Threat to Udhampur-Baramulla rail line

By B L Kak

The threat to the highly important 'national project', namely, Udhampur-Baramulla rail link in the Jammu and Kashmir is real than apparent. Hence, all the more reason for Parliament's Standing Committee on Railways to highlight the need for what it calls "adequate security cover" to ensure trouble-free construction of the rail line between Udhampur and Baramulla.

The 31-member Parliamentary panel has, made a pointed reference to the threat perception along the Katra Qazigund section and called for adequate security measures to enable the concerned agencies to complete the project. The panel's 19-page report made available in the two Houses of Parliament has voiced dissatisfaction at the "slow" speed of land acquisition process, particularly in Qazigund-Baramulla section in the Valley.

All this despite the deposit of Rs. 377 crore by the Railways with the J&K Government for disbursement of compensation. According to Parliamentary panel, the target date for Phase - I Udhampur-Katra is achievable if the required level of funding is made available.

There is no denying that the construction work on Katra-Qazigund section would depend upon the security cover between Chenab and Banihal section. If the authorities have managed to acquire most of the land required for Udhampur-Katra section, the scenario is different in respect of Katra-Qazigund section. Further delay in acquiring the projected land for the Katra-Qazigund rail line is bound to result in two developments - first, delay in the construction work and, second, further escalation in cost of the project.

The Parliamentary panel, while identifying gray areas has expressed apprehension about further cost escalation and timely completion of the 'national project'. Hence, the panel's recommendation: A project management authority be constituted under the administrative control of Prime Minister's Office (PMO), involving the representatives from the PMO, Ministry of Railways, J&K Government and the project executing agencies, to coordinate and oversee the progress of the work in "a holistic and synchronic" manner.

The report also contains the Railway Ministry's response, which runs thus: For monitoring of central projects for railways and roads in the State of Jammu and Kashmir standing committee of secretaries or development programmes of J&K under the chairmanship of the cabinet secretary reviews the progress of projects periodically.

The 'national project' for J&K, in fact, was sanctioned in 1994-95 at a cost of Rs. 1500 crores. In 1995-96, the scope of the project was modified and extended up to Baramulla at a cost of Rs. 1900 crores. Thus, the original cost of the entire project was estimated to be Rs. 3400 crores in 1995-96. The Standing Committee of Parliament has now been officially informed that the cost of the project has escalated to Rs. 5400 crores. And anticipated cost escalation has been worked out to five per cent per annum.

The problem in Kashmir is one of distance. New Delhi's mega train to Srinagar will need over 100 tunnels and about 800 minor and major bridges. Will this 'national project' eventually transcend the huge political divide that continues to separate Srinagar from the rest of the country? One view, which is even upheld by the powers - that-be in Srinagar, is that a parallel political track has to support the physical rail link in Kashmir.

The mega project, which the Centre wants to commission before August 15,2007, will also comprise a bridge over the Chenab, suspended over a gorge 300 metres deep, which will possibly be the highest such bridge in the world.

The Government expects that with the freight and passenger -carrying potential, the rail link will transform Kashmir's so far requested economy and go a long way towards addressing the problem of lack of job.

Parliamentary Standing Committee has, on the other hand, argued that the funding is not the sole cause of the slow progress in the execution of projects. According to the report there are varied drawbacks such as spending capacity of the Railways and lack of proper and effective coordination between the project executing authorities at project site and administrative machinery at the Centre. There is also a major defect in the planning of a project.

The Standing Committee has asserted that unless a vigorous and professional approach towards the project selection and proper planning is adopted, nothing is going to deliver tangible results.

The Railway Ministry's standpoint: The projects can be implemented in a time-bound manner only when required funding is assured. There is a heavy throw-forward of ongoing projects on the Railways and with the limited availability of resources, it is not feasible to assure funding for most of the projects. However, with augmentation of additional resources through various initiatives in the last two years and with the announcement of Remote Area Sampark Yojana, it is expected that the implementation of projects would get expedited and all the ongoing projects are likely to be completed in the next five years.

Bangladesh
Friend turning foe

By M Rama Rao & Atul Cowshish

As Bangladesh celebrates its 33rd Independence anniversary a stark but unpleasant truth that strikes many in India is that in recent years the two countries have been drifting in opposite directions when relations between them should have been the closest and friendliest.

Consider the latest spat on infiltration of Bangladeshis. It is a big issue in India's border states like Assam and West Bengal.

The defence minister Pranab Mukherjee has categorically asserted that incidents of infiltration had been noted from the Bangladeshi side. But Dhaka refused to admit it, much less take proper steps to address the problem.

Bangladesh would never have come out of the clutches of Pakistan had it not been for the sacrifices of Indian jawans who fought shoulder to shoulder with the ragtag Mukti Bahani of Bangladeshi nationalists who under the inspiring leadership of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib-Ur Rehman had dreamt of throwing out the might of the Pakistani army without really being equipped to do so.

As many as 30 million Bangladeshis are said to have lost their lives in their struggle to make their country free, while India fed and sheltered millions of Bangladeshis who had fled to this country to escape the wrath of the military rulers of Pakistan.

Officials of the two countries, who put up a brave public face and talk of friendly and 'historic' ties that bind India and Bangladesh do so clearly by glossing over ground realities. Such sentiments from Indian officials look odd these days because of Dhaka's apparent determination to stay as an unfriendly neighbour, perhaps under the influence or advise of some of its 'friends' at the western end of the subcontinent.

An outburst of strong anti-India sentiments by no less a person than the Foreign Minister of Bangladesh, M. Morshed Khan, before an audience of journalists some months ago is a clear sign of how deep the anti-India sentiments run in the ruling circles of Bangladesh. Bangladeshi officials and Ministers are quick to blame their ills on the so-called India 'hand' especially that of RAW- a replication of the standard Pakistani excuses. This war cry against RAW was heard loudly in August when a grenade attack on a rally addressed by the Awami League leader, Sheikh Hasina, had resulted in the death of 20 people.

While it is understandable that the fast growing tribe of fundamentalists in Bangladesh has taken upon itself the task of fuelling anti-India feelings, the moderates contribute their bit by raising the imaginary bogey of the Big Brother--India. They make it sound as if it is a sin for a big country to have small neighbours; the latter can do no wrong but the former is always wrong.

To get even with this 'villainous' Big Brother, Bangladesh has encouraged nearly every insurgent movement from North-east to set up camps inside its territory, allowed the Pakistanis to use Dhaka as main ISI centre to launch their various moves for destabilising India, refused to export its huge gas surplus to India that could considerably reduce the trade gap between the two countries and given boost to religious fundamentalists to influence the policy towards India and other countries.

The makeup of the present BNP-led coalition government of Prime Minister Begum Zia is patently anti-India as a result of the appeasement of the fundamentalist parties in the coalition. The Begum has a legacy of strong anti-India sentiments, inherited from her late husband, Gen Zia-ur-Rehman, who is credited with taking the first major step to end the secular character of Bangladesh by abrogating the word 'secular' from the constitution and substituting it by Islamic.

The perceived proximity of her political rival, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, to India is another strong reason for Begum Zia to be hostile towards India. This is a myth perpetuated by Hasina critics and Khaleda loyalists with an eye on local politics and picked up by the Indian media without getting a hang of the Bangladesh politics.

How, even after India's Border Security Force (BSF) was administered a bloody nose by the Bangladesh Riles (BDR) headed by a handpicked General, how Hasina can still be dubbed Pro-India. The earlier we get out of this month the better for India-Bangladesh relations. Moreover, we may be doing Hasina a disservice by harping on her 'mythical' pro-India stance.

This slight digression apart, it is to be expected that parties in the Khaleda government like the Jamaat-e-Islami and Islami Oikya Jote would press forward a strong anti-Indian agenda. But even many of the moderates in Bangladesh are unfavourably disposed towards India, carried way by the notion-- much propagated by Pakistan-of Indian 'hegemony'. It would be wrong to dismiss it as nothing more than the complex of a small neighbour as the charge is as baseless as it is absurd.

It, however, helps the anti-Indian Bangladeshi hardliners to radicalise a society that had ceded from a theocratic Pakistan in 1971 in order to breathe freely with its liberal ethos. The banner of Bangla pride under which the freedom struggle was carried out was not religion-based; it was more an assertion of a linguistic and ethnic identity very different from the Urdu-Punjabi dominated (West) Pakistan.

Things are different now. Persecution of minorities in Bangladesh has become regular. Their population has been steadily declining, from about 30 percent in 1971 to less than 12 percent. At the same time, Bangladesh has been winking at large scale migration of Muslims to neighbouring Indian states.

Many in India believe, perhaps not entirely without basis, that the aim is to bring about a demographic change in Indian states like Assam and West Bengal and then start a Kashmir-type movement to demand their secession from India. Some estimates say that nearly two crore Bangladeshis have illegally entered and settled in India. Bangladesh, of course, denies all that. Bangladesh denies the charge but the sudden demographic change in states bordering Bangladesh effectively contradicts the Dhaka line.

On the odd occasion when they agree to hear about the Indian complaint of large-scale clandestine migration or the presence of Indian insurgent groups within their country, Bangladeshi officials make a vague allegation about India too sheltering Bangladeshi 'terrorists', which can be taken as a reference to the presence of odd dissidents on the Indian soil.

By no stretch of imagination can the dissidents or political opponents be equated with terrorists whose aim is to spread mayhem and herald in a medieval regime that believes in going back instead of moving forward while the dissidents fight against the unacceptable ideological orientation of the present Government in Dhaka.

The treatment meted out to dissidents in Bangladesh is known worldwide. They are murdered and hounded. One such dissident, an academic, was found murdered in a foreign country. Another, an award-winning authoress, cannot visit her country as the government supports those who are baying for her blood. The state does not give the dissidents any protection against those who are looking out for them with their knives and guns.

Those who are working overtime to spread the poison of communalism and hatred in Bangladesh have obviously not cared to learn from the experience of their Pakistani friends. Islamabad today is paying for its sins of encouraging and nurturing fundamentalism with frequent terrorist attacks within the country when it had assumed that the terrorist guns would always be aimed only at India or the US.

Bangladesh is turning into a haven for a vast terrorist network in South and South-east Asia, including Al Qaeda, not to mention insurgent groups from Nepal and terrorists running away from countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Chechneya.

New Delhi has said that at least 200 camps for Indian insurgents are being run in Bangladesh and has given their locations to Dhaka authorities who continue to maintain the fiction that there are no terrorist or insurgents camps on their soil. In fact, there are some reports that suggest that many of these groups have set up bases deep inside caves, just as the Taliban had in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan.

The growth of terrorist activities in Bangladesh may not go down well with the US. And that cannot be a good thing for Khaleda what with repeated 'discovery' of arms caches in Chittagong. She cannot hope to draw comfort from Pakistan's analogy where the US doggedly overlooks the presence of fundamentalists, insurgents and terrorists if they are told to stay away from the US targets. Sadly for Khaleda, Bangladesh is no Pakistan and its strategic turf is very limited and hence of no use to the global super cop. (Syndicate Features)