India's move to ratify Land Boundary pact, opens new possibilities in regional cooperation

Pratim Ranjan Bose

Astrologers predict. Journalists use their experience to put jigsaw pieces together.

 In June this year, I anticipated that the Narendra Modi government is set to take definite steps in implementing the long pending Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh. 

My guess proved correct on November 25, as all the stake holders (including Modi’s BJP and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, who were staunch opponents to the move in the past) in the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs; unanimously cleared the final draft for land swap bill. It will be placed in the Rajya Sabha or the Council of States in the current session. 

The consensus was needed because, Modi’s, BJP that has a brute majority in the Lok Sabha or the House of the People; is a minority in the Rajya Sabha. It means, ratification of the bilateral agreement, the last of which was inked in 2011, is now a certainty.

I expect all the formalities be cleared in the current session of the Parliament. But that does not mean land will be swapped immediately. For, it would require due and lengthy administrative exercise to settle many issues including the most important of all – rehabilitation for the international migrants or refugees.

The task at hand

A grave omission during the Partition (1947) saw India and Bangladesh claiming hundreds of small villages, as their national territories, on either side of the border.

In the Constitution of either country they are referred as adversely possessed land (APL) and enclaves.

Mostly located on either side of the border along Barak Valley in Assam, the APLs are connected to the country by a small strip of land which is difficult to access. A total of 665 acres of land is in adverse possession of either country in Assam border.

Enclaves are completely land locked. India has 111 enclaves spreading over 17,000 acres at Lalmonirhat, Nilphamari and Kurigram districts in Bangladesh. Bangladesh has 51 enclaves over 7100 acres at Cooch Behar in India.

According to a head count conducted last year, a little over 51,000 people are living in a total of 162 enclaves. This includes 37,000 so-called Indian citizens living in captivity in Bangladesh and 14,000 in Bangladeshi enclaves in India.

I am saying “so-called citizens”, because they are deprived of any service that an Indian or Bangladeshi citizen can expect from its government.

There is no civic amenities be it electricity, school, health care facilities or so on. They are captives in a foreign territory that refuses to serve them. Their home country, at least on paper, cannot reach them any services either. They don’t figure even in the voters list of either country. They are citizens without a country.

 Once the international border is redrawn, people living in such land parcels will be offered the option of switching their nationality. Alternatively, they may migrate to their ‘home country’.

According to a survey by India Bangladesh enclave coordination committee, in 2013, only 743 people out of 37,000 living in Indian enclaves in Bangladesh were interested to migrate to India following land-swap. No one from the over 14,000 people in Bangladeshi enclaves in India are interested to migrate.

Once the Parliament decides to make necessary constitutional amendments; both the governments will engage into a more dependable study to finalise the details to the last mile. And, that should rightly take a little time. We could for nearly seven decades to reach this far, we can surely wait another couple of months or a little more to complete the deal and redraw the international border.

Huge Gains

An immediate gain for both the countries is the scope to tighten the border security and prevent infiltrations. The infiltration primarily takes place from Bangladesh to India for economic opportunity. But some Islamic terror outfits are using the border in their advantage. It’s time to hit them hard.

But what is important this is going to give Bangladeshi Prime Minister Seikh Hasina, some added handle to ignore Islamic outfits and strengthen economic ties with Modi’s India.

 And, that is the real advantage of this deal – greater regional co-operation. I am extremely hopeful that ratification of the land boundary pact will open doors for transit of Indian goods and services through Bangladesh to remotely located North Eastern States.

Better and cheaper connectivity should help improve India’s national integration both in economic and political front.

In fact, if Bangladesh grants India access to the Chittagong sea port, the landlocked North Eastern states may turnout to be into a lucrative investment destination to tap the South Asian markets.

I am sensing a flurry of announcements from Bangladeshi side sooner than later. Lets hope, I will prove correct, once again.

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