Hasina’s Delhi Visit

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s just-concluded two-day official visit to New Delhi has drawn worldwide attention. Equally important was her visit in the context of the Northeastern Region, which shares 1879 kilometres of international boundary with the neighbouring country. First and foremost, the two Prime Ministers have agreed on India’s decision to send technical delegations to the neighbouring country to carry out studies on the Teesta River Comprehensive Management and Restoration Project in Bangladesh. This is particularly significant because, while China too has a proposal for a loan of $1 billion to implement the project, Sheikh Hasina is likely to visit Beijing next month. The two leaders have also agreed to constitute a joint technical committee for discussions on the renewal of the Ganges Water Treaty of 1996, a 30-year treaty that expires in 2026. Bangladesh is incidentally at the centre of India’s “Neighbourhood First” policy and “Indo-Pacific Vision,” and India has implemented a series of projects for the welfare of people in the neighbouring country in the past year. The Prime Ministers of the two countries have incidentally met ten times in the past twelve months, and this in itself is a record of sorts, as no two heads of nations have ever met so frequently in recent memory. Delhi and Dhaka, on the sidelines of Sheikh Hasina’s visit to India, also signed ten instruments, including two shared visions on digital and green partnerships. These cover maritime cooperation in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean, E-visa for medical patients from Bangladesh to India, a commercial agreement between the National Payments Corporation of India and Bangladesh Bank to launch UPI, and three new connectivity services: a new train service between Rajshahi and Kolkata, a new bus service from Chittagong to Kolkata, and a goods train between Gede (India)-Darsana (Bangladesh) and Hal dibari (India)-Chilahati (Bangladesh) up to Dalgaon in Assam. Going beyond the immediate bilateral requirements, the two sides have also taken some decisions involving regional cooperation, which include Bangladesh joining the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative and New Delhi facilitating the supply of 40 megawatts of power from Nepal to Bangladesh through the Indian grid. It is also important to keep in mind that both India and Bangladesh consider each other as “special partners,” and this was evident from the fact that while Sheikh Hasina was in New Delhi only on June 9 to attend the swearing-in ceremony of the Narendra Modi government, she was back again within less than two weeks to become the first head of a government to pay a bilateral state visit to India.