Opinion Look to our near east

For her part,Hasina has done all the right things — offered substantive counter-terror cooperation,opened the door for trans-border power trading,and allowed Bharti Airtel to pick a stake in Warid Telecom of Bangladesh.

All this is refreshingly good news from Dhaka.

What is India giving in return? There is speculation that Delhi is planning to announce a $500 million credit line for infrastructure development in Bangladesh. India is also reportedly working on new water sharing arrangements and other deliverables during Hasina’s visit.

Money is indeed important; but it does not buy love. Looking beyond monetary assistance,Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should use the opportunity to change the psychological dynamic that had prevented cooperation between the two countries in the past even when their best national interests demanded it. If we can break through that political barrier,the sky may be the limit for what Delhi and Dhaka can do together.

During Hasina’s visit it is India and its government that are under test. The question is a simple one. Can the UPA government walk its talk on a good neighbourly policy? Ever since he became the prime minister in May 2004,Dr Singh has repeatedly promised to transform India’s relations with her South Asian neighbours.

The results during the last five and a half years have been mixed. India has done well with the smallest countries of South Asia,Bhutan and Maldives,where Delhi encouraged the democratic transitions and strengthened the bases of bilateral cooperation.

With the two larger countries — Sri Lanka and Nepal — all of India’s energies have gone into coping with their internal crises and preventing the civil wars from destabilising the bilateral relationship.

On Pakistan,despite the persistent and bold effort by the prime minister to transform the ties with our western neighbour,it has been a steady setback from early 2007. With Bangladesh,there have been few incremental advances in recent years,there had been no transformation.

The Hasina government in Dhaka promises that long elusive breakthrough. It is up to India now to seize the moment. If Delhi wants to engineer a real paradigm shift in our relations with Dhaka,it must articulate four important principles that will guide its strategy towards Bangladesh.

The first is about an unambiguous Indian commitment to an “equal” relationship with Bangladesh. It is always tempting for the Indian leaders to talk about the “special” relationship with our neighbours; nothing irritates Dhaka more.

The Indian political classes that are so conscious of equality in our dealings with say the United States find it hard to apply the same principle when engaging our smaller neighbours. Delhi’s long overdue corrective must underline an unflinching Indian respect for the principle of sovereign equality in the framing and implementation of our ties with Bangladesh.

The second is a new emphasis on “interests” rather than “sentiments” in our search for an enduring relationship with Bangladesh. Sentimentalism generates exaggerated expectations and leads to deep disappointments. This has been especially true of India’s relations with Bangladesh.

Given our previous history with Bangladesh and the deep divisions within Dhaka’s political elite about India,Delhi must make it clear that it has no desire to pick favourites in Bangladesh and is committed to dealing with whoever is in power on the basis of self-interest.

A complement to this approach must be a broad-based engagement of all the major official institutions in Bangladesh and support to wide-ranging exchanges between all the political classes across the border and the vibrant civil societies in both the nations.

The third message is one that Dr Singh has often articulated — that the destinies of the subcontinent’s peoples are interlinked. If India recognises that its own prosperity is tied to those of its neighbours,it should be opening its market more generously to products from Bangladesh.

Dr Singh has done quite a bit to liberalise market access for goods from Bangladesh; but not nearly enough. A further reduction of the negative list for zero duty imports,eliminating the many non-tariff barriers,and modernisation of the trade facilitation on our long border would do wonders for the relationship.

The fourth must be a strong Indian endorsement of Dhaka’s aspirations to lead the process of regional and sub-regional cooperation in the subcontinent. If it was Dhaka that took the lead in promoting SAARC in the early ’80s,it has even a bigger role in promoting the economic integration of the eastern parts of the subcontinent,including Nepal,Bhutan and linking it to Southeast Asia and the neighbouring regions of China.

If Dhaka leverages its geopolitical location into a strategy for sustainable growth,its stakes in a non-violent regional environment and a de-politicisation of trans-border economic projects can only grow. Similarly if India facilitates the emergence of Bangladesh as a great eastern hub of South Asia,it might discover innovative of ways managing our shared natural resources and borderlands.

Together,these four principles should signal to the people of Bangladesh and the rest of the subcontinent that India has turned a page in its book on neighbourhood policy. It is even more important that the principles are understood by our own bureaucratic establishment and the political classes which have had real trouble thinking strategically about Bangladesh.

The writer is Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress,Washington DC

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