Stable Bangladesh

President Droupadi Murmu has made a very significant statement, describing stability in Bangladesh as of utmost importance for India. The President made this observation when Hasan Mahmud, the visiting Foreign Minister of Bangladesh, called on her at Rashtrapati Bhavan on Friday. This is the first time since Sheikh Hasina assumed office as Prime Minister of Bangladesh that a foreign minister, or, for that matter, any dignitary from the neighbouring country, has visited India. It is a fact that political stability in Bangladesh affects India positively on various accounts. While it is imperative that India’s neighbours enjoy political stability, the importance of Bangladesh has increased in the context of the Northeastern region. Bangladesh and India share a 4,096-kilometre-long international border, the fifth-longest land border in the world. This includes 1879 km with four Northeastern states and 2217 km with West Bengal. Of the four northeastern states, Assam shares 262 km with Bangladesh, Tripura (856 km), Mizoram (318 km), and Meghalaya (443 km). Bangladesh and the Northeastern are, in fact, much more than next-door neighbours. Being geographically contiguous, they are ‘natural markets’ for each other. India and Bangladesh are now working together to widen and strengthen their cooperation. In the field of security, on the other hand, the two sides have made significant progress in recent years. It is time that Bangladesh and India’s Northeast could build on that foundation of cooperation and remove the bottlenecks affecting improved trade and connectivity. While India can help develop Bangladesh’s export and investment climate, Bangladesh can let India use its infrastructure for surface and maritime connectivity to move men and material to the Northeastern region. Equally important is the need to remove tariff and non-tariff barriers, develop and modernise the infrastructure along the border, and facilitate connectivity bilaterally and within the sub-region and beyond. That is exactly why President Droupadi Murmu has noted with satisfaction the progress India and Bangladesh have made in almost all spheres of bilateral cooperation, such as border and security, trade, connectivity, power, infrastructure, people-to-people contacts, etc. It is worth taking note that in the recent few years, both sides have been reviving rail, road, and waterways that traditionally linked the people and economies on both sides and are also simultaneously creating new connectivity links. With several more trans-border connectivity projects becoming reality, it is also time now to take the issues of India-Bangladesh bilateral cooperation to academia and the young generation across the Northeast in particular and the country in general.