This is an intense period of Indian election and in two places – West Bengal and Assam – Bangladesh is an important hate card that works to get votes. Bangladeshis are painted as illegal immigrants who steal jobs and prosperity. The objective is to ignite fear and thus gain votes of anxiety.
It’s a typical populist hate mongering platform that is seen everywhere. India is no different. Bangladesh has helped BJP gain much ground. In West Bengal where BJP once had not much of a presence, is now threatening to become a massive opposition. While polls say that Mamata and her Trinamool Congress will retain power, its majority will be vastly reduced. Once they become a major presence, they may well be looking towards power with an eager centre. So the stakes in both Assam and West Bengal elections are high.
Much of the hate campaign is run by Amit Shah, the BJP supremo who has earlier called Bangladeshis, “termites.” He recently commented that Bangladeshis migrate to India because they are starving here. This has angered many Bangladeshis and prompted the Foreign Minister to retort that Amit Shah basically doesn’t know what he is talking about. It was polite and proper and while it didn’t make people think the retort was hard enough but it was the most sensible within the circumstances.
Foreign Minister MA Momen also pointed a number of achievements of Bangladesh in taking care of its impoverished. In fact in many sectors Bangladesh has done better than most others. Of the big three –India, Pakistan and Bangladesh – the last named has taken care of its poor best. Its high poverty has diminished drastically and life expectancy at birth which results from a combination of indicators such as Infant mortality rate, maternal mortality rate, gender participation etc. is better than India and Pakistan. Thus the idea that they were forced to leave Bangladesh due to conditions here isn’t true but Indians want to believe that and hating the neighbor policy is politically convenient. But this argument reflects India’s problem of politics and little to do with Bangladesh.
While India has been doing very well with many aspects of its economy, it hasn’t turned out to be as much a pro-poor state as it would like to claim. Its agriculture policy which caused such trouble shows it’s finding difficulties in handling transition from an inefficient low performing agriculture to better performing industrial sector. Bangladesh has jumped ahead of India in that through the RMG sector route. India , therefore uses such electoral propaganda rather than economic data where it works and neighhbour hating works in the eastern part of India.
Be that it may, one should pay attention to developing a less India dependent policy in all sectors given its rising political unease. Political statements and electoral strategy should be read as indicators of possible instability where hate mongering rather than economic performance will be used for political gains. Keeping a safe distance from India may be useful for Bangladesh.
