Bangladesh was a significant presence in domestic politics in the run up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The Bharatiya Janata Party made illegal immigration a campaign issue, and its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi even alleged that there was a conspiracy to poach the endangered rhinoceros in Assam to create settlements for illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Even now, with the assembly elections in Assam coming up this year, BJP president Amit Shah accused the Congress of wanting to make the state a part of Bangladesh.
But this public opprobrium against India’s eastern neighbour is belied by its foreign policy. Indo-Bangla relations have seen a significant upswing over the past few years. Relations between the two are possibly the best since 1971, when Bangladesh achieved independence from Pakistan with a little help from India. So close are they now that, as reported recently, Bangladesh has cancelled plans to build a deep-sea port with the help of China even as New Delhi has shown interest in building another port. The fact that Bangladesh is considering India’s proposal regarding an asset as strategic as a deep-sea port shows how good the relations are between the two successor states of the British Raj.
Friends forever?
India-Bangladesh relations saw a turnaround in 2009 when the newly-elected Sheikh Hasina government decided to move closer to India. Hasina’s party, the Awami League, the traditionally secular pole of the country, was always more comfortable with India than the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party. At the start of her term, Hasina moved decisively against the banned United Liberation Front of Asom. It arrested its chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa and handed him over to India in 2009. Last year, it arrested and handed over the ULFA’s general secretary, Anup Chetia. Most significantly, Bangladesh has frozen the vast majority of ULFA’s funds, rendering the once-feared organisation nearly comatose.
Bangladesh has also permitted Delhi to access its internal transit routes that give it easier access to states in the Northeast. Dhaka had previously resisted Delhi’s request for transit right citing an infringement of its sovereignty. But Hasina’s closeness to India, and Bangladesh’s desire to benefit from the new routes via increased trade, has overridden this concern.
First steps
In return, India has stepped up investment in Bangladesh. It is building a 1,320 megawatt power project in southern Bangladesh, which will help the country ramp up its power consumption, currently one of the lowest in the world.
Private Indian investment in Bangladesh is also rising. The Adani group has proposed an investment of $8 billion, while the Reliance group has promised a $3.5 billion investment. Indian foreign direct investment in Bangladesh has grown eight-fold between 2009 and 2014. It is now India’s largest trading partner in the subcontinent, and trade between the two is expected to double by 2018.
India has even addressed the prickly issue of infiltration at the border. Contrary to furious politicking in public, on the ground, India has become less belligerent. Between 2001 and 2010, the Border Security Force had adopted a controversial, informal shoot-to-kill policy. This resulted in the death of almost 1,000 people from both sides of the border. From 2011, however, the BSF resolved to use non-lethal weapons such as stun laser shots and rubber bullets in its border patrols. As a result, the death toll has fallen by more than 60% since 2010.
Decisive action
After taking over as prime minister in 2014, Narendra Modi ignored the strong opposition emanating from Assam and cleared the swap of enclaves with Bangladesh even though it resulted in a net loss of land for India. That this pact was on the table since 1971 but was only operationalised in 2015 is a good indication that India-Bangla relations have never been better.
The change in relations is driven by mutually-reinforcing factors on both sides. India, under both Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi, seems to have fully operationalised the Gujral doctrine, a five-point roadmap that sought to build trust with neighbours even if it required Delhi to take the first step. In 2011, India allowed Bangladeshi goods duty-free access to its markets in a bid to rein in the runaway trade imbalance in its favour. At present, Bangladesh’s economy is booming on the bedrock of significant improvements in the standard of living. The World Bank estimates that it will be the world’s second-fastest growing economy in 2016. A large part of this growth is driven by its garment exports, which are now second in terms of revenue to China.
Sombre note
However, as the relationship booms, India runs the danger of placing all its eggs in one basket – that of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League. Hasina’s attempts to set Bangladesh’s economy right has come at the cost of suppression of the opposition and media. To aim for a long-term relationship with its neighbour, India needs to ensure that it builds relations with Bangladesh, not just with the Awami League. As India moves to invest in Bangladesh, constructing links with the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party is as important as making clear to Sheikh Hasina that Delhi does not condone the suppression of the media.
But even as Indo-Bangla relations are growing, in absolute terms, it’s still rather weak. In 2014, despite significant growth, only 4.4% of Bangladesh’s FDI came from India. Given the close cultural, historical and geographical links we share, this metric, and others, needs to rise significantly.
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