Five-fold embrace for Khalida

By establishing a linkage between the two all these years, India has lost out on both. India needs to pursue both of its main interests in Bangladesh on their own merit.

By offering a virtual carte blanche on economic cooperation, India creates space for Dhaka to act on its own on the security front. If Dhaka does not respond, Delhi has a range of other instrumentalities to encourage Bangladesh to respect India’s concerns on cross-border terrorism.

Failure to act now would leave New Delhi in a much a more intractable situation when the next opportunity arises for a substantive engagement with Bangla political leadership.