Sisters in harmony

Bangladesh, the emerging 'Asian Tiger', is celebrating its 50th year of independence. One of the world's most densely populated countries, Bangladesh has achieved the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for maternal and child health and made great progress in food security since independence.

The economy has grown at an annual average of about six per cent for the last two decades and the country had reached the World Bank's lower-middle-income status in 2014. Based on the international poverty line measure of USD 1.90 (using 2011 Purchasing Power Parity exchange rate) a day, it reduced poverty from 43.8 per cent in 1991 to 14.8 per cent by 2016. Life expectancy, literacy rate and per capita food production have increased significantly. In 2018, Bangladesh fulfilled all eligibility criteria for graduation from the UN's Least Developed Countries (LDCs) list, to the developing country status and is on track for further graduation in 2024. As per a report of Business Standard, it is estimated that Bangladesh will exceed India's per capita income in the next couple of years. According to the International Monetary Fund, as reported by DailyStar.net, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Bangladesh was able to escape a contraction in 2020 and is set to post the third-highest growth in the world and the highest in Asia in 2020.

Bangladesh shares 4,094 kilometres of land border with India on three sides, the fourth side being open to the Bay of Bengal. Five Indian states, namely, West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya and Mizoram, share a border with Bangladesh. Historically, the relations between India and Bangladesh are friendly for many common reasons. For instance, both countries share a common heritage and ecosystem in the eastern part of India. Moreover, both India and Bangladesh are members of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC), Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) and the Commonwealth.

Islam N (2017) argued that the 'India factor' has played a key role in the formulation of Bangladesh foreign policy since its independence in 1971. Over the past decades, Bangladesh-India relations have experienced ups and downs, but the 'India factor' has remained constant and continued to affect Bangladesh's foreign policy. Bangladesh foreign policy in the past decades can be divided into two broad types: 'pro- India' and 'anti-India'. This may seem arbitrary but the distinction helps to understand the extent of India's influence on Bangladesh's foreign policy. The general trend has been that when an Awami League (AL) government was in power, it adopted a pro-India foreign policy, while non-AL governments generally maintained an attitude of mistrust toward New Delhi, thus pursuing a counterbalancing strategy vis-a-vis India.

The China factor

Bangladesh is strategically very important to both India and China. The Bay of Bengal is a key component of the Indo-Pacific, and Bangladesh is very important to India's strategic and security priorities. As per a report in Rediff.com, lying some 600 miles north of the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal, with the major ports of Chittagong and Cox's Bazar, almost bordering its neighbour Myanmar, the country is an important littoral on India's eastern seaboard.

Bangladesh is a supporter of China's Belt and Road Initiative. China has an aspiration to link its Yunnan province to the Indian Ocean, bypassing the long and arduous Malacca Straits. It requires access to the Bay of Bengal through Myanmar and Chittagong. If this materialises, we will see a sizeable increase in the Chinese naval and maritime presence in the Bay of Bengal and consequently, in proximity to the Andaman Islands. Xinhua.net reported that China has already invested heavily to develop a deep seaport in the Bay of Bengal. It is building a port at the tip of the Kyaukpyu township in the Rakhine State of Myanmar which has a common border with Bangladesh.

In 2016, Bangladesh and China signed 27 agreements for investments and loans worth around USD 24 billion during President Xi's visit to Dhaka. Together with USD 13.6 billion invested in earlier joint ventures, Chinese investment in Bangladesh now totals about USD 38 billion, making China Bangladesh's single largest investor and Bangladesh the second-largest recipient of Chinese loans under BRI in South Asia. China and Bangladesh had been negotiating and have now decided to proceed with a 900 km highway to connect Chittagong and Kunming through Myanmar. This also fits with their joint initiative of improving Chittagong port infrastructure. Bangladesh and China are also developing a Chinese Economic and Industrial Zone (CEIZ) with an existing footprint of 781 acres close to Bangladesh port. The CEIZ will specialize in chemicals, automobile assembly, garments, and pharmaceuticals, as reported by India Briefings.

In addition to economic engagement, Bangladesh and China in 2005 signed the Bangladesh‐ China Cooperation Agreement on the Peaceful Usage of Nuclear Energy which aims to assist Bangladesh in developing peaceful nuclear energy for power generation and other developmental purposes and the Defence Cooperation Agreement with China in 2002.

China's lead over India

India and Bangladesh have failed to leverage their friendly relations into a robust business partnership. Indo-Bangladesh trade has not yet touched USD 10 billion. In 2013, Bangladesh exported 2.2 per cent of its total export to India but in 2019 India's share in Bangladesh's export had declined to 1.3 per cent. In the same period, China's share in Bangladesh's export had increased from 0.64 per cent to 4.22 per cent. In the case of imports, Bangladesh's dependence on China has substantially increased in recent times. In 2013, India's share in Bangladesh's total import was 16.9 per cent. This share declined to 7.3 per cent in 2019. However, China's share in the corresponding period increased from 8.5 per cent to 48.9 per cent!

The same trend is observed in FDI inflow to Bangladesh. During 2013 Indian FDI share had marginally increased from 3.3 per cent to 3.9 per cent but the Chinese FDI share increased from 2.4 per cent to 31.1 per cent.

The restraining issues that are acting as major barriers in improving business and good neighbourly relationships need to be identified and properly addressed. Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS) in one of its reports (2010) observed that Bangladesh‐India relations over the years reflected the prominence of coercive elements in India's hegemonic role in South Asia. According to it, India, considers South Asia as its backyard, exerting influence over it, and so a growing relationship between China and Bangladesh is visualized by India as potentially problematic. Bangladesh tries to bargain between India and China, thus standing only to gain. Apart from that, Bangladesh's government over the years has been characterized by one favouring India, and one against it. Additionally, the Chinese quest for regional power and then global power is based on the sustained and dedicated engagement with India's neighbours for access and basing. Therefore, Bangladesh has been an obvious choice for a partnership.

Importance of Bangladesh to India

The partition of Bengal and the subsequent emergence of an independent country in Bangladesh has practically isolated the north-eastern states from the rest of India. The division of Bengal had turned northeast into a land-locked region surrounded by five countries. The North-East Region (NER) of India is spread over an area of 2,62,185 sq km, which is more than 8 per cent of the total geographical area of the country. The region has a long international border of 5,182 km, which is more than 99 per cent of its total geographical boundary. The NE states share international borders with Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, Nepal and China. The umbilical cord is the 'chicken neck' corridor at Siliguri (West Bengal).

Bangladesh and India share, both land and maritime, a 4,096.70 km long border. Indian states that share borders with Bangladesh are Assam, West Bengal, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Tripura. Four Northeastern states, namely Tripura, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Assam share a 1,880 km border with Bangladesh. More than half of the long Indo-Bangladesh border is shared by West Bengal (2,216.70 km) alone.

India and Bangladesh have 54 trans-boundary rivers flowing between them, all of which are part of the drainage system of the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) basin. The Padma (the Ganga), the Jamuna (the Brahmaputra) and the Meghna (the Barak) and their tributaries are integral in maintaining food and water security in the region. The Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) river basin is a trans-boundary river basin with a total area of just over 1.7 million sq km, distributed between India (64 per cent), China (18 per cent), Nepal (9 per cent), Bangladesh (7 per cent) and Bhutan (3 per cent).

The GBM river system is considered to be one trans-boundary river basin, even though the three rivers of this system have distinct characteristics. They join only just a few hundred kilometres upstream of the mouth in the Bay of Bengal. The GBM river system is the third-largest freshwater outlet to the world's oceans, being exceeded only by the Amazon and the Congo river systems. Eastern and north-eastern parts of India and Bangladesh are part of this GBM eco-system. In addition to these, the Sundarbans, a mangrove area in the delta, formed by the confluence of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers in the Bay of Bengal, spans from the Hooghly River in the Indian state of West Bengal to the Baleswar River in Bangladesh. The Sundarbans mangrove forest covers an area of about 10,000 sq km, of which forests in Bangladesh's Khulna Division extends over 6,017 sq km, and in West Bengal, they extend over 4,260 sq km across the South 24 Parganas and North 24 Parganas districts. The partition of Bengal in 1947 has disrupted this shared ecosystem.

Due to the lack of proper market and adequate support from the Central Government and disruption of the shared ecosystem, the region could not utilise its huge economic potential for the benefit of its people. This gets reflected in the basic economic indicators like a share of Northeastern states' GSDP in the country's GDP. In 2017 the total GSDP of eight Northeastern states amounted only to 2.9 per cent of the national GDP. One of the reasons for the low GSDP of NE states is their inability to attract investment — both national and foreign.

From April 2000 to March 2018, the NE states could attract only 0.03 per cent of FDI equity flow which entered into India. Even Indian commercial banks have not extended credit to the NE entrepreneurs to the extent they deserved. Data show that over the years the credit-deposit ratio of the North-east region has remained nearly half of the national average. For example in 2017 the C-R ratio of seven sisters of NE India was 38.2 per cent against the national average of 73.8 per cent. Lack of funds and sustained siphoning of peoples' savings and natural resources like tea, timber, oil, coal etc. to other parts of the country have resulted in a vicious circle of inadequate resource, poverty, unemployment and political unrest.

Good relation is the solution

Data reveal that four NE states and West Bengal have suffered more due to partition than Bangladesh. It is ahead of Pakistan, its previous ruler, in almost all the socio-economic parameters. In 2017-18, it was ahead (USD 1,751) of its sister West Bengal (USD 1,500) and four other NE border states in per capita income (at current price).

Tripura, which has a common language and cultural root along with strong physical connectivity with the emerging Asian Tiger, will get immensely benefited from greater engagement with the country. Geographically, Mizoram and Tripura enjoy proximity to the Bay of Bengal through Bangladesh. The main problem lies with Assam and Meghalaya. These two states do not have any foreign neighbour to their east, but to their west, they have a more affluent neighbour in Bangladesh.

A good neighbourly relation with Bangladesh is a prerequisite for the development of the eastern and north-eastern regions of India. Since 2014, the Indian Government has been trying to address various concerns of its neighbours by initiating the 'neighbourhood first policy'! Under this policy initiative, four catalysts influence India's outreach to its neighbours: the three-pronged impulses of geography, regional integration and geo-economics; development imperatives; and security concerns.

The settlement of the long-pending maritime boundary dispute in 2014, the ratification of the Land Boundary Agreement and the successful exchange of enclaves in 2015 have been major developments in the India-Bangladesh economic relations in recent years. The two countries also cooperate in diverse sectors such as space, IT, shipping, electronics, energy, tourism and the civil nuclear programme, with 90 memorandums of understanding (MoUs) inked. Soumya Bhowmick and Syed Mafiz Kamal, in their special report "India-Bangladesh Partnership in Post-Pandemic

Economic Recovery", highlighted that India is Bangladesh's biggest development partner, with New Delhi extending three Lines of Credit amounting to USD eight billion to Dhaka in the last eight years for the development of infrastructures such as roads, railways, shipping and ports.

There are clear indications of a closer relationship between the two neighbours. In a summit-level talk between the leaders of India and Bangladesh, held virtually on December 17, 2020, the Indian Prime Minister said, "Bangladesh is a major pillar of our 'neighbourhood first' policy and it has been a special priority for me from Day one to strengthen our relations with Bangladesh'.

Road ahead

Partition of Bengal has not only disrupted the eastern economy by disconnecting its time-tested shared ecosystem, but it has also deprived northern India of its only direct access to the Bay of Bengal via river Ganga-Padma. After the construction of the Farakka Barrage in the early 1970s, this historical trade route of northern India also got destroyed. The common ecosystem that India and Bangladesh had enjoyed for thousands of years, which got disrupted after the partition in 1947, could be the basis of the future cooperation of these two neighbours. Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna Basin Cooperation (GBMBC) in line with the Mekong-Ganga Cooperation (MGC) may be initiated to optimize the potential of the North-Eastern Region (NER). It is likely to be a win-win situation for all the stakeholders, including Nepal and Bhutan, who are part of this ecosystem.

Trade history suggests that the North-Eastern Region (NER) of India enjoyed one of the highest growth rates under the colonial economy built on trading tea, timber and oil with Calcutta to which it was linked. The epicentre of growth radiated down the Bay of Bengal via ports of Calcutta, Chittagong, Akyab (Sittwe), Rangoon, Moulmein, Tavoy and Singapore. The policy-makers of landlocked states of Assam, Mizoram, Tripura and Meghalaya should decide to which side they must look, East or West, for their long-term development. Improved economic and cultural engagements with Bangladesh and West Bengal are likely to offer them better prospects to break their geophysical trap and help access a huge global market using the sea.

To fully utilise the huge economic potential of NER a cordial relation with Bangladesh is essential as connectivity with mainland India through Bangladesh, using the historical trade routes, will open up a huge market for all the stakeholders.

Views expressed are personal