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NEWS ANALYSIS

Two chief ministers distinctly different

Pallab Bhattacharya
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was the first foreign head of government to congratulate Mamata Banerjee on her party's historic victory at the Paschimbanga elections last year. But the first Indian state she chose to visit on her second innings as prime minister was Marxist-ruled Tripura and not Paschimbanga.
The significance of Hasina's visit to Tripura goes much beyond receiving the honorary D Litt degree of Tripura University and going through a journey down memory lane in a state which shared an umbilical chord with Bangladesh's liberation war. It brings out a contrast between two chief ministers — Mamata Banerjee ofWest Bengal and Manik Sarkar ofTripura.
Mamata did not accompany Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when he visited Dhaka in September last year but Sarkar was one of the four chief ministers of the northeastern states to do so. While Mamata scuppered the Teesta water-sharing treaty with Bangladesh, which would have been the showpiece of India-Bangladesh relations after the Ganges accord in 1996 (when the then West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu had played a key role in facilitating the Ganges water-sharing agreement) Sarkar generously offered 100MW of power from TYipura's quota of 196 MW from ONGC's Palatana project in the state, provided the central government approves of it. The 726MW power project will start generating electricity in a few months and Sarkar is too well aware that its construction was facilitated by the Hasina government through allowing use of Ashuganj port to ferry equipment for the project in a shorter time. Sarkar made the offer in the presence of Hasina in Agartala and the Bangladesh prime minister too expressed the hope that it would get the nod of the Indian government to help Bangladesh meet its acute shortage of electricity.
Besides, Sarkar said the 104MW Monarchak power project in Tripura would start generation soon and a portion of that power could be sold to Bangladesh. The Tripura chief minister has clearly made the right moves to enhance India-Bangladesh relations for which power is going to be a key driver.
Mamata may have had her own compulsions to oppose the Teesta agreement and it may be argued that the water-sharing deal is not the same as electricitysharing and that the former is much more complex and has implications for a much wider section of the population. Mamata has often been accused by Indian neighbourhood policy analysts of having missed the big picture by refusing to endorse the Teesta treaty. But to be fair to her, can she afford to rush into the big picture without first ensuring the interests of her own state? Where can the line be drawn between the two? While that debate may go on, the
incontrovertible fact remains that Manik Sarkar has seized the opportunity provided by the current upswing in relations between India and Bangladesh to position his state as the economic bridge between the two countries.
Tripura's geographical location gives it a unique advantage to be North-East India's gateway to Bangladesh. Work is in progress on a rail link between Tripura's capital Agartala and Akhaura in Bangladesh and land customs stations are being built on both sides of the border for trade. Infrastructure, particularly road, in Tripura is expected to get a big leg up as Bangladesh has allowed the use of Chittagong port, which is just 75km from away from the state's Sabroom town. The commercial importance of TYipura is going to rise once Ashuganj port becomes operational as a multimodal transhipment point.
Sarkar, during his visit to Dhaka along with
Manmohan Singh, had met Bangladesh's leading business and industry leaders and sought to know their requirements in a bid to sell the state as a key commercial transit point for north-eastern India and Bangladesh and a key link between north-eastern India and the rest of India. TYipura can also become a key transit point for trans-border electricity trade between India and Bangladesh as also evacuation of power from the north eastern states, which hold the immense potential of hydropower, to the rest of India.
If Mamata is letting go of the initiative to help put India's relations with Bangladesh on a new trajectory, Manik Sarkar has clearly fully used the window of opportunity. While an increased flow of Teesta water cannot for now nurture India-Bangladesh ties, a liberal offer of electricity from the Tripura chief minister should power them on.