On March 18, the prime ministers of Bangladesh and India jointly inaugurated a 130-plus km pipeline to carry diesel fuel from a hub in Siliguri, in the state of West Bengal, to Parbatipur in northern Bangladesh.
The pipeline was made with Indian funds, but the benefits will accrue to both countries: To India, with goodwill and revenue; to Bangladesh, with steady supply of necessary fuel across its north, and cost-savings by jettisoning cumbersome supply via railways.
On day one, the pipeline carried nearly nine million litres of diesel to Bangladesh. It's a political economy bonus of immense value before the onset of Ramadan, and in a politically-charged year.
It is justifiably being called a bilateral triumph, riding on the back of several recent initiatives, from joint-venture power plants to liberalization of trade and transhipment for mutual benefit. There's talk of greater investment across the borders, in Special Economic Zones in Bangladesh and the massive market-at-large that is the sub-continent.
This isn't the half of it.
Unarguably, Bangladesh's greatest bilateral opportunity with India in 2023 lies in India's presidency of the G20 grouping of developed and on-the-make countries, the world's “premier forum for international economic cooperation,” to quote G20 literature.
This opportunity can -- and should -- spark short, medium, and long-term gains for Bangladesh in an extensive array: Agriculture and its value chains, the digital economy, disaster risk reduction and mitigation, socio-economic development, education, employment, and environment and climate sustainability. All this, from system-architecture to sustainability.
While this is the domain of policy-makers and policy, direct applications for businesses and planners accrue through several focus areas, including science, start-ups, and urban planning, all areas of immense opportunity for Bangladesh.
Indeed, last week over dinner at an elegant Gulshan restaurant, a well-regarded Bangladeshi finance specialist was left salivating over such opportunities instead of his excellent pan-fried sea bass.
From recent visits to India's National Capital Region and Mumbai, he had sussed out interest among Indian angel investors. Instead of putting money outside the region, he said, Indian-origin investors were looking to put money in a regional (and culturally comfortable) eco-system like Bangladesh to incubate start-ups in a range from fin-tech to edu-tech and everything in between, instead of betting on relatively saturated investment eco-systems in the Global North.
Moreover, unlike the usual practice of locating outreach, exposure and networking activities to one or two major urban hubs, India has made G20 into an unprecedented roadshow by taking G20 to every part of India.
Just in Bangladesh's vicinity the host cities are Kolkata, Siliguri, Gangtok, and Guwahati, with smaller events scheduled for nearly every eastern Indian and northeast-Indian state.
Elsewhere, every Indian metropolis and numerous major Indian cities, numbering nearly 30 beyond New Delhi, will host about 200 events: Conferences, exhibitions and networking opportunities to draw in parliamentarians as much as think-tanks, researchers, and groups of women as enablers, empowering agents and entrepreneurs, young people and, of course, every manner of business.
While such opportunity would accrue to any South Asian country by virtue of simply being present, Bangladesh has a place of honour and privilege at the G20 table for the entire year of India's presidency. India can invite “guest” nations.
Before India formally took over the G20 presidency from Indonesia on December 1, 2022 (the presidency runs to November 30 this year), it invited Bangladesh as the only guest from South Asia.
By virtue of an early alphabet, Bangladesh leads other G20 guests: Egypt, Mauritius, Netherlands, Nigeria, Oman, Singapore, Spain, and the United Arab Emirates.
This isn't strictly an India vs China by-play, although in this super-charged, seething region the overhang of the two giants is never far. To put it simply, India's G20 presidency will, from December 2023, pass to Brazil. Then Bangladesh's neighbourhood opportunity would become for the hesitant an opportunity lost.
That said, there need hardly be any concern of geo-political overhang. Realpolitik is a well-honed South Asian practice. Nepal has for decades balanced China and India, the two countries with which it shares borders. Sri Lanka, depending on the political conglomerate in play, has swung between India and China particularly in these past two decades for everything from ports to power -- the pun is intended -- and nearly everything in between.
Bangladesh has proved itself adept at balancing its own national interest with the national interest of other countries in Bangladesh and eastern South Asia. This permits Bangladesh to do business -- literally and figuratively -- with both India and China in a range from trade, investment, grants and projects, to defense.
It permits Bangladesh to work with both Russia and the United States. Even as Russia provides technology and support for the Rooppur nuclear power plant's imminent production, the American ambassador to Bangladesh waxed eloquent about US-Bangladesh ties when he visited the Meghnaghat combined-cycle power plant last week, built with the help of American investment and know-how.
Bangladesh and India have tripped the geo-political and geo-economic light fantastic with dexterity for several years, and with alacrity since the Russia-Ukraine war exploded into renewed play in February 2022.
On a visit to New Delhi just weeks ago, I saw parked in the airport's VIP apron the Boeing 757 variant which ferried the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken for the G20 foreign ministers' meeting and a ministerial meeting of the Quad, parked literally a plane away from the government quad-jet that brought Russia's Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov for the same G20 meeting -- his to be followed by his attendance at Raisina Dialogue, an Indian government-sponsored Track-Two jamboree.
Bangladesh and India have evolved into two neighbours who can talk turkey -- alongside talking Türkiye. What's there to lose when there's a positive future to win?
Sudeep Chakravarti is Director, Center for South Asian Studies at University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh. He has authored several books on history, ethnography, conflict resolution, and eastern South Asia. His most recent book is ‘The Eastern Gate: War and Peace in Nagaland, Manipur and India's Far East' (Simon and Schuster, 2022).
