China’s growing footprint and a tangible shift in power dynamics in Bangladesh has weakened India’s leverage in Dhaka. Comment. (2025, 10 Marks)
From 2009 to 2024 India enjoyed its closest phase with Bangladesh: transit, power trade, the 2015 land boundary settlement and the dismantling of insurgent camps. The fall of Sheikh Hasina on 5 August 2024 ended it. The statement is largely correct, but India lost leverage built on one party, not leverage built on geography.
The shift in power dynamics
- The Muhammad Yunus interim government distanced itself from New Delhi. In Beijing in March 2025, Yunus called India’s North-East landlocked and Bangladesh the region’s guardian of the sea.
- Hasina’s stay in India after a death sentence in absentia (November 2025) remains the main irritant.
- The February 2026 election, with the Awami League barred, gave the BNP about 209 seats; Tarique Rahman became Prime Minister on 17 February.
- Rahman went to Beijing first (22–26 June 2026) and skipped the BRICS summit in New Delhi in September; an India visit is only being explored for late 2026.
China’s growing footprint
- Beijing backed the Teesta river management project and the expansion of Mongla port.
- A BNP–Communist Party of China accord creates a party channel that outlasts governments.
- China is Bangladesh’s main arms supplier, from Ming-class submarines to the Chinese-built Pekua submarine base (2023), near the approaches to the Siliguri Corridor.
Why the claim needs qualifying
- China is a constant across parties: the BNP signed the 2002 defence cooperation agreement and the Awami League the 2016 strategic partnership. What changed in 2024 was India’s position, not Beijing’s.
- The loss was partly self-inflicted: assumed privilege bred complacency, slow Indian-funded projects eroded goodwill, Teesta has been unsigned since 2011, and India’s 2025 curbs on transhipment and land-port trade confirmed fears that market access is political. Sumit Ganguly observed in August 2024 that New Delhi had overlooked the Hasina government’s abuses in return for security cooperation, leaving the relationship “at considerable risk” once she fell.
- Structural leverage remains: a 4,096.7 km border, transit, electricity imports, shared rivers and medical travel. China can outbid India on capital, not on adjacency.
- The bargaining agenda is India’s: the Ganga Waters Treaty expires on 12 December 2026, and Dhaka now seeks a new treaty with dry-season guarantees, while a BJP government in West Bengal (May 2026) removes the old political veto on Teesta.
Conclusion
India’s influence by association with one party is gone, and China has filled the spaces India left empty: Teesta, Mongla and arms. Structural leverage survives. It becomes influence again only through a generous Ganga settlement, a credible Teesta offer, fewer border killings and clearly stated red lines on Chinese military presence.