With reports suggesting that the Teesta River water sharing issue will not be on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s agenda during his June 6-7 Bangladesh visit, Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is expected to make a few announcements to celebrate the spirit of friendship between the two nations when she reaches Dhaka tomorrow.
Teesta Waters Runs Deep
Modi will take along with him a gift, in the form of Parliament’s ratification of the 1974 Land Boundary Agreement, which is expected to assuage feelings among Bangladeshis, especially the Awami League government of Sheikh Hasina.
On her part, Mamata gave consent to the LBA after she was promised a Rs 3,008-crore compensation package. However, the Modi government has not yet been able to make Mamata come around on the tricky Teesta water-sharing treaty.
This March, the West Bengal cabinet approved the setting up of a chair in the name of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, popularly known as Bangabandhu (Friend of Bengal) and revered as the Father of the Nation in Bangladesh. The Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman visiting professorship will soon be instituted in Calcutta University.
A United Bangla on the Radar
This will provide a platform for eminent scholars, academics, researchers and intellectuals from Bangladesh to come and stay in Bengal for a period of one year. The honorarium they will receive would be equal to the salary and allowance of a professor at Calcutta University.
Banerjee is also expected to pay tribute to Bangladesh’s national poet Kazi Nazrul Islam. She is expected to announce the setting up of the Kazi Nazrul Centre for Art and Culture in the newly-established Kazi Nazrul University in Asansol, about 200 kms from Kolkata.
This is envisaged as a centre for advanced studies in inter-disciplinary humanities. The centre hopes to encourage studies on values close to Kazi Nazrul’s heart and provide a forum for inter-cultural and inter-religious dialogue.
Banerjee hopes to create an opportunity for the finest Bangladeshi minds to collaborate on issues of regional interest, while the Modi government can thrash out national issues that impact good neighbourly relations.
(Payal Mohanka is a Kolkata-based senior journalist.)
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