A decade has passed since Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s recent visit to Delhi announced an agreement to provide ‘Rail Transit and Corridor’ to India and India’s involvement in the ‘Tista Restoration’ project.
These issues have already sparked a heated debate in Bangladesh, with the opposition BNPO government lashing out – but India is still very confident that these measures will be implemented and will benefit the people of both countries.
On the issue of ‘Rail Transit’, India has directly stated that this step is aimed at taking the ‘multidimensional’ connectivity between the two countries to the next level.
Besides, Delhi has also given this indication – the ‘technical committee’ of the two countries will discuss the details of how much toll, duty or transit fee will be collected if the Indian train runs through the territory of Bangladesh and how the safety measures will be ensured in that train. .
Officials said that India has no plans to withdraw even from the project that India has pledged to join Bangladesh in order to conserve and manage the waters of the Teesta or that it has announced to start talks on renewing the Ganga Treaty, despite objections from the West Bengal Trinamool Congress.
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Meanwhile, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has written to the Center warning that she will not accept any water deal with Bangladesh that ‘compromises the interests’ of the people of the state. But his threat is not being taken into account, at least as of now!
However, several observers in Delhi and researchers from various think tanks told the BBC that they believe that India will have to make some important and major ‘concessions’ to implement measures like rail transit or the Teesta project in Bangladesh.
What they may be, it is not possible to say clearly at this time. But they also mention possible concessions to Bangladesh for trade with Nepal and Bhutan, rail and road transit through India, changing a large part of India’s financing of the Teesta project to grants (‘grants’) instead of loans.
However, no official message has been given by the Government of India in this regard.
The government officials in Delhi or the diplomatic circles of India are not paying any attention to the fact that these initiatives are being opposed by various parties including the opposition parties within Bangladesh.
They say that in the last 10-15 years, many of India’s initiatives in Bangladesh have been blocked by a section of people in that country – but in the end, due to the goodwill of the governments of both countries, all those projects have been implemented successfully, and the people of both countries are benefiting from it.
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As a result, Delhi believes that there will be no exception in the case of rail transit and Teesta restoration projects.