India looms large as Bangladesh heads for polls

By John Chalmers

DHAKA (Reuters): Conspiracy theorists in India had a field day after April's ugly incidents on the frontier with traditionally friendly neighbor Bangladesh.

But in Bangladesh, the incidents, one of which led to the killing of 16 Indian and three Bangladeshi soldiers, have stoked a pre-election debate on one of its most touchy subjects -- India.

"India has always loomed large in Bangladesh elections," says Muchkund Dubey, a former Indian foreign secretary and authority on Bangladesh.

When Bangladeshi troops swooped in the middle of the night on an Indian tribal village and took control of a nearby border security post, speculation took off in New Delhi.

Perhaps it was a plot by the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) led by Begum Khaleda Zia to embarrass Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina ahead of this year's elections.

Maybe the chief of the Bangladesh Rifles border force was a rogue in cahoots with the BNP or with Pakistan's secret service, which many Indians seem to think is lurking around every corner.

Some suggested that Hasina might have engineered the incident herself to disprove allegations that she is an Indian stooge.

There has been no such talk in Dhaka, and it has all been rubbished by officials and politicians across the board.

An overcrowded and impoverished delta state, Bangladesh is almost surrounded by India. It shares a border of more than 4,000 kilometers with India, and just a short stretch of around 250 km divides it from Myanmar. Of 54 rivers flowing into the country, all but two are from India.

The historical preoccupation with India dates back to the armed struggle for independence from Pakistan in 1971 which was led by Hasina's father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and supported by New Delhi.

Mujib, who became Bangladesh's first president, was assassinated by army officers in 1975 partly because of reactions against his perceived dependence on India.

The string of military regimes that followed Mujib championed a more exclusive Bangladeshi nationalism against India.

That polarity of policy, although less marked today, still pits Hasina's Awami League against Khaleda's BNP and her allies, and looks set to be a key issue in the elections due by October.

"Allegations of making concessions to India and succumbing to its pressure carry considerable electoral appeal," Dubey wrote in India's The Hindu newspaper after the incidents.

Already the opposition has staged demonstrations against what it dubs India's aggressive response to the occupation of the border village and Hasina's "spineless apology".

The border is still plagued by the hasty and haphazard creation of East and West Pakistan from India in 1947. Only 6.5 kms remain to be demarcated. But there are dozens of enclaves which are occupied by people from one country even though they are marked on the map as belonging to the other.

A Western diplomat in Dhaka said there was a lot of anger over Hasina's agreement with India to withdraw troops from the village when the clash seemed to be spinning out of control.

"What was perhaps statesmanship was seen as giving in to a bullying neighbor," he said.

"But now both sides are trying to make political mileage out of it. The Awami League is boasting that Bangladesh gave India a bloody nose, and the opposition is complaining that it didn't hold its ground."

The border has key crossing points for smuggled Indian goods, believed to be worth up to US$1 billion a year, and remains a source of tension over migration by Bangladeshis.

But perhaps more importantly, many in Bangladesh feel that India is choking its neighbor's economy.

Hasina will seek to take credit during her election campaign for a 1996 treaty with India on sharing the water of the river Ganges, arguing that this has lifted grain production and helped the country become self-sufficient in food.

Opposition parties brand the pact, despite its popularity, a sell-out by a puppet government to its Indian master.

"It is undeclared war against our economy," said Ahamad Abdul Quader, acting secretary general of the Islami Oikyo Jote, an Islamic group allied with Khaleda's BNP.

"With the passage of time it has emerged that this was a false agreement, eyewash. There is no water, you can cross the river by foot."

Hasina has taken some tentative steps to widen the scope of economic liberalization which began in the late 1980s.

But she could secure faster growth if she tied up agreements with New Delhi on trade, the sale of natural gas and potentially lucrative transit facilities through Bangladeshi territory.

Bangladesh is now India's eighth largest export market. But New Delhi has been hesitating for more than two years on a request from Dhaka to grant duty-free access on a non-reciprocal basis for imports of 25 product groups.

"Unfortunately, the most natural and easily accessible market, India, still remains by and large closed to Bangladesh," says Dubey. "India is following a short-sighted, niggardly and over- cautious incremental approach towards opening up its markets to imports from Bangladesh."

Hasina's hands are also tied -- at least ahead of the elections -- on the question of granting export licenses for the country's natural gas fields, which the opposition believes would amount to selling the country's birth-right.