Look East, Prime Minister

But Indo-Bangla relations are too important to be allowed to drift any further. Clearly, this unprecedented juncture in Indo-Bangla relations can no longer be managed by officials. It demands a political intervention at the highest level. And the initiative must necessarily come from the Indian prime minister. It is widely known that without the political initiative, the Indo-Pak peace process would not be in the robust stage it finds itself in. Left to the bureaucracies, there would have been no bus service between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad, and Pakistan president, Pervez Musharraf, would not have visited India in April. Neither would there have been a serious discussion on the pipelines nor an encouragement to think out-of-the-box on Jammu and Kashmir.

Just as he repeatedly over-ruled the conservative instincts of the establishment to unveil a new set of initiatives towards Pakistan, Manmohan Singh must now take charge of the extraordinary crisis in India8217;s relations with one of its most important neighbours. Besides the long overdue political imperative, the prime minister8217;s diplomatic calendar too demands a purposeful engagement with Bangladesh.

Barring unexpected developments, which are always a possibility with Bangladesh, Manmohan Singh should be heading to Dhaka in November to attend the twice postponed summit of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation. The prime minister has two options on this visit that he has to undertake. One is to treat it as a mere multilateral occasion and fly in and fly out of Dhaka to a cold reception from the host government. The other is to treat the summit as an opportunity to make a determined effort to change the current course of Indo-Bangla ties.

Recall Vajpayee8217;s visit to Islamabad in January 2004, when it was not clear until the very end whether the Indian prime minister would in fact visit Pakistan and, if he did, whether he would meet President Musharraf on a bilateral basis. In the end Vajpayee8217;s visit to Islamabad provided that elusive breakthrough in bilateral relations and launched the peace process.

Manmohan Singh8217;s visit to Dhaka will be the first by an Indian prime minister in nearly six years. Khalida Zia, on her part, chose not to come to Delhi in the last four years, citing protocol reasons and demanding that the Indian prime minister travel first to Dhaka on a bilateral visit. This sums up the present state of Indo-Bangla relations. Manmohan Singh must convey to Dhaka, at the earliest, his desire to have a solid bilateral component during his SAARC visit and to use the next few months to put the relationship back on track. Once that decision is taken, Manmohan Singh can consider a number of diplomatic options on process as well as substance.

On process, nothing stops Manmohan Singh from picking up the phone and talking to the Bangla premier occasionally. To make the direct contact with Khalida Zia successful, Manmohan Singh should set up a back channel of special envoys to clear the air and provide the basis for a substantive bilateral engagement.

In the case of India and Bangladesh, the back channel cannot be a substitute for a wide-ranging engagement between the two governments. Whether by design or not, hardly any ministers of the Union government and senior officials travel between the two countries on a regular basis. Manmohan Singh must correct this immediately by dispatching senior cabinet ministers in the coming weeks and months to Dhaka.

The chief ministers of West Bengal and the Northeast, too, could travel to Dhaka and contribute to the process of building much needed communication and contact between the two countries. If the chief ministers of East and West Punjab travel across the Indo-Pak border at the drop of a hat, why can8217;t there be productive contact between India8217;s eastern states and Bangladesh?

Whether it is in a position to address them all or not, India must first signal that it is willing to listen seriously to the many grievances of Bangladesh. That in itself could change the psychological dynamics of bilateral relations.

On substance, Manmohan Singh must take a quick decision to de-link economic and security dimensions of its policy towards Bangladesh. India8217;s insistence that its economic gestures to Dhaka will only follow Bangladesh acting first on cross-border terrorism has resulted in little progress on either front. In Pakistan8217;s case, it was by avoiding a tight linkage between cross-border terrorism and normalisation of ties, that India managed progress on both.

While taking steps on its own to deal with terrorism from across the Bangla border, the time has come for Delhi to redeem its past pledges on better market access to goods from Bangladesh and offer unilateral initiatives to redress the huge trade imbalance in its favour. It should not take a rocket scientist to figure out that India8217;s 8220;tough8221; approach to negotiations with Bangladesh, focusing on terrorism and economic reciprocity, have failed to deliver. Weaker neighbours rarely respond to pressure. Standing up against the stronger neighbour becomes a political end in itself. A softer touch and a longer term political vision could serve India better.

If he chooses to focus on political outcomes rather than bureaucratic procedure, Manmohan Singh would recognise the urgency of experimenting with a new diplomacy towards Bangladesh that combines psychological sensitivity, expanded political communication, economic unilateralism, and an emphasis on problem-solving.