At least 20 edit-page articles on Bangladesh in leading Indian papers within two months, half of them in the last two weeks – unbelievable but true.
And all the writers have three things in common — India must formalise the land boundary agreement with Bangladesh and sign the Teesta agreement, that if it does not happen will mean a foreign policy disaster for India, and the villains Mamata Banerjee and Asom Gana Parishad must not be taken seriously.
The Times of India, the country’s leading English paper, has run at least six of these edit page articles backed by similar editorials in the last few weeks.
While Seema Sirohi’s piece, the first on the issue, attacks the BJP for its short-sightedness in opposing the land boundary agreement. But that was before the BJP changed track — something that became evident in Varun Gandhi’s article in the Times of India where he blamed Manmohan Singh for indecisiveness and called for signing the Teesta deal and going ahead with the Land boundary agreement.
After that, his party did not oppose the introduction of the bill in parliament.
The Hindustan Times carried similar articles by Suhasini Haider, CNN-IBN foreign editor, and Subir Bhaumik who called for a change in BJP’s Bangladesh policy. Bhaumik’s “Wake up call for Hasina” in the Times of India also outlines the future scenario for India if Awami League loses the polls.
Haider’s piece “Time running out” and Jyoti Malhotra’s piece in Economic Times “Delhi must deliver on promises to Dhaka” argue that India will lose a dear friend if it failed to go ahead with the deals. All these writers argue that if India fails to sign the deals, it will very adversely affect the Awami League’s chances in the forthcoming polls.
Former foreign secretary Krishnan Srinivasan’s edit page piece in Telegraph lays out in detail the steps taken by India and Bangladesh to improve relations but says that without these agreements, the Awami League will be adversely affected.
Apart from this flood of opinion articles supporting Bangladesh’s case, the Indian television channels have run long discussion programmes attacking Mamata Banerji and AGP for, as an NDTV programme said, “holding foreign policy hostage to domestic politics”. The NDTV program hosted by Nidhi Razdan brought together Indian minister Shashi Tharoor, former diplomat Veena Sikri, Trinamul MP Saugato Roy, BJP’s Tarun Vijay and journalist Subir Bhaumik.
Vijay ended up agreeing with Bhaumik’s assessment, leaving Roy isolated in his opposition.
Before that Times Now, India’s leading English channel, carried a similar item in its ‘Latitude’ program hosted by Maroof Raza. Apart from Bhaumik and other Indian analysts, it featured Bangladesh’s former foreign secretary Farooq Sobhan.
Former army vice chief and Assam-Kashmir governor SK Sinha had started the pitch for getting to implement these agreements in his interview to ANI agency which was carried in several channels.
He said India must support Bangladesh’s present government in ‘all possible ways’.
Bengali daily Ananda Bazar exposed Mamata’s double-face by carrying a copy of her government’s letter to Indian foreign secretary Ranjan Mathai in August 2011 where West Bengal government gives concurrence to the land boundary agreement.
‘Bartaman’ also ran an article on edit page supporting the agreements.
By all means, the issue of India failing to implement land boundary agreement and sign Teesta deal with Bangladesh has been a single largest recipient of editorial and news gathering attention amongst all the foreign policy issues that featured in the Indian media.
“I am sure this has got more coverage than even the Chinese army incursions in Ladakh, specially on the editorial pages” says media analyst Mritunjoy Chatterjee, who teaches journalism at Ilead institute.
But even such a media fusillade is not good enough to swing Mamata Banerji and Prafulla Kumar Mahanta because these regional chieftains perceive they gain more by opposing rather than supporting the accords with Bangladesh.
Source: Bd news24