When Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina visits New Delhi soon, she will be looking for deliverables

As Prime Minister Narendra Modi prepares to welcome Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in April, her image managers in Dhaka are more worried than elated. What will she come back with is the question they all ask.

Hasina has been steadfast in her support for Modi’s ‘isolate Pakistan’ drive, her government has cracked down hard on Northeastern rebels and Islamist militants, on fake currency rackets and Pakistani agents to address India’s security concerns. She has cleared transit for Indian goods to Northeast through Bangladesh territory and addressed most of India’s connectivity concerns seen as crucial to the success of India’s Look East policy. As Hasina prepares for her Delhi visit, Indian and Bangladesh officials are trying to finalise a deal to allow Indian use of Chittagong and Mongla ports for accessing Northeast.

But even her close advisers have been asking Hasina what will she have to show to her own people from this visit. Some even suggested it be deferred, now that they don’t expect India to announce any ‘real progress’ on the Teesta water sharing deal.

Modi had promised Hasina during his 2015 Dhaka visit that he will get Mamata Banerjee to agree to the Teesta deal after Bengal’s concerns were addressed. Foreign minister Sushma Swaraj, tasked to manage Mamata, is ailing and the Bengal leader now complains Modi has not got a promised meeting between the Indian government and those in Sikkim and Bengal to work out a compromise deal that can be offered to Bangladesh.

Whatever hope there was for a solution on Teesta seems to have evaporated post-demonetisation, after which the Modi-Mamata relationship is at an all-time low. Not only is Mamata intensifying her deprivation rhetoric on everything from cash to Teesta waters, she is even accusing the Modi government of planning coups and assassination targeting her.

Bangladesh high commissioner Syed Muazzem Ali has said his government continues to repose faith in Mamata for a Teesta solution, but even optimists doubt whether Mamata will oblige now. But India’s endless domestic complications provide little comfort for Hasina. At a recent global water conference in Budapest, Hasina pitched strongly for lower riparian rights on trans-regional rivers.

Delhi should not miss the signal – patience on the water issue is running out in Dhaka. Bangladesh is still primarily an agrarian country where water is a huge issue. Hasina wanted Indian participation in the ambitious $3 billion Ganges water barrage project, but Bangladesh’s junior water resources minister Nazrul Islam recently told me they have not been able to figure out Delhi’s response so far. Chinese corporations, Nazrul told me, have already promised full financing for the project that, when completed, will help Bangladesh store enough water in a huge reservoir and use that during the lean season to flush its western rivers.

Bangladesh usually touches base with India before it turns to China for funding such key projects, but it does not help anyone for Dhaka to keep hanging. Hasina’s government has huge development aspirations as she sees inclusive economic growth and human development as the only way to beat challenges like Islamic militancy and religious radicalisation and keep Bangladesh on the right track.

So for all the eyebrows raised in Delhi over $28 billion Chinese funding and investments promised for key projects during President Xi Jinping’s recent Dhaka visit, Bangladesh insists it needs both India and China, the latter primarily as a source of development finance. China is also Bangladesh’s main supplier of military hardware – its sale of two submarines to the Bangladesh navy now has got alarm bells ringing in Delhi.

India’s insistence on revisions to the bilateral investment treaty, keeping in mind its funding the 1320MW controversial Rampal thermal power project, has also worried Dhaka. Domestic resistance to the project is growing on environmental grounds. Even Mamata seems to be fuelling the resistance because she believes it will adversely impact not only Bangladesh’s but also her state’s part of the Sundarbans.

If Afghanistan and Bangladesh are key to Modi’s ‘isolate Pakistan’ policy in South Asia, it is time for India’s diplomatically active PM to look beyond catchy expressions and pay back to a trusted ally, when she needs it the most.