladesh’s gas reserves are another prize that India seeks, but again now that India’s foot is no longer in the door, a precious opportunity has been lost.

Just as important to this gameplan was using that transit to simulate growth in Bangladesh, directly dependant on India. Combined with gas sales this would have become far too important a source of revenue for the Bangladesh government and a source of employment for the people. Any government, even the Khaleda Zia led ones, would have been deterred from pointlessly antagonising India.

Effectively, while Ms Zia is adept at using India as a scapegoat for her administrative incompetence, India related economic growth in Bangladesh would have turned the tables by linking Bangladesh’s economic wellbeing to good relations with India.
Geopolitically this is as big a blunder as it can get, and to quote Talleyrand, “It was worse than a crime — it was a blunder”.

Sheikh Hasina had staked much personally on the Teesta deal, throwing off her detractors by showing how much clout and competence she had in getting India to sign a deal. The last minute cancellation has effectively pulled the rug from under her feet, and made her vulnerable to attack. Worse still, India has confirmed a long held impression of being an unreliable and untrustworthy ally that is all too willing to let its friends down for selfish considerations.

The Teesta water sharing is both, a real and emotive issue for the Bangladeshi people. Since murmurs had been doing the rounds for months that the deal would be finalised, the snafu that eventuated has brought up some serious systemic issues.

In lieu of this, it is important to point out that inadequate consultation on the issue of water sharing along with unclear domestic water sharing laws has increased the state-centre gap in India, thus resulting in a lack of national consensus. Add to this, coalition politics, and the result is a loss of strategic imperative for India as a whole.

Seen from an Indian point of view, Singh’s recent visit has highlighted not only India’s inability to reach political consensus on issues of importance, but also on how this lack of national consensus impinges on its neighbourhood policy. We, as Indians, have yet again lived up to our image of trying to extract what we want from our neighbours without much regard to what may be important for them.

Therefore, there seems to be a discontinuity in the foreign policy principles India projects and the subsequent stand it adopts on the negotiating table. This has evoked suspicion amongst the neighbouring countries about India’s projected rationales and contradicting ulterior motives which drive India’s position on certain matters as is emphasised by the non-agreement on Teesta water sharing.

This discontinuity, in tandem with India’s projected highhandedness in the South Asian region has compelled its neighbours to counterbalance India’s influence in the region — a definite blow to India’s regional aspirations.

India has lost significant traction and credibility in this wholly avoidable fiasco. This is entirely our own doing and Prime Minister Singh has to accept institutional responsibility for this debacle. On the other hand, while Mamata Banerjee is quite entitled to make her point in any way she chooses, and is justified in her demand that West Bengal not suffer in the pursuit of India’s larger interests, she must tell us how much she expects India to suffer for West Bengal — because the price this state-centre tussle has extracted is already way too high.