Kolkata: Developments, official statistics and institutional sources have been evaluated as of the research cut-off date of 31 March 2026.
Bangladesh’s general election of 12 February 2026 marked a decisive political reset in the Bay of Bengal. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) secured a clear parliamentary majority, and Tarique Rahman assumed office as prime minister on 17 February. The new government inherited a bilateral relationship that had passed through three distinct phases: the Sheikh Hasina–Awami League administration from 2009 to August 2024; the interim administration led by Muhammad Yunus from August 2024 to February 2026; and the present BNP-led order. As the International Institute for Strategic Studies noted after the election, Rahman’s mandate is substantial, but his government also faces difficult domestic and external tests.
For India, this change requires more than a reset in political messaging. It calls for a shift from a relationship identified heavily with one governing party towards a broader state-to-state framework capable of surviving political turnover in Dhaka.
During the Hasina years, India and Bangladesh built an unusually close security and connectivity architecture. Bangladeshi action against northeastern Indian insurgent networks helped reduce the use of cross-border sanctuaries. The period also saw the settlement of longstanding territorial questions: India’s Constitution (One Hundredth Amendment) Act, 2015 enabled implementation of the 1974 Land Boundary Agreement and its 2011 Protocol, including the acquisition and transfer of specified territories.
Yet the political foundation of this partnership remained narrow. V-Dem’s *Democracy Report 2025* classifies Bangladesh as an electoral autocracy and traces an episode of autocratisation to approximately 2010, with a further negative democratic trajectory associated with the 2024 election. In the author’s assessment, India’s close identification with the Awami League made strategically useful cooperation vulnerable to Bangladesh’s domestic anti-incumbency currents.
The August 2024 uprising and Yunus-led interim administration exposed that vulnerability. The interim government’s mandate was temporary, while bilateral disputes and public mistrust complicated engagement. The February 2026 election has removed that custodial ambiguity. India must now deal transparently with the elected BNP government while protecting cooperation that serves both states.
From party-centric diplomacy to institutional engagement
The central weakness of India’s previous posture was not cooperation with the Awami League itself, but the absence of equally durable relationships beyond it. Counter-terrorism, border tranquillity and transit access came to be viewed in parts of Bangladesh through a partisan lens. A resilient policy must therefore create formal channels with the government, parliamentary committees, opposition parties, professional associations, business organisations and credible civic platforms—without attempting to shape Bangladesh’s domestic political outcomes.
The institutional core should be practical. India and Bangladesh can regularise military staff talks, counter-terrorism consultations and hydrographic exchanges. The Border Security Force (BSF) and Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) need continuous field-level contact. Customs cooperation between India’s Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs and Bangladesh’s National Board of Revenue should focus on compatible documentation, risk-based inspection and reduced border dwell time. Regular exchanges between the Lok Sabha and the Jatiya Sangshad would give bilateral policy a wider parliamentary base.
Diplomatic decentralisation can complement these channels. India’s High Commission in Dhaka and Assistant High Commissions in Chattogram, Sylhet, Rajshahi and Khulna provide a platform for local engagement. More academic and research exchanges, predictable medical-visa processing and wider access to Indian Council for Cultural Relations scholarships would help separate people-to-people relations from fluctuations in elite politics.
Economic engagement must also become less government-centric. Border chambers, logistics operators, universities and professional bodies often experience the practical consequences of delayed clearances or visa restrictions before national ministries do. A standing bilateral consultative forum drawing on these institutions could identify operational bottlenecks without turning every administrative problem into a political dispute. Such engagement would not confer diplomatic authority on private organisations; it would give both governments a structured record of how policy is functioning on the ground.
BIMSTEC as an institutional buffer
Sub-regional organisations can preserve momentum when bilateral politics become strained. Bangladesh assumed the BIMSTEC chairmanship at the Sixth Summit on 4 April 2025, during the Yunus-led interim administration; the BNP government inherited that responsibility. With the BIMSTEC Secretariat in Dhaka and an Indian diplomat, Indra Mani Pandey, serving as secretary-general, the two countries possess a common institutional platform for connectivity, energy and maritime cooperation.
The Bangladesh-Bhutan-India-Nepal Motor Vehicles Agreement remains a useful but incomplete framework. The SASEC Action Plan for 2024–2026 records that Bangladesh, India and Nepal have ratified the agreement, while Bhutan has allowed the other three to proceed pending its own ratification. Passenger and cargo protocols still require operational completion.
BIMSTEC offers a parallel route. Its Master Plan for Transport Connectivity, adopted in March 2022, covers roads, railways, ports, inland waterways and supporting regulatory measures. Locating appropriate corridors within this framework can present connectivity as a regional economic asset rather than a one-sided bilateral concession.
Disaster cooperation is another area where institutionalisation is realistic. BIMSTEC already conducts disaster-management exercises, and its maritime-security expert group finalised draft guidelines in 2024 for the maritime component of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. India and Bangladesh should turn these mechanisms into regular coast-guard and naval coordination for cyclones, floods, oil spills and search-and-rescue operations.
Maritime security and critical infrastructure
The Bay of Bengal carries trade, energy flows and digital communications. The India-Bangladesh maritime boundary is no longer disputed: the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s July 2014 award settled the delimitation. The current challenge is to distinguish military cooperation, commercial construction and critical infrastructure instead of combining them in a single geopolitical narrative.
China remains an important supplier to the Bangladesh Armed Forces. Bangladesh commissioned two refurbished Type 035G submarines in 2017 and opened its first dedicated submarine base at Pekua in March 2023. Built with Chinese assistance, the facility was inaugurated as BNS Sheikh Hasina and is now commonly referred to as BNS Pekua. For India, its relevance lies in Bangladesh’s expanding undersea capability and the need for sustained maritime-domain dialogue—not in assuming that every Chinese-built facility automatically constitutes a foreign military base.
Chinese participation in port development also requires project-specific scrutiny. In December 2016, Bangladesh signed preliminary agreements with China Harbour Engineering Company and China State Construction Engineering Corporation for components of Payra port. However, the later capital and maintenance dredging of the Rabnabad channel was contracted to Belgium’s Jan De Nul. These are separate arrangements. At Mongla, Chinese financing and construction proposals have evolved through several stages; they should be assessed through the terms, financing and operating control of each contract rather than through general claims about “strategic encirclement.”
Maritime-domain awareness offers a direct field for cooperation. India and Bangladesh finalised an MoU in 2019 for a coastal surveillance radar system. In 2022, India was still requesting its implementation. Publicly available official material examined for this article does not establish that the system had become operational by the research cut-off.
Digital infrastructure deserves similar attention. Bangladesh Submarine Cables PLC operates the SEA-ME-WE 4 landing at Cox’s Bazar and SEA-ME-WE 5 at Kuakata, while terrestrial links from India also carry a substantial share of international bandwidth. India and Bangladesh should consider a bilateral cable-disruption response protocol, coordinated hydrographic monitoring and faster repair clearances. These would be policy initiatives agreed by the two governments, not arrangements automatically created by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Fisheries provide another potential confidence-building area. The maritime boundary has been settled, but fishermen can still cross jurisdictional lines or face detention while pursuing mobile fish stocks. Coordinated seasonal restrictions, vessel-identification systems and humane repatriation procedures would protect livelihoods while strengthening enforcement against illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. BIMSTEC’s blue-economy and maritime-security mechanisms could support technical cooperation, but operational authority would remain with the participating states.
Northeast connectivity and energy interdependence
Bangladesh provides India’s Northeast with shorter access to eastern ports and markets, but the strategic value of a route depends on whether it is regularly operational—not merely inaugurated.
The 12.24-kilometre Agartala-Akhaura rail link was inaugurated on 1 November 2023, accompanied by an inaugural freight movement from Gangasagar in Bangladesh to Nischintapur in India. A Rajya Sabha response dated 8 August 2024 stated that the Indian portion was complete and physical progress on the Bangladesh portion stood at 98 per cent. The official sources reviewed do not independently establish the commencement of regular commercial freight or passenger services by 31 March 2026.
Maitri Setu, the 1.9-kilometre bridge connecting Sabroom in Tripura with Ramgarh in Bangladesh, was inaugurated on 9 March 2021. Yet an operational corridor also requires functioning land-port infrastructure on both sides. India’s Land Ports Authority continued to describe Sabroom as a proposed land port; the bridge’s inauguration should therefore not be confused with evidence of regular commercial traffic.
Inland waterways provide a more established institutional route. The India-Bangladesh Protocol on Inland Water Transit and Trade permits vessels of both countries to use designated routes and ports of call, connecting the Ganga and Brahmaputra systems through Bangladesh. Maintaining navigability, night-navigation facilities and predictable customs procedures would make these routes more reliable for bulk freight.
Electricity trade is already a major source of interdependence. Bangladesh imports power through the Baharampur-Bheramara and Tripura-Comilla interconnections and from Adani Power’s 1,600 MW Godda plant. Because tariff, coal-pricing and payment disputes have politicised the Godda arrangement, both sides require transparent commercial review and credible dispute-resolution mechanisms rather than sudden supply disruptions.
Regional clean-energy trade provides a more diversified model. India, Bangladesh and Nepal signed a trilateral power-sales agreement in October 2024, and the first transaction of up to 40 MW from Nepal to Bangladesh through the Indian grid was inaugurated on 15 November 2024. Scaling this arrangement could allow hydropower and renewable electricity to move across South Asia under transparent grid-access and settlement rules.
Trade policy should reinforce this infrastructure. Bangladesh’s scheduled graduation from Least Developed Country status will alter some of the preferences available to its exporters. India and Bangladesh have discussed a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, but the appropriate formulation is to advance negotiations—not to suggest that a completed agreement awaits signature. Any CEPA should address rules of origin, standards, services, investment protection and adjustment costs alongside tariff reduction, ensuring that integration is understood as reciprocal rather than extractive.
Border security and shared rivers
The 4,096-kilometre land border must be managed against smuggling and trafficking without treating civilian safety as secondary. At the February 2025 BSF-BGB directors-general conference, the two sides agreed to increase joint patrols, vigilance and real-time information-sharing while working towards border management without killings. The policy test is implementation: incidents should be investigated jointly, non-lethal methods should be prioritised wherever feasible, and enforcement should target organised criminal networks rather than deepen hostility among border communities.
Water diplomacy is approaching a deadline. India and Bangladesh share 54 rivers. The 1996 Ganges Water Sharing Treaty expires in December 2026, and a February 2026 Lok Sabha response confirmed that discussions on renewal were underway. Renewal is not predetermined; it requires technical agreement and political consent.
The proposed 2011 Teesta arrangement was never signed. Until a political settlement becomes possible, cooperation can advance through monsoon flood-data exchange, riverbank protection and joint studies under the Joint Rivers Commission. Smaller shared rivers—including the Manu, Muhuri, Khowai, Gumti, Dharla and Dudhkumar—should receive more sustained technical attention. Joint monitoring of the Sundarbans can also connect river diplomacy with cyclone resilience, salinity management and biodiversity protection.
These technical channels matter because river negotiations are shaped by both bilateral diplomacy and India’s federal structure. New Delhi cannot treat state-level concerns as an afterthought, while Dhaka cannot reasonably be expected to regard indefinite delay as a policy. Early consultation with West Bengal and other affected states, publication of agreed hydrological data and clearly defined review mechanisms would make negotiations more credible on both sides.
A policy framework for India
India’s eastern-security strategy should rest on five linked principles. First, it should replace party-exclusive diplomacy with institutional engagement across Bangladesh’s government, parliament and society. Second, connectivity projects should be judged by actual operability, local economic benefit and transparent commercial terms. Third, border enforcement must combine action against trafficking and smuggling with measurable reductions in civilian deaths. Fourth, water and energy cooperation should be anchored in data, predictable agreements and regional grids. Fifth, public diplomacy should make visas, scholarships, medical access and academic partnerships more reliable.
India cannot secure its eastern frontier by appearing to choose Bangladesh’s rulers. It can do so by making cooperation valuable to successive governments and visible to citizens on both sides. A relationship grounded in sovereignty, institutional continuity and shared economic gains would preserve India’s security interests while supporting a stable and prosperous Bangladesh.
About the Author
Hridbina Chatterjee is a contributor to TheNews21 who writes on India’s Northeast, climate security, regional connectivity and the evolving strategic dynamics of the Bay of Bengal. Her work focuses on the intersection of public policy, geopolitics, infrastructure and human security.
