India should buy the three districts of Chittagong Hills and the district of Cox Bazaar from Bangladesh. They should offer $7.5BN (10% of Bangladeshi GDP) and a free trade area in Siliguri for Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and India in return. It is a win-win situation.

For Bangladesh

Helps stabilize their economy
Removes the need for offering politically sensitive transit across their country
Offers a free trade area to develop business with Nepal and Bhutan
Removes the problem districts of Chittagong Hills from their country and reduces their need to tackle Chakma rebels

For India

Offers direct transit to Bay of Bengal for North East India
Develops stronger economic relations with Bangladesh
Develops Nepal, Bhutan, North Bengal and Assam through the Free Trade Area and pulls Nepal and Bhutan into India's economic orbit
Reduces India's dependence on Myanmar and allows India to take a more balanced approach towards Myanmar

Chittagong Hills and Cox Bazaar would be geographically isolated from India. What is the point to such a purchase?

Geographical isolation can result in seperatist movements, like what happened in Bangladesh (then "East Pakistan") in 1971, or what is happening now in Northeast India which is partially isolated by the "Chicken's Neck".

No. They border Manipur and Tripura. And furthermore, they would end the isolation of Northeast India by offering direct access to the Bay of Bengal and a few short hours boat ride away from mainland India.

In fac it would solve the very problems you have mentioned.

The Cox Bazaar and Chittagong Hill regions would still only be connected to Northeast India through yet another "Chicken's Neck", this time between Bangladesh and Burma.

No, they would have direct sea access to the Bay of Bengal and be just a few short hours to the Indian mainland. Not a chicken's neck at all but a solution to the present chicken's neck.

In that case, Bangladesh would be surrounded by India on all sides.

It already is. Except for a thin stretch of land connecting it to Myanmar. And for Bangladesh, India is far more important than anything any one else can offer.

Selling these districts to India also addresses multiple problems for Bangladesh - Eliminates their problem of Chakma rebels, removes the persistent problem of needing to offer transit to India. This is over and above the money and the FTA with India, Bhutan and Nepal.

I see the other way around. Bangladeshi migrants are occupying Indian land.

If a person has a head, only then he has a headache. It seems India has a big headache because it has an extra land in the northeast. So, to get rid of this headache, I can assure you a better solution. Just take your hands off the NE, then Bangladesh will take care of this land which is the natural extension of this country.

I think the demographic change and the recent bombings prove that NE is heading towards a separation from India. Bangladesh will not have to pay a single penny to take control of this land. Not only that, it will also spare a third world poor country like India from paying many billion dollars to BD to buy land.

I tried really hard to find at least one sensible sentence in your reply. But couldn't find any. So I am not going to bother with a reply.

You sound as if Bangladesh is richer than Luxembourg In my opinion India should drive out illegal Bangladeshi migrants from it's territory and erect a barbwire fence all along the Indo-Bangladesh border and shoot anyone transpassing illegally into India. Bangladeshis are a big nuisance they don't have any means of livelihood in Bangladesh which is one of the poorest countries in the world and they cross into India to make a living.

Could you please tell me specifically which of my sentences carries a meaningless NON-sense?

At the exchange rate of 1 dollar to 50 Rupees, your per capita GDP seems to be only US$722. No big difference with the "ONE OF THE POOREST COUNTRIES," i.e. Bangladesh. You better ask your Rahul Gandhi of Congress Party who visited Bangladesh only one month before to see the developments BD has achieved in the social sectors. He wants to visit again. I hope these visits will help his Party and govt of India to improve the quality of an average Indian's life.

More than 500,000 Indian citizens, from mostly the NE, are working illegally in BD. But, we are not that small minded nation like the Indians to kick out those poor people. Every person has right to livelihood and as such source of income.

You are either hopelessly misinformed or stupidly egotistic. Either way, no point wasting my time in answering your comments.

Also by the way, can you find someone else's post to bug please? This is meant for serious discussion not a child learning to type for the first time.

Since you have found my statement correct, therefore, you are finding it difficult to deny it. UN Secretary General and his wife are now visiting Bangladesh to see the DEVELOPMENTS IN THE SOCIAL SECTORS. Do not you think these people are very serious-minded? So, why do you think I am a stupid to get you misinformed about our development side.

In the last fiscal year we have exported more garments to the world than India. It amounted to US$14. 89 billion. We have no communal riots like India, no bombing incidents like India, no other friction with any other country except India.

Making a true statement does not prove a person egoist, rather egoists are those who support their country's hegemonist policy towards its neighbours.

This is an open forum and its a free world. I have my choice, you have yours. Why do you have this naivity to think others are just a little baby and are typing nonsense? I find your writing audacious.

By the way, even if you lease the BD land does it solve your main problems? You need Burmese natural gas to West Bengal thru BD land. You also need BD land to transit your human as well as goods traffic. So, I have a few propositions different from yours. They are as follows:

1) BD allows gas from Burma thru its land to West Bengal.
2) As for TRANSIT, instead of a direct transit, we give you a substitute human transportation route. People from Benapol comes to Dhaka via Moitree Express, then takes a local train to Akhaura in the east. From this point they cross the border to go to Agartala.
3) For freight transportation, we allow your ships to unload at Chittagong port, our rail or road system takes your goods to Akhaura. From this point, your system carries your goods to any point in the NE.

Think over all these proposals. Then think over what India can give us in exchange. I hope you will find my proposals sensible enough. By the way, your State Minister of Commerce Mr. Jairam Ramesh is in Dhaka to talk trade matters. He seems to be a visionary, a Bismarc in the process of making. He will laugh at your original proposals in this thread. Thank you.

Next person to double post will be given a warning.

So what if you have exported more garments to the world? If you seriously think Bangladesh is in anywhere the financial situation to be healthy, I can't help you. Of course you don't have communal riots. You drove most of the Hindus away. Who is there to riot with? When India got Bangladesh its independence (yes, that is true, sorry hard cold facts), ~ 30% of Bangladeshi population was hindus. Now it is less than 10%. My friend's family (hindus) lived in Dhaka's outskirts for over 200 years. They were harrassed so much that they left and have now settled down in Orissa, India. So please take one minute and think.

Anyway this is my last reply to you. You can post what you want. I don't care.

And you don't think that residents of Chittagong Hills and Cox Bazaar are going to rebel against Indian occupation? India already has enough problems with Northeastern and Kashmiri rebels, not to mention Bangladeshi immigrants, so why add even more problems with formerly Bangladeshi rebels?


The Indian media was making a big deal when Chinese troops shot Tibetans for crossing the Sino-Indian or Sino-Nepali borders, but you guys don't seem to have any problems with shooting Bangladeshis crossing the Indo-Bangladeshi borders? Would you do the same for Indian immigrants crossing into Bangladesh? And for your information, India has a much higher unemployment rate than Bangladesh. Also, Bangladesh has only been around for three decades, and yet its rate of growth has already caught up to what India's growth was less than a decade ago.


I don't see why are you are getting so emotional over ahmedwazir's comments? I don't think his propositions are any more unreasonable than your own propositions. Also, there's no need to exaggerate the figures just to make a point. The percentage of Hindus in Bangladesh was 18.5% before the Bangladesh Liberation War, after which it reduced to 13.5% after many had fled due to the atrocities carried out by the Pakistani army. Over the last three decades, the Hindu population declined by another 4%. It's possible that many of them converted to the majority religion (Islam) and that many others migrated to India. Whatever the reasons, the percentage of Muslims in India is currently only a little higher than the percentage of Hindus in Bangladesh. If Hindus were so oppressed by barbaric Muslims in Bangladesh, then why is it India that has far more Hindu-Muslim violence instead of Bangladesh?

And what does the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War have to do with any of this? Bangladeshis already acknowledge India's help during the Bangladesh Liberation War, but why are you trying to take all the credit for it? India only joined in the last week of the war, but during all the months before that, it was Bangladeshi guerillas who were fighting the Pakistani army. India would not have won the 1971 Indo-Pak War either if it wasn't for the Bangladeshi guerillas weakening the Pakistani army on the other side of the border.

The Exchange Rate of 1 US dollar to 68 Bangladesh Taka is a very big difference. The Rupee is devaluing these days good for outsourcing industry. As far as Rahul Gandhi and Congress party are concerned they need to learn from everyone how to run a country. The fundamentals of the current Congress government for the developments in the social sector are very wrong.


On what basis you're making these claims? NE Indians will go to other parts of India to make a living. Why will they go to Bangladesh which has the world's highest population density and can't even feed their own people.


Here you go again with your biased statements. UN Secretary General is visiting Congo today which is a strife torn country and one of poorest in the world. So shall we say it is a heaven of development? UN Secretary General tours around the whole world he even came to India just last month.

And to put to rest your ever chest thumping posts let me show you a news report about UN Chief's visit to Bangladesh.

http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5guuRTA4U1mRXrYXhSvYrN0h5cSgQ

Kolkata has no jobs. It takes more than 10 days for the NE people to go to western India, where jobs are available. Many young people leaves BD to work in foreign countries. So, there are job openings in Bangladesh, specially in the garments sector. Other sectors, such as pharmaceutical, oceangoing ship building sectors are rising fast. We are already exporting these two items. Ships are being exported to europe only, at present.

The GDP growth in this fiscal year has been forecast to be somewhere between 6.2% to 6.5%. Last fiscal year, the growth was 6.2%, even though there were two floods and one devastating cyclone. In this year (2008), BD will become a rice-surplus country, with a surplus of 16 million metric ton. The acreage of farmland in BD is good enough to produce food for 350 million mouths under optimum condition.

No BD citizen will pretend that we belong to 1st world. BD is definitely in the 3rd world. But, with a burden of 150 million population, cyclones and chronic floods we are not giving up, we are fighting back. A person should respect the strength in BD population that has been ingrained when they fought against an well-armed occupation army with just bare hands mostly. No foreign citizen has this right to ridicule our sacrifice by saying that our independence was a gift presented by India.

News report you have posted is only a small part of the whole story of the Secretary General's visit. All the countries of the world are keen to learn the mechanism of our pioneering micro-credit system, that has helped to improve our average living standard.

By the way, BD has no plan to sell its land in its southeast, therefore, India should think substitute ways to develop its NE. As I said before, your State minister of Commerce truly understands the process of developing that part of India. Please keep a watch on his thinking, it will help India in the NE.