Identify the persistent points of friction between India and Bangladesh at present. (1998, 2007, 20 Marks)
India and Bangladesh share a 4,096 km border, 54 rivers, a language and the memory of 1971, yet politics often works against geography. The frictions fall into two groups: structural irritants that have persisted for fifty years, and political ruptures that opened after Sheikh Hasina’s fall on 5 August 2024 and the BNP’s return under Tarique Rahman in February 2026.
Structural frictions
- Water: India is upstream on every shared river. The Ganga Waters Treaty (1996) expires on 12 December 2026; Dhaka wants a new treaty with stronger lean-season guarantees, while Bihar and West Bengal want their own needs protected. Teesta has been unsigned since 2011: West Bengal’s veto ended with its change of government in May 2026, the river’s lean-season shortage did not.
- Border management: Rights groups count over a thousand border killings since 2000. The Felani Khatun case (2011) ended in acquittal by a BSF court. Fencing within 150 yards of the zero line led each side to summon the other’s envoy in January 2025.
- Migration and citizenship: Dhaka denies mass illegal migration. The Assam NRC, the CAA (2019) and the 2025 “push-backs” of people India called infiltrators read in Bangladesh as accusations against it.
- Trade asymmetry: Indian exports outweigh Bangladeshi exports roughly six to one in about US$13 billion of trade. Non-tariff barriers, sudden Indian export bans and an unsigned CEPA keep the gap a political grievance.
Post-2024 frictions
- The Hasina question: she has stayed in India since August 2024. Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal sentenced her to death in absentia in November 2025, and Dhaka seeks her extradition. The 2013 treaty’s political-offence and good-faith exceptions give India room to refuse, yet it has neither refused nor complied, and her statements from Indian soil stall high-level contact.
- Trade coercion: India withdrew the transhipment facility (8 April 2025) and restricted land-port imports (May 2025); Dhaka curbed Indian yarn. On 24 August 2026 the two sides discussed reopening land ports and border haats and lifting the yarn curbs; the Adani Godda power tariff remains a grievance.
- Minority security: attacks on Hindus after August 2024 draw Indian criticism, which Dhaka calls interference; “Bangladesh First” answers with non-interference.
- The China and Gulf factors: Rahman went to Beijing first (22–26 June 2026), where China backed a Teesta project and Mongla expansion and the two parties signed a BNP–CPC accord. China is Bangladesh’s main arms supplier, and projects near the Siliguri Corridor are a security matter for India. In August 2026 Dhaka said it would consider “positively” an invitation to the Saudi–Pakistan–Turkey defence pact; the MEA was “monitoring all developments closely”.
- Domestic veto: Jamaat’s 68 seats limit how far any government in Dhaka can move towards India.
Why the frictions persist
These are two-level games in Robert D. Putnam’s sense (1988): West Bengal, Assam and Bihar in India, and nationalist parties and the street in Bangladesh, drive each friction. Smruti S. Pattanaik’s edited volume Four Decades of India–Bangladesh Relations (2012) shows how Dhaka’s internal political calculations pull India into its domestic politics, and India compounded this by investing in one party rather than the country. Yet the working relationship is resilient: visas were restored by about May 2026 and Khalilur Rahman met S. Jaishankar in New Delhi on 8 April 2026.
Conclusion
Water, border, migration and trade are permanent frictions that can be managed, not removed. The newer ones over Hasina, China and Gulf alignments are serious but turn on choices India can influence: a generous Ganga renewal, a Teesta deal, and fewer killings on the border would remove most of the grievances that Bangladeshi nationalists and outside powers now exploit.