BanglaBhoot
RETIRED TTA
- Joined
- Apr 8, 2007
- Messages
- 8,839
- Reaction score
- 5
- Country
- Location
Holding up the LBA will throw away the last chance to normalise ties with Dhaka
The Times of India – August 21, 2013
Just as policy paralysis is taking a toll on the economic front, the government's inability to seal important legislation is also damaging foreign policy. Despite having a friendly government in Dhaka for the last five years, New Delhi has failed to make bilateral ties irreversible. Even now Parliament continues to stall the protocol to the 1974 Land Boundary Agreement (LBA), despite the eminent strategic sense it makes. Once ratified, the protocol would fully demarcate the India-Bangladesh land border and facilitate the exchange of adversely held enclaves, normalising ties with India's eastern neighbour.
The ongoing session of Parliament provides the last opportunity to pass the Constitution amendment Bill required to operationalise the LBA. Failure to do so would leave the Awami League dispensation — which has invested heavily in its relations with India — high and dry before general elections are announced in Bangladesh. Yet the BJP, the Trinamool and the Asom Gana Parishad are opposing the LBA because it will see India lose a few thousand acres of land in the enclave swap. This disregards the fact that the LBA only legitimises a de facto reality, as the enclaves are located deep inside each other's territory, cut off from the mainland.
The political class as a whole appears to be happy to snatch strategic defeat out of the jaws of victory. Pushing away Bangladesh at this point would be a victory for Islamists in that country, at a time when a US withdrawal from Afghanistan is imminent and India has enough problems on the Pakistan front. Both the government and opposition parties must understand that India cannot afford a hot eastern border and spurn a friendly dispensation in Dhaka, at a time when its western and northern borders are hot anyway.
Holding up the border accord will throw away the last chance to normalise ties with Dhaka - The Times of India
The Times of India – August 21, 2013
Just as policy paralysis is taking a toll on the economic front, the government's inability to seal important legislation is also damaging foreign policy. Despite having a friendly government in Dhaka for the last five years, New Delhi has failed to make bilateral ties irreversible. Even now Parliament continues to stall the protocol to the 1974 Land Boundary Agreement (LBA), despite the eminent strategic sense it makes. Once ratified, the protocol would fully demarcate the India-Bangladesh land border and facilitate the exchange of adversely held enclaves, normalising ties with India's eastern neighbour.
The ongoing session of Parliament provides the last opportunity to pass the Constitution amendment Bill required to operationalise the LBA. Failure to do so would leave the Awami League dispensation — which has invested heavily in its relations with India — high and dry before general elections are announced in Bangladesh. Yet the BJP, the Trinamool and the Asom Gana Parishad are opposing the LBA because it will see India lose a few thousand acres of land in the enclave swap. This disregards the fact that the LBA only legitimises a de facto reality, as the enclaves are located deep inside each other's territory, cut off from the mainland.
The political class as a whole appears to be happy to snatch strategic defeat out of the jaws of victory. Pushing away Bangladesh at this point would be a victory for Islamists in that country, at a time when a US withdrawal from Afghanistan is imminent and India has enough problems on the Pakistan front. Both the government and opposition parties must understand that India cannot afford a hot eastern border and spurn a friendly dispensation in Dhaka, at a time when its western and northern borders are hot anyway.
Holding up the border accord will throw away the last chance to normalise ties with Dhaka - The Times of India
