Opinion | Hambantota And Gwadar: Dhaka Snubbed PM Modi On Mongla But Will Eventually Pay For It

A Chinese state contractor will build & operate industrial infrastructure a day's drive from West Bengal, in a delta that Indian admirals have always deemed their own drawing room

In the final week of June, in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Bangladesh made its confession. It signed away a piece of land that India had waited eleven years to build on. During Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s first state visit to China, the Bangladesh Economic Zones Authority signed a memorandum of understanding with China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation to develop the China-Bangladesh Mongla Port Economic Zone, adjacent to the country’s second-largest seaport.

The 110-acre plot had been allotted to India under a 2015 agreement, announced during Narendra Modi’s visit to Dhaka, which was celebrated as a golden era of bilateral ties. Now, the location. Eighty kilometres from the Indian border. A hundred and eighty-eight from Kolkata. On the Pashur River, at the edge of the Sundarbans, where the tigers swim and the water hides everything. A Chinese state contractor will build and operate industrial infrastructure a day’s drive from West Bengal, in a delta that Indian admirals have always considered their own drawing room.

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So, yes, India is concerned, and Dhaka believes it has found a faster, more generous friend. Sri Lanka believed the same thing once. So did Pakistan. Chinese money is a marvellous houseguest—charming, punctual, and bearing gifts. It simply never leaves.

What Dhaka Actually Gave Away

Mongla is not some sleepy fishing village. Since 2018, Indian cargo has moved through it, giving New Delhi a route to its landlocked northeast so that it doesn’t depend entirely on the Siliguri Corridor, twenty-two kilometres at its narrowest, which is all that connects mainland India to eight states and fifty million people. Nations have gone to war over less fragile geography. While India did not pick up the gun, it took the port seriously enough to secure operating rights........

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