As Bangladesh votes next week, a relook at how its relations with India have fared under Sheikh Hasina

The year 2024 is going to be historic due to the sheer number of countries that are going to witness their national elections. This makes it a crucial year because the resultant governments will get a chance to shape the global and regional politics for the next five years. Two such countries include India and Bangladesh as well. While Indian elections will take place in summer of 2024, Bangladesh is set to vote in the first week of January itself. These elections will set the tone for the future relations between these countries. While India is fast assuming a place of geopolitical prominence globally, Bangladesh has become its most crucial neighbour in the Indian subcontinent in recent years. The last decade has proved to be very transformative for their equation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bangladeshi counterpart, Sheikh Hasina steering the relations away from uncertainty and disagreements to one full of nothing but ‘Maitri’ or friendship. As Bangladesh goes to election next week, let’s take a quick relook at how far its relations with India have improved in the last decade but first a short historical background: India under leadership of prime minister Indira Gandhi had played a significant role in liberating Bangladesh from the clutches of Pakistan in 1971. After liberation, Bangladesh began a cordial bilateral relationship with India in 1972. However, the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975 and the subsequent political developments after this heinous event reshaped their relationship into one mired by suspicion and animosity. The distance between the two countries started to grow as the pro-Pakistani regimes in Bangladesh started to build greater bonds with Pakistan at the cost of its relations with India. It was only in 2009, when Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman took power, bilateral relations between India and Bangladesh started to improve. A new era of cooperation which was never seen in the post-colonial Indian subcontinent dawned when in 2014, India voted decisively to bring in Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power. Since then, Bangladesh has transformed from a mere neighbour to a strategic and economic partner for India in the South Asian region. The two counterparts have been working jointly to promote peace, stability, and prosperity in the region. In the last decade, the bilateral relations between the two countries have come to be defined by mutual trust, cooperation, and friendship. A large credit for this goes to the 2015 land boundary agreement which proved to be a milestone in mitigating territorial disputes between the two. Additionally, the transfer of 111 border enclaves in 2015 by India further infused confidence in their equation. This agreement is not only a testimony to diplomatic maturity, but it has also provided thousands of people with self-identity and citizenship rights. As a symbol of mutual trust and friendship, Bangladesh allowed India to withdraw water from the Feni River, which aided local Indians living near the river. Another remarkable development is the peaceful settlement of the maritime boundary dispute between India and Bangladesh. Following the settlement, Bangladesh acquired a vast maritime boundary, which opens immense opportunity for maritime economic development. The settlement of the long-pending boundary issue has paved the way for a security partnership between the two countries. In the past, the Khaleda Zia regime in Bangladesh had provided a safe sanctuary to insurgent groups from North East India in a mistaken policy to keep pressure on India. However, after coming to power in 2009, Sheikh Hasina announced that she will not allow Bangladeshi soil to be used to foment cross-border terrorism against India. Not just this, her government has worked closely with the Indian government to address security concerns and combat rebel groups in the north-eastern region. One of the major developments in Bangladesh-India security cooperation was the arrest of the ULFA chairman Aravinda Rajkhowa by Bangladesh authorities who handed him over to India. To address cross-border terrorism, Bangladesh and India have signed several agreements in the last decade. In 2013, India-Bangladesh also signed an extradition Treaty to suppress crimes. In addition, an MoU on prevention of human trafficking, another MoU on prevention of smuggling and circulation of fake currency notes was signed in 2015. A firm commitment has manifested between Sheikh Hasina and Narendra Modi to deal with cross-border terrorism and ensure peace and stability for the people of Bangladesh and India. It is also pertinent to note that in September 2019, on the side-lines of the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Sheikh Hasina and Narendra Modi held bilateral meetings on different issues while they reiterated the zero tolerance for terrorism. Besides their cooperation against terrorism, their military relationship has also improved significantly in the last decade as reflected in conduct of joint military exercises including the annual SAMPRITI exercise. The common goal of these joint operations is to enhance counterterrorism and anti-insurgency actions. In 2020, the Indian Army and the Bangladesh Army also collaborated for a series of joint drills. These exercises aimed to improve the interoperability and cooperation between the two forces in various military missions, including the fight against terrorism. India has also extended a $500 million Line of Credit to Bangladesh for purchasing of military hardware. Interestingly, India and Bangladesh have also started an annual defence dialogue, the fifth edition of which was held in Dhaka this year in August. The breakthrough moment in India-Bangladesh relationship is not limited to security convergence alone. Thanks to the economic growth in both countries, economy has today become one of the key drivers in their equation. Sample this, India-Bangladesh bilateral trade stood at just $6.6 billion in the year 2014 but in 2022 it had tripled to around $18.13 billion thus making Bangladesh India’s biggest trading partner in the subcontinent and sixth largest overall. That’s not all. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi and Hasina, the two countries are also negotiating a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement to further deepen their ties beyond just merchandise trade. What’s providing the necessary fuel to their economic partnership is Bangladesh’s imminent graduation from the status of ‘Least Developing Country’. An LDC enjoys considerable concessions from economically more developed economies in terms of duty free and quota free access to their markets. In 2026, Bangladesh is all set to lose this access when it will finally give up its LDC tag and that’s the reason why it is keen on inking trade pacts with its key partners. However, of late, an irritant has come in the India-Bangladesh trade relationship in the form of Bangladesh’s interest in China-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. India which had withdrawn from the RCEP due to well-placed fears of being flooded by cheap Chinese goods is now wary of the free trade agreement that it is negotiating with Bangladesh as well. Issue being that China may use Bangladesh as a route to dump its products in India. This is something which can hamper Indian industries in the long run and hence India will try to avoid. However, the potential between Indian and Bangladeshi economy in terms of trade remains huge and Bangladesh is likely to allay Indian fears due to its own self-interest in not losing access to the humongous Indian market. In the last decade, Bangladesh has started viewing India as a formidable development partner with India finding a place of primacy in its vision document. India has also fulfilled the expectations by extending its biggest support anywhere in South Asia to Bangladesh. In the words of India’s Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal, India stands “shoulder to shoulder” with Bangladesh in its development journey. As a reflection of the same, a CEO forum was launched by both countries in 2020 to smoothen their business-to-business relations. Results of the same have started to show— More than 350 Indian companies have registered in Bangladesh with a cumulative FDI of $3.5 billion. Similarly, companies in the medical sector in India are also eyeing the $14 billion healthcare market in Bangladesh. Many Indian companies such as the Reliance and Adani group have already concluded investment proposals to invest in the energy sector in addition to a three-country power initiative between India’s NTPC, Bangladesh’s Power Development Board and Nepal. As Bangladesh votes on 7 January, 2024, the road ahead for Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League does not appear to be very smooth. The party has a long history of defending its pro-India and pro-minority image in front of other political players in the country. In an act of desperation to escape any alienation in the political arena, the Hasina government has even started to court the Islamist elements in the country. Its closeness with an ultra-right group Hefazat-e-Islam must be seen in the same light. But what’s not going to change is the Hasina government’s commitment to continuous cooperation with India. After all, Sheikh Hasina has shown the highest level of interest in forging friendly and cooperative ties with India among all the other diplomatic partners of her country. Her party, Awami League has already outlined its vision to further deepen the India-Bangladesh equation explicitly in its election manifesto released this week. Monica Verma is a PhD from the Department of International Relations, South Asian University. She writes on India’s foreign policy. Md Shariful Islam is an Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Rajshahi, Bangladesh. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.