Indian turf war over Bangladesh pipeline
By Sudha Ramachandran

BANGALORE - The ongoing turf war between India's Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and the Oil and Petroleum Ministry is likely to affect a pipeline deal India has been negotiating with Bangladesh in recent months. An irate MEA, which is seeking to clip the wings of the Petroleum Ministry, is objecting to some of the terms that the latter had agreed to while clinching the deal.

The current spat between the MEA and the Petroleum Ministry is said to be over Oil and Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar's negotiations with Bangladesh regarding a gas pipeline. In January this year, India reached agreement in principle with Myanmar and Bangladesh on construction and operation of a pipeline that will bring natural gas from Myanmar's Shwe gas fields to India via Bangladesh. India had managed to bring a reluctant Bangladesh on board by linking the pipeline agreement to Bangladesh's trade and transit demands of India.

The MEA is said to be upset with the Petroleum Ministry for agreeing to discuss bilateral issues such as bilateral trade and transit rights in order to clinch the trilateral pipeline agreement. India has always refused to discuss bilateral issues in multi-lateral forums.

Before coming on board the trilateral pipeline agreement, Bangladesh had to be assured that its bilateral concerns with India over trade and transit rights would be addressed in a positive manner.

The MEA's contention is that the language of the preamble of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) initialed in Yangon at the first meeting of the Techno-Economic Working Committee on February 24-25 pertaining to the bilateral issues raised by Bangladesh "seriously compromised India's position on these issues, was at variance with India's considered positions and was not acceptable to the MEA". Earlier this month, the principal secretary to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pulled up Aiyar's deputies for compromising India's position by signing a preamble that agreed to consider bilateral issues of hydropower, trade and transit rights.

According to a report in Indian Express, Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran has said that the preamble in the MoU would be reworded to remove the condition of resolving the bilateral issues for the trilateral agreement on the pipeline. Besides, the Petroleum Ministry would henceforth be "de-linked" from such bilateral negotiations.

Bangladesh has many misgivings over the pipeline project, with anti-Indian sentiment and irrational fears of the project depriving Bangladesh of its resources among them. Now India's proposed rewording of the preamble could become an excuse for Dhaka to slip out of the project.

The MEA's quarrel with the petroleum ministry goes back several months. Right from the start, it objected to the Petroleum Ministry negotiating pipeline projects with Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. Its contention was that the MEA was the nodal agency for interaction with other governments. This quarrel over turf was sorted out earlier this year when the Indian cabinet gave the Petroleum Ministry the nod to negotiate on the pipeline projects. The MEA's input in the negotiations was ensured through the deputation of a senior MEA officer to the Petroleum Ministry.

Over the past few months, Petroleum Minister Aiyar has managed to clinch several petroleum and pipeline deals. "The stunning success of the petroleum minister's diplomacy [he is, incidentally, a former diplomat] has upset the MEA," points out an official in the Petroleum Ministry.

While protection of turf and inter-ministry rivalry might be fueling the turf wars, what is evident is the MEA's fossilized approach to diplomacy and its refusal to think outside of the box in dealing with India's neighbors.

In its foreign relations, especially those with its neighbors, India has been stressing building economic and trade ties ahead of tackling contentious issues, the rationale being that with economic links strengthened, addressing political disputes would become easier. However, in its spats with other ministries the MEA contends that enhancing economic and trade ties cannot precede improvement in political relations.

According to a report in the Indian Express, in early April, the MEA shot down a proposal by Indian Oil Corp to bid for 51% equity and management control of Pakistan State Oil. The message conveyed to the Petroleum Ministry was that Indian firms had "very little chance" and it was not worth trying to get business in Pakistan. The MEA's argument was that a successful bid by Indian Oil Corporation would stoke anti-India sentiment in Pakistan, putting in jeopardy the ongoing normalization process.

The MEA is also said to have serious reservations over Tata Steel investing US$2 billion in Bangladesh.

On foreign policy issues, India's political class has been far more flexible and progressive than the mandarins at South Block (where the MEA is housed). "Not giving ground in negotiations with other countries is good diplomacy, but only up to a point. When not giving ground and reiterating old positions becomes routine it is self-defeating," a retired Commerce Ministry bureaucrat told Asia Times Online. He recalled that any shifts in India's foreign policy over the past decade came at the initiative of the political leadership, not because of the MEA.

While admitting that the Indian foreign service "does have some very fine minds", Shekhar Gupta, editor-in-chief of the Indian Express, wrote a couple of years ago in an op-ed piece titled "Indian Fossil Service" that "institutionally, the ministry [of external affairs] is not merely caught in a time-warp, it has also built this formidable immune system that strikes out the moment it is infected with change. At a time when the rest of the world is dismantling border checkpoints, when there is more toing-and-froing from academia to diplomacy than ever, our establishment is unique in curtailing even its own members' participation in international seminars for fear of contamination. It has resisted approaches from foreign services of other countries (notably Britain) to routinely send officers on exchanges even while the defense forces continue sending officers to each other's institutions. At a time when international trade and diplomacy are converging, our services are still fighting over who should represent us at the World Trade Organization (WTO)."

It is to this fossilized mindset and resistance to change that the Ministry of External Affairs' current objections to Aiyar's negotiations should be traced. In its statements, the MEA endorses the position that economic diplomacy should lead the way to normalization of relations. But its actions seem to be dictated by its turf wars with other ministries, such as the Commerce Ministry and the Petroleum Ministry. In the process it is undermining progress made through economic diplomacy.

The pipeline deals enhance India's energy security and could contribute to improving interaction with other countries as well. Giving some ground or adopting a new approach - even if it is a shift from India's long-held position - if it brings India gains, is not a threat to India's security.

While the MEA must step in if India's vital national security interests are being directly undermined by economic deals struck with other countries, its habit of raising objections whenever India's diplomatic dealings seem to be slipping out of its iron grip is not only absurd, it is unhelpful.

Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore.

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