India must diversify its investments in Bangladesh

 India must diversify its investments in Bangladesh

Its decades-long, unwavering support for the incumbent Awami League, including tolerating its undemocratic leadership, and refusal to cooperate with other parties may come back to haunt it.

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised diversity and democracy during the G-20 Summit in New Delhi last month, even referring to his nation as "the mother of democracy."

But in Bangladesh, India's neighbor to the east, the Modi administration is backing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's more autocratic rule. Additionally, the administration in Dhaka is uncomfortably close to China, India's main regional foe, which adds a splash of humor to an otherwise somber story.

Putting all of your eggs in one basket is a lousy approach, and foreign officials deliberately avoid doing this when interacting with other nations. But for a very long time, Bangladesh has been treated in this manner by India's Ministry of External Affairs. The Awami League (AL) has been India's choice in Dhaka for many years as it has played favorites in Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, India does not have any other political allies it can rely on.

India's ardent backing of the AL administration has pushed it to trample on human rights and imprison human rights advocates without consequence. Under the AL's direction, democratic institutions that ought to ensure a peaceful transfer of power have been undermined.

Beyond the symbolism of Mother India turning a blind eye to her rebellious child, Indian support for the AL government despite its undemocratic operations exists.

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In the run-up to the 2014 general election, India dispatched its then-Foreign Secretary Sujata Singh to encourage the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) to participate in the poll. The BNP has requested that impartial caretaker government hold elections. The BNP threatened to boycott the election because the AL refused to grant their demand. Singh was unable to persuade the BNP to turn around.

Unfazed, Singh approached Hussain Mohammed Ershad, the Jatya Party's leader and a former president of Bangladesh, and made the case that if his party did not run in the election, extremist groups like the Jamaat-e-Islami would win. Rarely has the Jamaat received more than 5% of the vote in elections.

The debate was odd to say the least since the Jamaat had just been declared unlawful by Bangladesh's high court four months before to Singh's visit to Dhaka, contending that it violated the nation's secular constitution.

When the Jatya Party ultimately made the decision to run in the election, the farce at least seemed to have some dignity. All of the country's main political parties boycotted the election, which resulted in 153 candidates being elected without opposition to the 300-member parliament.

The BNP and other significant political parties took part in the 2018 general election. However, this was also seriously manipulated, much as the exercise in 2014.

While Western leaders demanded an investigation into election violence and violations, Modi acted quickly to contact Hasina and congratulate her on her win. China was the other significant nation to congratulate her.

Indian backing for succeeding AL governments is motivated by security and geopolitical considerations.

The landlocked northeastern states of India are connected to the rest of the nation via the constrained Siliguri Corridor. Access to the sea might be provided by Bangladesh and Myanmar. Bangladesh is known to have served as a haven for anti-India insurgent organizations, and the Northeast has also been plagued by insurgencies for decades.

The leaders of various rebel organizations have been deported to India by succeeding AL administrations, which have also taken steps to prevent these organizations from using Bangladeshi territory.

Therefore, Bangladesh's current political situation is essential for India to maintain peace in its ethnically varied, politically unresting, and insurgency-prone Northeast.

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The relationship between the Indian establishment and the AL extends back to 1971's Bangladesh Independence War, when India actively provided military and diplomatic assistance to Bangladesh's young government-in-exile. AL and I have a personal and emotional bond as a result.

That explains why India hasn't bothered to build new allies in Bangladesh even after the most of the insurrections in its northeastern states have ended. Due to this resistance, India and the AL have entered into a weird marriage of convenience. Sadly, the democracy of Bangladesh is sacrificed in the making of this.

India must take a defensive stance in Bangladesh. In the event that the Awami League loses the election or some other means of power, India may find itself without allies with whom to cooperate. This would be devastating since Bangladesh, with which India shares the fifth-longest land border in the world, is important to India's economic, security, and geopolitical interests.  It must immediately begin negotiations with the main political figures in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh is now seeing a rapid increase in Chinese influence. In 2015, China replaced India as the biggest commercial partner of Bangladesh, a position that India had held for four decades. Bangladesh continues to import more items from China than from India eight years later.

Bangladesh's economy is dependent on Chinese goods and money in addition to Chinese goods. It owes China a total of $17.5 billion in debt, the most of which is allocated to white elephant infrastructure projects that, together with a fall in remittances, might trigger an economic disaster in the nation.

Bangladesh signed up for a $4.7 billion loan package with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in order to get out of this predicament. However, the nation has fallen short of two of the six goals outlined by the IMF, one of which must be met in order for the bailout to proceed. It is uncertain how Bangladesh's dwindling foreign reserve would handle the blow if it is unable to get the IMF loan.

The issue of repaying the Chinese loans is another issue. China grants its debtors a shorter time period to repay loans than the IMF or the World Bank. There are also higher interest rates. Bangladesh paid back $2.74 billion in loans in the previous fiscal year, a 37 percent rise from the year before. This fiscal year, it will reach a maximum of $3.28 billion.

Bangladesh is at serious danger of degenerating into a failed state. It's likely that the continued political upheaval may cause the economy to collapse, which might have repercussions in the Indian states that border Bangladesh.

The United States has been reasonably concerned about the prolonged volatility. The Biden administration has maintained its support for an inclusive, free, and fair election in Bangladesh. A new visa limitation policy was been established by Washington for any "Bangladeshi individual believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, undermining the democratic election process in Bangladesh."

Given how many local plutocrats have significantly invested their illicit fortune in American real estate, there are grounds to think that the legislation might aid in Bangladesh's return to democracy. The sanctions will prevent Bangladesh's alleged billionaires from enjoying an unrestricted lifestyle in the West.

The new visa policy of the United States may be followed by stricter regulations. The United States wants to see a Bangladesh that is devoted to democracy, transparency, pluralism tolerance, good governance, and respect for human rights, according to U.S. Ambassador to Bangladesh Peter Haas in a speech at Bangladesh's Defense Services Command and Staff College.

The democratization of Bangladesh is crucial to the U.S. Indo-Pacific pivot.

China's strategic advancements into the Indian Ocean depend on this nation. In the case of a naval blockade in the South China Sea, China would want access to the sea from either Bangladesh, Myanmar, or both. China does not want Bangladesh to become a Western-style democracy because doing so may undermine its all-weather ally, the AL.

There is only one method left to keep China in check in Bangladesh, and that is to allow democracy to take root there.