The question that should baffle experts as well as those aware of the subject is why has the issue of a vehicular traffic agreement surfaced in the absence of a transit agreement? Isn’t it a transit issue that needs to be addressed under the internationally recognised practices of transit operations?

India has for long been asking for facilitation of its movement of goods through Bangladesh territory on all modes of transport in addition to the existing inland water transit facility, an operation that has been in practice since the partition of India but for a spell of around six years following the India-Pakistan war in 1965. The water transit protocol which forms part of the Indo-Bangla bilateral trade agreement has been revised a number of times. Lately, a major revision to make it more effective for transportation of Indian transit and transshipment cargo has been  made to include Asuganj as a port of call and the facility for movement of transit cargo from Asuganj to Agartola in the Indian state of Tripura through trucks and trailors. It is important to note that everything that got negotiated on riverine connectivity has been under the ambit of transit. This being the case with water transit, there is no reason why overland transportation of goods in a much wider perspective should be looked at differently.

What transpires from the draft vehicular agreement proposed by India is that the issue is being treated not as transit but as a transport-cum-connectivity issue involving identification of land routes, types of vehicles that are to ply on those and so on. Understandably, the purpose is to drag the veritable transit issue to a self-defined connectivity issue. Concerned authorities in Bangladesh are yet to question the rationale for treating the matter in the manner it is being done –misplacing it under a different garb. It has been learnt from newspaper reports that the draft has been sent to various ministries and relevant agencies for their opinions. Now, are the ministries or government agencies, given the present perspective, in a position to question the legitimacy of the exercise? They have been asked to give opinions on the routes and related matters. Their responses can at the most stretch up to the issue of viability of the routes and not to pin down the basis for asking.

Newspaper reports have quoted experts and the ministry of commerce officials who reportedly sounded straight in stating that accommodating the Indian proposal would yield no benefit to this country. There were also remarks from government sources that if no extra levy, local taxes, service charges, maintenance charges etc., are imposed on the cargo vehicles, Bangladesh far from gaining anything would have to count heavily on damages to its road infrastructure. Needless to say, these are but a naïve way of looking at the matter and are far from raising the vital question — legitimacy.

Looking not far back, one gets a sense of how things began to take shape. The Joint Communiqué (JC) released during the visit of Bangladesh Prime Minister to New Delhi in January 2010 did not spell out the term transit, ostensibly because of the alleged sensitivity attributed to it. However, it did incorporate, by way of a set of cooperation initiatives, all issues that would facilitate India’s transit operations through Bangladesh by all modes of transport (road, rail and waterways) including access of Indian cargo to Chittagong and Mongla seaports. The Framework Agreement on Cooperation for Development between India and Bangladesh, signed on September 6, 2011 reiterates the issue (Article 1) in its fullest spirit and content.  Although the expression ‘transit’ did not figure in the JC or the framework agreement for ‘tactical’ reasons, it is not understood how could one think of materialising the key content of the JC or the framework agreement without going for a comprehensive (unlike the makeshift water transit) transit agreement and a multitude of protocols addressing all the functional matters involving various stages and aspects of transit operations.

Recognising that the JC and the subsequent framework agreement were agreed documents to work on, it was highly likely that the government of Bangladesh would evolve a suitable modus operandi to ensure a viable and self-sustaining transit operation for mutual benefit of both countries. However, amidst a good deal of initial confusion, prompted mostly by ill-informed and conflicting statements from apparently responsible quarters, the government formed a  Core Committee on Transit comprising representatives who, among others, included eminent transport specialists and economists. The Core Committee, it was learnt, had examined the matter at length and sent its report to the government.

Now that the government is set to work on the vehicular agreement as a tool for facilitating transit, one wonders if the authorities have finally decided not to shake the boat called transit and deal with the issue under the apparently safe and benign garb of connectivity.

Again it appears a trifle surprising to see that the government is presently at the final stage of its negotiations with Bhutan towards striking a full-fledged transit agreement. Bangladesh had a transit agreement with Bhutan, but because of its imperfections in meeting the requirements, both governments have agreed to redesign a transit deal that observers believe would more or less conform to the internationally recognised transit principles and practices, which among others include various charges on account of services that Bangladesh would provide to Bhutan.

Transit operation, one need not emphasise, is a gigantic activity involving not only massive investment on the part of the country offering transit, but at the same time it is integrally related to a host of economic, political, security and management issues. Standard international practices confirm that a sustainable transit operation is essentially about taking into account all such issues with as much accuracy and precision as possible in order that it is rendered win-win for the contracting parties. Hence ever since the issue has emerged, experts have clearly stated their opinion in favour of a framework agreement on transit to start with instead of a shortcut.

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Wasi Ahmed is a journalist, short story writer and novelist.

Photo: bdnews24.com

Nothing seems appropriate enough to mark the past two weeks as anything but the ‘blame weeks’. Our collective dementia must not let us forget the overwhelming presence of ‘blame game’ during the weeks as the all important soap opera on the national, albeit political scene. It was not a stray occasion, but part of an interminably long chain of past ‘shows’ that the ruling and the main opposition parties have been performing on the dreary national stage ever since they came to exist. One needs to be curious: do they do it consciously or is it a reflection of a sordid state of mind they care less having it exposed?

The recent incidents at Ramu, Ukhia, Teknaf and Paitya speak volumes of the cabaret in which both sides are taking turns to bare themselves as much they can. What happened in those places, especially in Ramu is a deep, bottomless hole in the heart of the nation that only the sensible souls can be expected to suffer. Now, condemnation of the barbarity is one, and pointing fingers at others is another. However, in reality, both are not as remote as they apparently look like. Condemning the act and trying to make amends in whatever forms possible including finding out the criminals is only one aspect of the reaction that an ideal situation will demand. But when condemnation coincides with an instant ‘you did it’, it becomes a totally different ball game. Soon after the news of the ravaged and charred Buddhist monasteries made it to the headlines and video flicks on TV screens began to torment the hearts of the vast majority of the countrymen, the ruling party and the main opposition found the timing perfectly right to go haywire. Half of the barbarity was done by the criminals who swooped on the scenes in and around Ramu with rampaging spree, and the rest by the self proclaimed protectors themselves. Brutality did the half and hypocrisy and opportunism told the rest.

It was disgusting to watch senior leaders of either side routinely visiting the sites of destruction only to gain as long mileage as possible from the ashes and thick swirls of smoke. The worst-hit of the sites is Shimla Bihar, an early 18th century tick wood structure that housed as many as four hundred Buddha statues along with invaluable relics and rare manuscripts.

The saddest part is that most people in the country were not in a mood to blame either of the parties when they heard the news. They were shocked more than they could imagine. They read news stories about the questionable inaction of law enforcers, reportedly posted a few hundred yards from the key place of occurrence. The Rohingya theory also came up in the media, which did not seem totally implausible. These and perhaps a lot more are matters for the investigating agencies to deal with. But it is not to be so in a culture bred by cannibalism, and both the sides did not waste a moment to confirm the point. Allegations followed counter allegations in ruthless extravaganza. To fend off the allegations of the ruling party, the main opposition even rushed to produce sixty-some-pages of probe report pointing out, as decisively as they could, the involvement of the ruling party in the incidents. The ruling party struck back in no time terming the report fictitious. Hilarious indeed, what the government is now attributing to the so-called probe report as potentially capable of jeopardising the enquiry being conducted by the law enforcers is more fittingly applicable to its pointing at the opposition, naming its local lawmaker as the mastermind.

Who gains from the blame game? Social psychologists would be quick to surmise that blaming others is in the first place disempowering. Even if it is one’s own mistake, pointing at others erodes one of self-esteem; more precisely it is perhaps a symptom of insecurity. From a broad social perspective, blaming is infectious – communicable in the sense that once blame attribution is part of a culture, commoners are prone to blame each other for totally unrelated failures. No wonder, blame gaming has become a ritual, believed to be recommended by political counselors as a handy expedient to shrug off responsibility or accuse others for actions they may not have anything to do with. Thus it is often a matter of how quickly to jump into a situation, preferably as “breaking news” to reframe things to one’s advantage.

That the post-incident hullabaloo means politics, and is not in the least related to securing protection for the sufferers or punishing the culprits is clear enough to the victims themselves. Again trying to have them name the culprits or asking them point fingers at the masterminds belonging to either of the predominant parties – as a calculated stratagem to cause division among them – is the worst that their ravaged hearts can take. So far, the elderly monks and the commoners in the strife-torn Buddhist hamlets have been prudent enough not to allow themselves to be tricked into the game.

One need not be too naïve to discover that the entire game is agenda-driven. Besides targeting the general elections where the minority is a factor, one of the motivations, not a difficult one to discern, is to send signals to the outer world to befittingly label one or the other party as campaigner of communal hatred ¬– discovered lately by the West as the most sinister of all sins and hence abominable.

So, who hopes to gain? It is wicked than stupid to conceive of the idea that in the 21st century, a location, however remote and forlorn, inhabited by peace-loving Buddhists could be a hunting ground to cash in on communalism, no longer a hidden manifesto of the political parties. Traversing the arid wastes of Bangladesh politics, one cannot blame one’s sense of sanity while confronting such cynicism.

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Wasi Ahmed is a journalist, short story writer and novelist.