Editorial
Visit by neighbouring Indian CMs
We need to strengthen our relations with them
A special feature of the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's just-concluded visit to Bangladesh was the presence of chief ministers from four northeastern states of India in Dhaka. It is for the first time that such a good number of influential Indian politicians at the state level travelled to Bangladesh. Indeed, as far as we can recall, visits by politicians from India's north-east have been conspicuous by their non-happening. That only doubles our appreciation of the goodwill gesture the four chief ministers made to us.
It is rather curious that in all the dealings that we in Bangladesh have had with India we have somehow bypassed, if not exactly ignored, those Indian states, save for Paschimbanga, that are geographically so close to us as neighbours. Indeed, our focus over the years has consistently been on the ties which have bound Bangladesh and Paschimbanga in terms of culture and political history. Of course there have been the very proper reasons for such a condition, but now comes the time when Bangladesh's government and people need to expand their priorities, this time to developing and fostering closer links with north-eastern India. Needless to say, the potential economic benefits accruing for northeast India and for Bangladesh from such contacts can hardly be denied.
The visit by the chief ministers should be an opportunity for their states and for Bangladesh to facilitate people-to-people links in terms of cultural and economic exchange. Leading figures in the literary and artistic fields can play a definitive role in enhancing such cooperation. There are also security issues common to them as part of India and to Bangladesh. Measures to deal with such issues can be better handled through closer ties. The chief ministers' presence in Dhaka should, properly speaking, have acted as a spur to us in our understanding of India's north-east and the other way round. We hope the chief ministers have gone back home with happy memories of their rather brief stay here.
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