SPEAKERS at an international conference on energy security on the capital on Wednesday held the view that regional cooperation can play a pivotal role in ensuring energy security of all the nations in South and South East Asia and their leaders should work accordingly. The news of the event as reported by media quoted Prof Mahendra P Lama of New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University as saying borders should not be treated as a threat other than an opportunity to neighbours to fulfil one another’s need. He blamed the Indian policymakers’ decision for dropping the plan to take gas from Myanmar through Bangladesh against Bangladesh’s demand for allowing its access to directly import electricity from Nepal and Bhutan. The present Indian blockade of fuel shipment to land blocked Nepal has meanwhile created the big confidence gap in any regional cooperation as India appears punishing its neighbour instead of helping it under the long established border cooperation.
Prof Dr Mahendra Lama has rightly said South Asia region is sitting over unused potentials of producing 58,000 MW of electricity from hydropower projects. But lack of Indian government initiative to explore the potentials is not allowing regional cooperation to develop. His comment that India does not take interest to accommodate neighbours’ interest in power sector thus makes open the Indian mentality on cooperation when it is not to India’s interest. Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali was present in the event in the city. He made the point that diversification of energy sources is essential as part of energy security in the region and for that there is no alternative to regional cooperation. But as it appears leaders and intellectuals in the regions only speak loud about such cooperation but the spirit is rather shrinking by unilateral Indian maneuvering instead of developing cooperation as a workable phenomenon.
India as the single biggest country in the region is enjoying the unique position to make or break such cooperation. Not only credible cooperation is failing in energy sector, except selling some electricity to Bangladesh, India is also creating trade bottlenecks by using countervailing duty on exports from Bangladesh under duty-free facilities. In many cases meaningful cooperation still a far cry. India’s current energy blockade to Nepal closing borders under the cover of trackers strike is a unique event how far India can go to hit a smaller neighbour where cooperation has hardly any meaning. Nepal is working now to airlift fuel from Bangladesh, in addition to bringing it from China on emergency basis.
Such blockade has created more distrust to trust India when it decides to make its case over the neighbour. South Asia must live together, but it is India which can only make the cooperation possible and also meaningful. So the question is what India means by regional cooperation.
