Looking South, For Sikkim

KC PRADHAN
With Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State visiting West Bengal on Sunday to meet Didi Mamata Banerjee who has been ranked by Time magazine as one among the 100 most influential people in the world, history is in the making in South Asia at the historical Writers’ Building. It is even more so when she has made her presence felt in China and made it known that US is still a world power to reckon with. Her friendly presence in nearby Bangladesh urging feudal parties (headed by rather another powerful lady) to to bury their past, end the discord and move ahead as a truly democratic nation, besides  mending  fences with India made a deep impact. All these marathon visits with a 40-strong US contingent in Air Force Two with show of much feared and antiaircraft carrier USS Enterprise of 1971 Bay of Bengal (while Bangladesh as a nation was in the making) fame coincidentally moored in the Bay of Bengal as its final voyage before this star of US Navy is scrapped on its return home after 50 years of its show of strength - rather military might from Cuba, to Vietnam to the Mediterranean - has to be reckoned with gravity.
Sikkim is important corridor between Central Asia and South Asia and beyond to SE Asia with Singapore as the ultimate destination from a trade standpoint. Sikkim’s destiny lies with West Bengal and Bangladesh from that standpoint. It is alright to align with the oft hyped North-East for short term monetary benefits but in the long run, our destiny lies elsewhere – to the South. How to cultivate West Bengal and Bangladesh for Sikkim to have a place of pride in the world power-politics should not be lost sight of. Besides, the geo-political location from economic and political standpoint, the other important factor is the river Teesta which binds all the three regional players.
While I was at East West Centre in Hawaii some three decades ago, representing India at the Man, Forests and Environment workshop, the Bangladesh delegate spoke immediately after my presentation and remarked in an unequivocal tone that Sikkim must practice better landuse policies to save Bangladesh from recurrent floods caused by the Teesta - once the river of sorrow - that made people in the downstream homeless year in years out. The workshop was extended by an hour to talk on the matter. Thirty heads – mostly from south-east Asian countries - were put together and the outcome was to take the Teesta Ecoregion from its source in Sikkim till it meets the river Brahmaputra in Bangladesh as one eco-region and work towards regional development and the World Bank should take this as the model. It was hoped the model could be emulated in other regional development initiatives taking eco-region as the basis of development the world over. Some attempts were made through Maulana Institute of South Asian Studies funded by the Ministry of External Affairs but did not get very far as immediate haphazard development take over the longer goals in view.
While on the vexed issue of sharing the waters of Teesta [possibly be on the cards of Clinton’s visit], some thought should be spared on eco-regional development with maximizing the use of water [so very important both to north Bengal and Bangladesh]. And here, along with Nathula as a corridor for enlarged trade in real terms, emerges the importance of Sikkim in the international context. This will also bring into focus the jugglery of Gorkhaland and fitting in this highly vulnerable chicken-neck in the overall game plan. A broader and wider vision is called for in South Block. Perhaps this should be taken as an opportunity as strategic partners of eminence should rightly do so.
[The writer is a former Chief Secretary, Sikkim]