The election in Bangladesh, the outcome of which is a foregone conclusion with the opposition boycotting it, is an apt occasion for New Delhi to examine its neighbourhood foreign policy. Widely seen as pro-India, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League party is poised to win a fifth term in office.
To New Delhi, this may look like a satisfactory outcome, given it is heavily invested in Hasina’s regime. India needs Dhaka’s ports to service its own northeastern states and to reduce the vulnerability inherent in the 20 km wide Siliguri Corridor, popularly called Chicken’s Neck, which connects the Northeast to the rest of India. But then, the legitimacy of Bangladesh’s elections has been widely questioned, as it was during the last two iterations in 2018 and 2014. The elections are being conducted without a caretaker government entrusted with their conduct, a constitutional practice that Hasina ended in 2011.
Almost the entire opposition leadership is in prison or exile, and dummy candidates were fielded by the ruling party to give it a semblance of a contest. The last 10 years have seen Dhaka become a basket case of democratic backsliding. In fact, Haseena’s government has outdone the Narendra Modi regime itself in rolling back the autonomy of constitutional institutions, making the country democratic in name only. With popular protests being put down with brute force, geopolitical analysts say an Arab Spring-like occurrence is a distinct possibility in Bangladesh.
Such an event, should it happen, would not be a happy augury for India. Whenever unpopular regimes favoured by or favourable to India have been dislodged in South Asia, the results have been detrimental to us. In each case they were replaced by hostile governments that brought an ethno-nationalist discourse into their national politics with India as the hated other. This always makes a conversation difficult. We have seen this happen in Nepal when the Nepali Congress was ousted. We have seen it in Sri Lanka when the Rajapaksas, Mahinda and Gotabaya, came to rule.
Most recently, we have seen a pro-India regime booted out and replaced with a pro-China government in the Maldives. President Mohamed Muizzu won power in Nov 2023 vowing to end the island nation’s military ties with India. He has lost little time going about it. The day after being sworn in, he kicked out Indian military personnel manning two helicopters and a Dornier plane stationed on the island. Since then, the new president has avoided visiting Delhi as his first port of call and decided to roll back a bilateral agreement that permitted India to collaborate in a hydrographic survey of Maldivian territorial waters.
Regime changes are unavoidable but wisdom lies in de-risking a foreign policy from such adverse occurrences. The cornerstone of India’s foreign policy is the Neighbourhood First policy, which mandates the government to forge strong relations with nations in South Asia based on a consultative approach, respecting the civilisational bonds we share. The Modi regime began well on this count by inviting SAARC heads of government to its inauguration in May 2014. But since then, the policy has been put on the back burner, due to which we have seen neighbour after neighbour turn sour to us. If India desires to be a good neighbour rather than the local hegemon, it is time to revisit the policy.