Narendra Damador Modi has come and gone. In the print and electronic media it’s all gold and glitter. Our honorable PM danced in elation. And our honorable ex-PM read a litany of complaints from her sorry cheat-sheet at Modi’s musings. Yes, if he wished, like Caesar, Modi could have twitted back to his own capital - veni vidi vici ...
Yes, substantial accomplishment happened. LBA is done. It’s great. However, the scope of LBA is not that wide or important in the context of wider national scape. Murder at border and Felani’s hanging corpse is languid but still lingers. Despite fanfare and signing of score-plus bilateral accords of puny-plus significance, a half billion vs six billion dollar trade imbalance still lingers in our sceptic mind. Visa simplification still cries in vain for the Delhi-Wala’s sympathetic ears.
And the five-hundred-pound gorilla, I mean equitable sharing of common river waters, thanks to the Chief Minister of our neighboring Opar Bangla, is a hush hush taboo…
In his well-received speech Modi uttered the forbidden words Teesta and Feni with an urbane inflection. He, too, is thinking of a resolution; he said – it is humanitarian …
Sorry. It’s no humanitarian. It is a legal issue. Norm of water sharing of international rivers follows certain international rules and regulations. It can’t be done by diktat or by benevolence of a brutal (think of Gujrat pogrom) leader.
Hope is what we got from Manmohan – it didn’t work. Hope is what we again got from Manmohan’s successor – and it shall not work.
When the hype is over, it’s all fruitless floccinaucinihilipilification – thus says the wiser.
