The Ministry of Commerce has decided to send 3,000 metric tonnes of hilsa to India for Durga Puja. Yet the interim government's fisheries and livestock adviser, Farida Akhter, had said that no hilsa would go to India this time, because she wanted people in the country to eat hilsa at a lower price. Then on 21 September it emerged that 3,000 tonnes would be exported to India.

In the 2022-23 fiscal year Bangladesh exported 1,376 tonnes of hilsa to India. In other words, more than double what went out in a whole fiscal year is now being sent for a single Durga Puja. Fisheries and Livestock Adviser Farida Akhter said the decision to export was not her ministry's but the Commerce Ministry's, and that she still holds her earlier position against exporting hilsa.

In the latest redistribution of advisers' portfolios on 16 August, Salehuddin Ahmed was given charge of the finance and commerce ministries, so the export decision was taken by his ministry. But exporting 3,000 tonnes at once is not the sole decision of the Commerce Ministry or of Adviser Salehuddin Ahmed. There is good reason to think it came from the highest level of the government.

After the Awami League government fell on 5 August in the face of a mass uprising, an "anti-India" stance has been clear in the words of many advisers of the interim government and their policymakers, and some incidents suggested a sharp deterioration in relations with India. Against that background, the sudden decision to export 3,000 tonnes of hilsa has prompted much discussion. It came just before Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus's participation in the UN General Assembly, when it was known that Dr Yunus would meet US President Joe Biden and even Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on the sidelines, but would not see India's prime minister. So it is hard to conclude whether bilateral diplomacy lies behind this hilsa shipment.

It is true, though, that some advisers of the interim government are speaking about border killings and India's dams and unilateral water withdrawal on shared rivers in language no past minister used. The day after the decision to send 3,000 tonnes of hilsa to India, Water Resources Adviser Syeda Rizwana Hasan said: "The days of silence and inaction with India are over." From Bangladesh's point of view on water diplomacy, the statement and its tone are undoubtedly bold and commendable, because there are few examples of our policymakers speaking so plainly on sharing the water of common rivers, especially the Ganges, the Teesta, dams and barrages. Weak and submissive diplomacy is blamed as the main reason Bangladesh has repeatedly failed in bargaining over shared rivers. In this reality, people are asking how or why the Commerce Ministry decided to export 3,000 tonnes of hilsa in the face of the fisheries adviser's direct opposition, and whether it has anything to do with recent strains between the two countries or the UN session.

It is not the case that hilsa prices will double if it is exported to India, or that people will eat hilsa at Tk 400 a kg if it is not. Only a few days ago several media reports said that even without exports to India, and with plenty of hilsa in the market, prices were as high as before. In some places hilsa was selling for more than at this time last year.

According to the Department of Fisheries, hilsa production (catch) was 517,000 tonnes in 2017-18, 550,000 tonnes in 2019-20, 565,000 tonnes in 2020-21, 567,000 tonnes in 2021-22 and 571,000 tonnes in the latest year, 2022-23. It will take more time to know the catch for the current year. Even if 500,000 tonnes are caught, exporting 3,000 tonnes to India is not much in arithmetical terms. Questions are being raised this time mainly for two reasons:

• More than double the entire previous fiscal year's hilsa exports is being sent in one go.
• The Commerce Ministry decided on the export ignoring the decision or wishes of the fisheries and livestock adviser herself, raising the question of whether there is a lack of coordination within the government.

It may be recalled that on 1 August 2012 the government banned exports of all fish, including hilsa. On 23 September that year the ban was lifted for all fish except hilsa. In January 2018 the then fisheries and livestock minister told journalists the ban on exporting hilsa, the national fish, would be lifted to stop smuggling. He said that since production was rising and there was demand in the international market, the government wanted to export some. The minister also admitted that even without export permission hilsa went abroad through various illegal routes, depriving the state of revenue, so allowing exports would stop smuggling. Many believe the decision to export 3,000 tonnes to India this time was taken for the same reason: to stop smuggling and collect revenue.

Hilsa is bound up with Bengali emotion in a way no other fish is. In Bangladesh the craze for panta-ilish on Pahela Baishakh has faded considerably, partly because of various state initiatives. Above all, the Bengali New Year does not fall in the hilsa season, and there were once headlines about enthusiasts paying even Tk 10,000 for a single hilsa. But although the Pahela Baishakh craze has faded in recent years, ordinary people's frustration over hilsa prices has not ended, because good-sized hilsa still cannot be had at the price they want to pay. Small hilsa are available at Tk 600-700 a kg.

While the Pahela Baishakh frenzy has waned in Bangladesh, in India, particularly West Bengal, there has been no let-up in the hilsa frenzy around Durga Puja. The main reason is that Durga Puja falls in the peak hilsa season. The Ganges, the river called the Padma in Bangladesh, once yielded plenty of hilsa too, but for various reasons hilsa are no longer found far north of the sea. So West Bengal depends mainly on Bangladesh for hilsa, with some coming from Myanmar. Huge hilsa are sometimes seen in Bangladeshi markets too, most of them from Myanmar. Whatever they look like, they do not taste good at all. The taste of even a medium-sized hilsa from the Kirtankhola flowing past Barishal, the Sugandha past Jhalakathi town or the Sandhya past Banaripara upazila cannot be found in a two-kilo fish from Myanmar. Hence West Bengal's special interest in Bangladeshi hilsa.

Neighbours mean give and take, if both are friendly. Bangladesh's relations with India are historic, but there are many stories of strain too: killings of Bangladeshi citizens by the Indian border force BSF, India's high-handedness over shared river water, the trade deficit, and influence over Bangladesh's politics and power structure. Relations have been bittersweet, very good under some governments and badly deteriorated at other times.

Ordinary people, however, do not want to understand the twists of state diplomacy. When Durga Puja comes, people in Kolkata want plenty of hilsa from Bangladesh. And when Bangladesh faces an onion crisis, it is India that has to step in; recently a lot of eggs have come from India too. Being neighbours means standing by each other in difficulty. Relations between two states do not depend only on hilsa and onions, but without mutual trust and respect even a little hilsa or onion can cause relations to sour.

Ordinary people cannot always know, and do not always want to know, what is discussed through diplomatic channels, who won what and who conceded how much. Beyond these state calculations lies the kinship between people, especially the warmth between a large part of West Bengal's Bengalis and the people of Bangladesh, which has roots. Not only many famous people in West Bengal but countless ordinary people have ancestral homes in Bangladesh. So in the hilsa that goes there from here, they smell their roots.

Let me end with an incident. Our friend Shuvojit is a fairly well-known journalist in Kolkata whose roots are also in Barishal. A few years ago he came to Dhaka and said he would go to Barishal. I asked whether anyone of his lived there. He said: "No, I'm going to bring back soil." Soil? "Yes. My uncle told me that if I go to the old country, I must bring back a little soil from Barishal."

This is the pull of roots. No one who has not left his roots to live in another country can ever understand this pull, this love, this feeling.

So whatever the diplomacy over hilsa, the heartfelt bond between the Bengalis of West Bengal and the people of Bangladesh, especially those who once lived in this Bengal, cannot be tied with any thread of diplomacy.

Finally, the hope is that at Durga Puja hilsa reaches the plates not only of West Bengal's wealthy but of ordinary Bengalis too, and that in Bangladesh hilsa stops being a rich man's fish. May even a day labourer be able to go home with a hilsa, if not a one-kilo fish then at least one of 600 grams, so that his worn kitchen too fills with its aroma, and a piece of hilsa on hot rice as white as jasmine stirs his heart as well.

The writer is a journalist and author.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.