Narendra Damodar Modi has come and gone. In the print and electronic media, it’s all gold and glitter. Our honourable PM was elated, and our honourable ex-PM read a litany of complaints from her sorry cheat-sheet at Modi’s musings.
Yes, if he wished, like Caesar, Modi could have tweeted back to his own capital -- veni vidi vici.
Yes, substantial accomplishment happened. The LBA is done. It’s great. However, the scope of the LBA is not that wide or important in the context of the wider national scape.
Murder at the border and Felani’s hanging corpse is languid but still lingering.
Despite fanfare and the signing of score-plus bilateral accords of puny significance, a $500m vs $6bn trade imbalance still lingers in our sceptic mind. Visa simplification still cries in vain for the Delhiwala’s sympathetic ears.
And the 500-pound gorilla, by which I mean the equitable sharing of common river waters, thanks to the chief minister of our neighbouring Opar Bangla, is a hush-hush taboo.
In his well-received speech, Modi uttered the forbidden words “Teesta” and “Feni” with an urbane inflection.
He, too, is thinking of a resolution; he said -- it is humanitarian.
Sorry. It’s not humanitarian. It is a legal issue. The norm of water-sharing of international rivers follows certain international rules and regulations. It can’t be done by diktat or by benevolence of a brutal (think of Gujrat pogrom) leader.
Hope is what we got from Manmohan -- it didn’t work. Hope is what we again got from Manmohan’s successor -- and it shall not work.
When the hype is over, it’s all fruitless floccinaucinihilipilification -- thus says the wiser.
