The reports received in Dhaka regarding President Abdul Hamid’s 6-day “official” visit to India, that took place from December 18 to 23, read more like the diary entries of a senior citizen on one last sojourn through a favourite holiday destination, all expenses paid-for.
That last bit about the expenses, it of course was in reality. We don’t begrudge him that.
Yet the line between fluff talk and concrete results must be drawn somewhere, and if the president is due a break or two given the years he has put in, the question still stands: what was the need for the state minister for foreign affairs to accompany him?
To recount, President Hamid during his time in India was slated to meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Leader of the Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad, Vice President Hamid Ansari, and last but not least President Pranab Mukherjee, at whose invitation the visit took place.
All of these meetings duly took place. In what must have been a whirlwind start to the tour, the Bangladeshi president was through with all of them by just the second evening he was there, on December 19.
In fact, all the meetings took place on that one date. The day, and for all intents and purposes, the “official” visit of the president, was wrapped up in fine fashion that evening with a state banquet in his honour.
After which a look back at the president’s itinerary reveals: On day three of his tour, he visited the Taj Mahal, where he was photographed looking quite resplendent it must be said, against the most famous background known in photography. Later he took to other attractions in and around Agra.
Day four was one for piety, as the president checked in at Ajmer Sharif, and offered fateha there. The 16th century Amber Fort just outside Jaipur also managed to make it into the presidential diary before the fifth day, when in a sure sign of the tour winding down, President Hamid and his entourage rolled into Kolkata - the city that for many Bangladeshis, still remains the one that got away. They would only stay that one night though, fitting in an “exchange of pleasantries” with the most important person in West Bengal vis-a-vis Bangladesh, Mamata Banerjee, at a dinner hosted by the state’s governor.
The next evening, December 23, President Hamid was back in Dhaka, having had to cut his visit to Shantiniketan short earlier in the day, due to students at Viswa Bharati protesting over admission quotas. At this you can only say, not the most perfect ending, but at least it ended.
Now it may be fashionable to try and hold this all under the scanner, and question just why taxpayers should support such a visit, specifically those last four days. Were accountability paid something more than just lip-service in our affairs of state, there would probably be no excuse for it.
But what we’re going to try and arrive at here is something a bit more nuanced of reckoning. It occurs in the realm of perceptions, and concerns itself with their importance, in particular how they relate to bilateral ties between nations.
While the president and his entourage were on their round of sight-seeing around Agra and Jaipur, the bicameral Indian parliament was looking to get busy to get an adequate amount of work done before closing for the winter.
One of the pieces of legislature that was speculated to be on the agenda for both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha throughout the last four weeks, was the long-stalled Land Boundary Agreement between India and Bangladesh, ratified by Bangladesh in 1974.
Having taken a position against it while in opposition, in government the BJP under Prime Minister Modi had come around to it, we were made to understand. Following the approval of the constitutional amendment bill necessary for Indian ratification by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, speculation grew that the fate of the over 150 “chitmahals” and theirs residents along the border between India and Bangladesh would be resolved before the winter session was up.
The dates for President Hamid’s visit were finalised against this backdrop. The chair of the Lok Sabha committee, the suave and urbane novelist, Congress MP, and former UN under-secretary general Shashi Tharoor, took it upon himself to remind the incumbent government that the bill was ready to be placed in the Rajya Sabha through a combination of tweets, press briefings and op-eds.
With the days winding down, he stood on the floor of the Lok Sabha and questioned the delay, exclaiming: “The Bangladesh president is here.”
Needless to say, the session concluded - incidentally, on the same day as President Hamid’s trip - without the said bill seeing the light of day. Now, to be sure, the Land Boundary Agreement is nowhere near the prize for Bangladesh that it is made out to be these days. With an agreement over sharing the waters of the Teesta ruled out for the time-being, it is merely the next best thing. If anything, with some 110 chitmahals going India’s way under the agreement (versus 52 for Bangladesh), it is probably they who stand to gain from it.
Yet the Modi government’s treatment of the issue can be instructive on how it views relations with Dhaka going forward, beyond the rhetorical flourishes that have so far defined it. Before you get drawn into the complexities of Indian domestic politics and how they acted to stall progress on a number of fronts towards the end of the parliamentary session, please be informed that the Lok Sabha did manage to pass a record 18 bills before going into recess.
The failure to prioritise the bill relating to LBA one bit in consideration of the Bangladesh president’s presence in the country - on top of it being due anyway - does not speak well for the relationship.
And neither does the president and his entourage’s seemingly happy acceptance of four days on the tourist trail, in lieu of something concrete and noteworthy.
Just imagine the chappal on the other foot. You could probably find a team of gymnasts to give the Eastern Europeans a run for their money, from the amount of bending-over-backwards that would ensue among members of Sheikh Hasina’s cabinet. People would be falling over each other. All to make sure that someone like Pranab Mukherjee always got good value for whatever amount of time he spent in Bangladesh.
To be fair, that is only how it should be. High-ranking government officials, heads of nation-states - one shouldn’t expect it of them in this day and age, to have time to waste, to hang around, see what happens. Certainly our series of Indian official visitors in recent years have all shown a proclivity towards tight, business-like schedules. And they’ve got their business done.
Bangladeshi officials might be well-advised to start reining in their own schedules, given it’s never too late to try a good thing. They might just find that as long as you don’t give off the impression that you’ve got time to waste, most people don’t feel like they can waste your time.
