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    How Darjeeling row is impacting trade in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal

    Synopsis

    ET travels through India’s chicken neck, a 22-km-long stretch between Bangladesh and Nepal, to track trade movement among four nations — Bangladesh, Bhutan, India & Nepal.

    ET Bureau
    ET Magazine travels through India’s chicken neck, a 22-km-long stretch between Bangladesh and Nepal, to track trade movement among four nations — Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal

    Rajendra Thabar, a sub-inspector with the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), one of India’s Central armed police forces that guards the international borders along Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and parts of the Northeast, is posted at Panitanki on the India-Nepal border.

    The ongoing unrest in the Darjeeling hills — roughly 50 km from Panitanki on the foothills — means he has to be on a higher alert round the clock. Posted on the Indian side of the bridge over the river Mechi, which connects West Bengal’s Darjeeling district with Nepal’s Kakarvitta town, Thabar advises his men to walk an extra mile to spot any suspicious movement of goods and people.

    Citizens of both nations are allowed to move to the other side without a visa; flashing one’s voter identity card is good enough. “India’s border with Nepal is open and it is 1,751 km long. But our SSB jawans keep a vigil all along the border, allowing people to cross over only at designated border points. That’s why you see such a rush here,” says Thabar, about the bridge that is chock-ablock with pedestrians, cycle rickshaws, small and heavy vehicles. “A little delay in clearances results in a jam on the bridge.”

    Image article boday


    A couple of hours at the Panitanki check-gate will make you realise how hyperactive a border entry point can be. Indian students are coming home; Nepalese citizens are visiting their relatives in India; and traders are crowding the border at both ends.

    A woman carrying a sack of wastepaper to the Indian side is told to open her belongings. “Raddi (waste) has more value only on our side,” quips a constable at work. Early this week, SSB constables at Panitanki arrested a drug peddler with charas (hand-rolled hashish) worth Rs 1.1 crore, and rescued four Nepali girls in one of many human trafficking rackets that are busted on the border. Then, there are about 150 trucks from either side crossing the border every day.

    Those from India carry mainly petroleum products whereas trucks from Nepal are filled with brooms and agricultural products, mainly ginger. Also, Bangladeshi items such as cotton waste, cosmetics, battery cells, fabric, juice, biscuits enter Nepal, and also Bhutan, through another entry point — Jaigaon (India)-Phuntsholing (Bhutan). The upshot: Panitanki in the foothills of Darjeeling is a bustling trading hub for four nations — Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal — and is often called BBIN sub-region.

    The trade:
    1) Bangladesh exports goods such as cotton waste, cosmetics, battery, fabric, juice, biscuits to Nepal and Bhutan via Siliguri sub-division in Darjeeling district

    2) Nepal exports pulses, animal feed, herbs, vegetables to Bangladesh via the same route

    3) Indian exporters use this route to send boulders and construction materials to Bangladesh, and petroleum products to Nepal



    ...and Impact of the Unrest:
    1) Bangladesh-Bhutan trade is hit after truck drivers refuse to drive through the disturbed Dooars area, a gateway to Bhutan

    2) High alert sounded on India-Nepal border; checking intensifies, resulting in a slowdown in clearances

    3) No truck owner is taking risk in venturing into the Sevoke area to collect boulder stones, a major export from India to Bangladesh through the Fulbari border point


    Border Issues
    It is also a highly sensitive zone from the national security perspective, as Darjeeling district shares 101 km border with Nepal, 30 km with Bhutan and another 19 km with Bangladesh. So, it’s not surprising that as soon as the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM)-led agitation — triggered by the imposition of Bengali language in the hills — turned violent, there were apprehensions that the agitators would use the porous Nepal border to their advantage, both for creating hideouts and even mobilising resources.

    The saving grace, though, is that Nepal is a friendly neighbour; the chances of Kathmandu fomenting troubles in Gorkha areas are low, at least for now. Last week, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said the violence in Darjeeling was a “deep-rooted conspiracy”, blaming the agitators for taking help from Northeast insurgents. Her contention: “Where was the GJM getting illegal arms and money from?” This was after GJM leader Bimal Gurung’s office and residences were raided by the police, yielding bows and arrows, catapults and other weapons, firecrackers and some cash.

    “The police are gathering information, but I can’t divulge any details,” Siliguri’s Deputy Commissioner of Police Sudeep Sarkar told ET Magazine. Siliguri, a sub-division of Darjeeling district, falls well into India’s chicken neck — the 22-km-long corridor with Bangladesh in the south and Nepal in the north that connects the Northeast with the rest of India. This writer travelled from the Fulbari (India)-Banglabandha (Bangladesh) border point to the Panitanki (India)-Kakarvitta (Nepal) checkpost, a distance of 40 km by road.

    But as a crow flies, the distance between these two international trading hubs is less than 25 km, going by Google Earth measurements.

    Crippled trade
    At Fulbari bordering Bangladesh, trade goes as usual, except that the truck drivers have avoided trouble-torn Sevoke, the collection point for boulder stones, a major export item to Bangladesh. A mid-sized lorry with boulder stones can fetch about Rs 10,000 per trip. Truckers say that they need to enter just a kilometre into Bangladesh, dump the boulders and return empty. After the Darjeeling unrest began a fortnight ago, the lorry owners decided to collect more boulders from the Balason river (some 18 km north by northwest of Siliguri) to compensate for avoiding the Gorkhadominated Sevoke area near the Teesta river.

    Then there are trucks from Bangladesh that carry goods, mostly food products such as juice, biscuits and noodles, up to the border point. Unlike the Panitanki border with Nepal, Fulbari is an integrated checkpost (ICP) with immigration, customs, border security, parking facilities, warehousing — all in one complex. The goods are then loaded from Nepal and Bhutan for an onward journey.

    The unrest in Darjeeling has so far had little impact on the Bangladesh-Nepal route via Siliguri, but trucks carrying goods to Jaigaon near the Bhutanese town of Phuentsholing are feeling the heat of the agitation, as the 160 km Bangladesh-Bhutan route passes through the Dooars floodplains, which are partially affected by the strike in the hills. The indefinite strike to press for a separate state for the Gorkhas has crippled tourism industries both in the Darjeeling hills and Sikkim, with an estimated loss of Rs 70 crore so far; a tourist can reach Sikkim only via National Highway 10 that passes through Gorkha areas.

    Also, none of the 87 tea gardens, which produce the world-famous Darjeeling tea, is operational (See Tea and Janmukti). The plucking of tea leaves has stopped altogether. The Darjeeling Tea Association, which has estimated over Rs 100 crore loss so far, has formally appealed to Bimal Gurung to exempt the sector from the strike. The agitators, however, offered a 12-hour window on Friday to various boarding schools in the hills to evacuate their students to the foothills.

    They said only school vehicles would be allowed on the road, which meant tourists stuck in the hills are not out of the woods. The violent nature of the agitation isn’t good news for international trade in the BBIN sub-region as well as for domestic industries like tea and tourism. A state government report, as quoted by local newspapers, says public properties worth Rs 5.6 crore were damaged till Thursday, and another Rs 3.6 crore loss was incurred due to the torching of vehicles.

    The situation is exacerbating as both the sides — the West Bengal government and the GJM — are hardening their positions. On Thursday, the West Bengal police slapped murder cases against Gurung and his wife Asha, chief of the party’s women’s wing, for the death of three agitators at Singmari last week.

    The agitators have maintained that the lives lost were on account of police firing. With both sides not budging, the agitation that was sparked by the imposition of Bengali language in the school syllabus in the hills persists despite the controversial notification being withdrawn. The agitators are now reviving the decades-old demand for a separate state for the Gorkhas.

    As Kiran Desai wrote in her 2006 novel, The Inheritance of Loss, which had the movement for Gorkhaland as a backdrop: “A journey once begun has no end.”
    Image article boday


    Truckers still on the road
    Two out of three Bangladeshi truckers, who ET Magazine spoke with at the Fulbari border point, were unaware of the growing unrest in Darjeeling. The third, Muhammed Azad, said he heard about the problem in Darjeeling hills but his job was not to think beyond the unloading of the food products — juice, biscuits, noodles — at the Fulbari border point, an act that he had successfully carried out.

    “Indian trucks will carry our goods farther to Nepal and Bhutan. Those drivers will decide whether to travel in any risky area,” he said, while waiting at the checkpost for his return journey to Bangladesh. “I will need about 14 hours from here to reach Dhaka.”

    An Indian driver Supen Singha, who belongs to Matigara of Darjeeling district, said the truck owners decided to change the source of collecting boulders after violence broke out in Darjeeling. “The quality of stones in Teesta river is better, but we can no longer go to Sevoke, the collecting point. That’s a highly disturbed area now. So, more and more trucks are now loading stones from Balason river instead,” said Singha.

    At Panitanki on the India-Nepal border, about 40 km from the India-Bangladesh border point, trucker Virendra Singh laments the slow clearance system. “For the last two days, we have been waiting for the gate-pass. This machinery (his truck carries a giant machine) needs to be delivered at a cement factory in Jhapa (Nepal).

    For us, clearance is an issue, not any agitation”

    Trade facts

    Image article boday


    INDIA TO NEPAL: Petroleum products, food items, machinery
    NEPAL TO INDIA: Brooms, agriculture products, mainly ginger
    TRUCK MOVEMENT: 100-150 trucks from each side cross the border daily. Trucks include those carrying items from Bangladesh as well SEIZURE: Banned items valued at Rs 64 crore seized in 2016. These included cocaine and other drugs, Chinese jackets and electrical items, ashtadhatu (eight-metal) idols
    HUMAN TRAFFICKING: At least one or two Nepali women are rescued every month from being sold in Indian metros and even outside India

    DARJEELING UNREST IMPACT: No effect on truck movement on this route so far, as Siliguri sub-division (Panitanki falls in it) remains largely unaffected by the Gorkha agitation Sashastra Seema Bal, the paramilitary force that guards the area, has increased vigil during the last fortnight to detect suspicious movement of people with possible links to agitators

    *Trade figures on this border point are not available; India-Nepal trade volume was $5.4 billion in 2015-16. India’s exports were worth $3.9 billion and imports $1.4 billion

    INDIA TO BANGLADESH: Boulder stones, construction materials
    BANGLADESH TO INDIA: Cotton waste, juices (trucks return empty)
    TRUCK MOVEMENT: Over 200 trucks cross the border from each side every day.
    Trucks include those carrying items for Bhutan and Nepal SEIZURE: NA
    CATTLE TRADE: District administration bans buying and selling of cattle within 6 km of international border

    DARJEELING UNREST IMPACT: About 100 trucks that collect boulder stones from the Sevoke area of Teesta river (in Darjeeling district) every day are impacted because of the Gorkha agitation; movement of Bangladeshi goods exported to Bhutan is impacted as truck drivers are avoiding the Dooars route to Bhutan

    *Trade figures from this border point are not available; total India-Bangladesh trade volume was $6.7 billion in 2015-16. India’s exports were worth $6 billion and imports $0.7 billion


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