India lists Hilsa, Jamdani sarees to import
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee may want early resumption of import of Hilsa from Bangladesh, but the Indian federal government feels the fish alone is not enough and wants more goods including Jamdani sarees from Bangladesh.
In fact, as the countdown to Manmohan Singh's visit to Dhaka begins, the two countries are giving final touches to at least half-a-dozen agreements that Indian officials will mark as a turning point in relations.
One big message that Singh's visit will deliver is that India is focused and serious about its relationship with Bangladesh and wants it to serve as a model for its other neighbours, big or small, Indian officials said.
As a part of the exercise to fine-tune the agreements, Indian National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon visited Dhaka on August 28-29, and Indian Water Resources Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal will be in Bangladesh capital on September 5-6 to wrap up the Teesta and Feni rivers water-sharing accords.
One of the showcase agreements will be to address Bangladesh's repeated plea for a greater access to Indian market, and to address concerns over the imbalance in bilateral trade volume.
An indication to this effect was available from Indian Home Minister P Chidambaram's remark that “we want more goods to come from Bangladesh. Hilsa alone is not enough and we want more Indian goods to reach Bangladesh”.
Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma had visited Dhaka in April this year and increased the quota of special tariff-free import of garments from Bangladesh from Rs 80 lakh to Rs 1 crore.
In June, External Affairs Minister SM Krishna signed agreements on investment protection and for allowing vehicles from Bhutan to enter Bangladesh. They also discussed a proposed memorandum of understanding on textiles, which seeks to address non-tariff barriers, including for Jamdani sarees from Bangladesh.
Agreements on land boundary, enclaves, sharing of Teesta and Feni rivers and market access, and if there are two or three more, will make Manmohan Singh's visit a landmark one, officials here said. Both sides will be working till the last minute on some of them, they added.
For Bangladesh, the killing of straying civilians by the Border Security Force (BSF) is a constant irritant in ties, especially after the killing of Felani, a teenaged girl whose body was hanging from the barbed wire fence for hours.
During his visit to Dhaka in July-end, Chidambaram had sought to address this issue by assuring Bangladesh that the BSF would open fire as a last resort and, that too, from inside the fence. Bangladesh should keep its gates closed and ask locals not to move near the Indian border during night curfew.
Expectations of tangible outcome from Manmohan's visit to Bangladesh are understandably high as this would be the first full-fledged visit by an Indian PM to Bangladesh.
Previously, Indian prime ministers -- Rajiv Gandhi, Chanderashekhar, PV Narasimha Rao, IK Gujral, and Manmohan Singh -- had travelled to Bangladesh only to attend Saarc summits, to attend business summit or to visit flood and cyclone-ravaged areas. Atal Bihari Vajpayee had gone to Dhaka for a few hours to launch Dhaka-Kolkata bus service in July 1999.
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