India must acknowledge that its treatment of Muslims has repercussions: Debapriya Bhattacharya

Since August 2024, India-Bangladesh relations have undergone a seismic shift. Former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was seen as a reliable and trusted friend of India, but strong opposition to her within Bangladesh, along with her close ties to New Delhi, appear to have worked against both her and India. Now believed to be living in exile in Delhi, Sheikh Hasina has left behind strained India-Bangladesh relations, which have plunged to their lowest point in three decades. The latest development in this saga is the visit of Bangladesh’s Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus (who leads the interim administration in Dhaka) to Beijing, where he received a warm welcome from President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders. The two sides signed a raft of agreements. To understand the impact of this visit, the challenges facing India-Bangladesh ties, and the latest developments in Bangladesh politics, Frontline spoke to the distinguished Bangladeshi economist and public policy specialist, Debapriya Bhattacharya. He is with the Dhaka-based Center for Policy Dialogue and also headed a committee that prepared a White Paper (released last December) on the state of the Bangladesh’s economy for the interim administration. The White Paper’s headline finding was that corruption had severely undermined the economy: Bangladesh had lost $16 billion annually over the last 15 years due to money laundering alone.