Talk to Dhaka: New Delhi should not ignore the new govt in Bangladesh

Bangladesh’s current government, which was installed after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was forced out of power by student-led protests, has consistently failed to live up to its own ideals. Under Chief Advisor Mohammed Yunus, it is supposed to prepare the ground for free and fair elections. Instead, it has made little effort to address — and, in some cases, stoked — the divisions that emerged during and after the protest movement. A few weeks ago, influential members of the interim government left to form a new political party; and last week the government decided to ban Ms Hasina’s Awami League. Any objective observer will read this as the new establishment putting a thumb on the electoral scale. Given that the main criticism against Ms Hasina is that she undermined democratic institutions to stay in power, it is hard to see how the current dispensation can claim to occupy the moral high ground after doing exactly the same thing. People in power there cannot even claim to have been elected in the first place. 

Prof Yunus’ first priority should have been restoring economic stability and political calm. However, this has not been achieved. Economic stability depends on repairing relations with big trading partners and ensuring that the investor community feels secure about Bangladesh’s future trajectory. Given the ratcheting up of tensions with India and the poor law and order situation in the country — a problem compounded by the blatant subversion of the judicial process to act against the Awami League — it is hard to see how investors will look kindly on the country’s troubled economy. The country, which is dependent upon the export of readymade garments, would in any case face the need for painful structural reform when it graduated from “least developed status” next year and lost duty-free access to certain markets such as the European Union. Its priority should be boosting other partnerships, not allowing them to wither. 

New Delhi has now imposed some trade restrictions on exports from Bangladesh, following ill-advised comments by Prof Yunus about India’s Northeast. However, New Delhi too seems to have not learnt much from its experience over the past few years. It first went all in on support for Ms Hasina — and as a consequence that leader’s unpopularity among the Bangladesh citizenry spread to negativity about the bilateral relations with India. It failed to open back-channel diplomacy with Ms Hasina’s rivals in time, and was wrong-footed by the success of the anti-Hasina movement. And now it is not engaging with the new establishment. This sort of approach will not survive in a world defined by realpolitik. New Delhi was a major backer of the democratic regime in Kabul, but now has realised it is in the national interest to rebuild ties with the Taliban. Can its diplomats believe it is worth talking to the Taliban but not to Dhaka? Clearly there is much to discuss. 

New Delhi must also recognise that distrust for India in Bangladeshi society, born of its propping up of Ms Hasina as she descended into open authoritarianism, requires it to take the first steps in repairing relations. In any case, the larger country always has to go the extra mile in satisfying concerns of the smaller neighbour; and in this case, that requirement is doubled. Stability in the neighbourhood is well worth opening talks.