Bengal's political shift creates an opening for eastern integration

The electoral verdict in West Bengal has produced a new alignment between the state and the Centre — an important shift because connectivity, trade facilitation and border infrastructure depend on sustained intergovernmental coherence.  

Bangladesh, too, has entered a new phase, with a new government under Prime Minister Tarique Rahman restoring a firmer democratic mandate and greater executive continuity. India and Bangladesh share a 4,096-km border — the fifth-longest land border in the world — and West Bengal accounts for more than 2,200 km of it, making the state the principal land bridge between the North East and the Bay of Bengal, and a critical gateway for trade and transit, linking Nepal and Bhutan to the eastern seaboard. 

The economic case is compelling. In FY26, bilateral trade reached ₹1.09 trillion, making Bangladesh India’s largest South Asian trading partner and India Bangladesh’s second-largest trading partner globally. In the same year, trade with Nepal stood at ₹82,948 crore and with Bhutan at ₹18,261 crore — figures that underline the weight of India’s eastern neighbourhood. 

Even during periods of geopolitical strain, trade through the land frontier has remained resilient. Trade routed through India’s land border crossings with Bangladesh accounted for nearly ₹44,202 crore in FY26, around 40 per cent of total bilateral trade with West Bengal. Petrapole remains the dominant node, handling ₹28,203 crore in trade, and serving as the principal gateway for passenger movement. Changrabandha, Fulbari, Ghojadanga, Hili and Mahadipur collectively contributed over ₹14,656 crore. 

The economics of integration: The next phase of India-Bangladesh partnership will depend less on tariff schedules than on how seamlessly goods move. The World Bank estimates that improving transport connectivity between the two countries could increase exports from Bangladesh to India by 297 per cent and from India to Bangladesh by 172 per cent. The constraint, in short, is no longer demand; it is the system through which demand is served. This matters even more for the North Eastern region. The North East has borne the penalty of distance, with freight moving through the congested Siliguri Corridor. Transit through Bangladesh offers an efficient alternative, reducing time and cost while linking production centres to Chattogram and Mongla more effectively than current overland routes. West Bengal is the hinge in this equation, connecting India’s eastern seaboard, Bangladesh’s transit geography, and the productive potential of the North East. Rail links via Haldibari-Chilahati and Akhaura-Agartala strengthen this. 

The wider BBIN (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal) space operates on a similar principle. The Fulbari-Banglabandha route links Bangladeshi ports to landlocked Nepal, while Changrabandha-Burimari and Jaigaon-Phuentsholing support Bhutan’s connectivity. The BBIN Motor Vehicles Agreement, finalised in April 2025, envisages trial corridors through Kakarbhitta-Panitanki-Siliguri-Phulbari/ Fulbari -Banglabandha towards Bangladeshi ports. This framework has the potential to reshape the subregion’s logistics geography. Beyond BBIN, the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation’s connectivity agenda is advancing through its transport master plan and a working group on a draft Motor Vehicles Agreement, though it is yet to be concluded. 

The riverine layer is equally important. The Protocol on Inland Water Transit and Trade connects National Waterway-1 with National Waterway-2 and National Waterway-16 through the Indo-Bangladesh Protocol route, linking the Kolkata-Haldia system with Mongla and Chattogram while opening a waterborne channel to India’s North East. Expanded to 13 ports of call in each country, it is now an active commercial corridor, with traffic reaching 17.46 million metric tonnes in FY25. India’s task is now to weave roads, rail, waterways and land ports into a single, inter-connected multimodal transport construct that converts geographic advantage into sustained regional integration. 

Land ports and the architecture of execution: Translating the region’s potential into performance requires institutions that can govern the complexity of land borders. Land Ports Authority of India (LPAI) is an institutional response to the practical challenges. Its task is not merely to build facilities, but to organise the frontier as a coordinated system that secures the border while enabling efficient, lawful and predictable movement of goods and people. LPAI operates 15 land ports. A modern land port is not a checkpoint but a multi-agency platform integrating Customs, immigration, border security, quarantine, warehousing and cargo handling under a unified facilitation framework. In West Bengal, Petrapole remains the only fully operational land port. The next phase lies in upgrading Changrabandha, Ghojadanga, Fulbari, Hili, Mahadipur, Panitanki, Jaigaon, Chamurchi and Birpara into integrated gateways. Integrated upgrades can bring 97 per cent of Bengal’s land border trade under modern infrastructure and coherent systems. 

Execution, however, has faced predictable constraints: Land acquisition delays, nonavailability of strategically located land, and sites too far from the zero point, most visibly at Hili, Jaigaon and Panitanki. This is not a technical footnote; it is the binding constraint on capacity.  

Yet no eastern strategy can detach border economics from border security. The risks of extremist infiltration, misuse of transit corridors and disruptive networks remain real. The answer, however, is not to choose between security and trade, but to design institutions that deliver both. Biometrics, facial recognition, drone surveillance and grid-based monitoring can make security more precise, less intrusive and compatible with higher throughput. The deeper point is that security and the rule of law are preconditions of commerce, not obstacles to it. 

The time is right to expand capacity on India’s eastern border through integrated land-port development, supported by stronger border management and tighter Centre-state coordination, especially on land, last-mile connectivity, and operating protocols.

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The author is Chairman, Land Ports Authority of India (LPAI). With contributions from Samridhi Bimal & Komal Biswal, policy researchers, LPAI