Drona Bandyopadhyay

“The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today”

                      - Franklin D. Roosevelt

India shares about 4,156 kms (2,582 miles) of common international boundary with her eastern neighbor Bangladesh. As many as five states of eastern and north-eastern India have extensive land border with the erstwhile East Pakistan. This considerably long borderline is not a natural one as Bangladesh was originally the eastern part of undivided Bengal province. The bordering Indian states have innumerable socio-cultural patterns and practices which are explicitly found in Bangladesh. So, this ancient cultural affinity irrespective of the communal partition of the Indian subcontinent and emergence of political hostility between India and Pakistan up to 1971 and creation of independent Bangladesh in December of the same year have not been able to erase the time-old social affiliations to each other and commercial connectivity. Moreover, the establishment of independent Bangladesh through an armed struggle with direct Indian role and rapport based on non-communal and democratic ideas has witnessed the scope of people-to-people contact between the two friendly nations.

In the light of this invariable reality both the countries have taken a well-thought decision to set a number of international trading posts (border haat or ‘simanta haat’) along the specific border points of two countries. Till date there are seven operating border haats with the first one established at Kalaichar-Baliamari in West Garo Hills district of Meghalaya and Kurigram of Bangladesh. In 2011 in the near future there are plans to set up many more too. These jointly organized border haats is not only a ‘haat’or market to trade the commodities of both the countries but also a common meeting spot for divided families across the border.

In this context our objective will be to find out more ways and means to make these border haats were economically viable and socially more blending. Apart of it we will also seek to contemplate on expanding on the scope of trade in these border hats without affecting the social peace and stability of the bordering areas of the both nations. The existing Indo-Bangladesh border haats are functioning well and making the direct and indirect stakeholders financially and socially closer. But the extensive Indo-Bangladesh border is a porous one and critically infamous for illegal immigration and contraband trafficking. The active invigilating and patrolling role of BSF of India and BGB of Bangladesh are crucial in this regard. The greater cooperation and coordination between the respective ‘Haat Management Committee’ (s) and border defending forces is as essential prerequisite to tackle these trans-border crimes.

In the post-Hasina scenario after the fall of extremely Awami League regime on 5th August 2024 in the midst of a popular revolt against the fifteen-year-old Awami dispensation of the future of Indo-Bangladesh relations has become uncertain due to heightened anti-Indian sentiments gripping the broader spectrum of Bangladeshi society. It is quite difficult at present to predict the future course of bilateralism between the two countries. Since neighbors cannot be selected and ignored the expected political prudence and diplomatic maturity of the Yunus led interim administration will strive to accelerate the pace of mutual amity and benefit for the prospective posterity of both the countries. The border haats will play a vigorous role in this case. These haats work in the grassroot level and the high-end geo-politics should not affect the lives of simple and innocent folks at the lower rung of the social scale. Rather the village folks living the border areas know the dire realities of Indo-Bangla relations better than any person formally initiated into geo-politics. The border haats are set up to involve these rural folks in the border trade and other bilateral exchanges at that level. It would be squarely unpragmatic on the part both Dhaka or New Delhi to neglect or ignore these little institutions along the border since these are the bedrock of bilateral relations involving the people at the grassroot level through the encouragement of trade and social exchange where state, political parties and other commanding stakeholders of geo-politics play a very minimum role and organic people-centric endeavors have a dominating involvement.

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Drona Bandyopadhyay is Assistant Professor at Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam Govt. College, Kolkata, India