Most of the time, its the needs of others that help you the most. A young nation with deep wounds and neglect. Give its leaders a cause to sell celebration to its population and they will happily sell your agenda. A nation that was crushed by those who were supposed to protect it.... Give it some small victories (like enclave exclave situation). They will convince themselves that they won. Meanwhile milk the situation in your favour.
Its a weird kind of pity that we never ever tried to even solve the enclave exclave situation till Modi of all people arrived on the scene. We are truely penny wise pound foolish. If I had IG level popularity, I would have gladly solved Enclave Exclave situation in a manner that helps Bangladeshi leaders the most and asked for concessions in connecting north east. Heck I could have sold it as connection to old Kolkata and "reunification" of Banglas. You know, Bangladeshi and Indians still like to travel across the border there.
But then IG was surely more shrewd than me. Lord know what was she thinking.
India already has enough concessions from BD. You have access to our ports, transit to North East. (with unreasonably low transit fees.)
Enclave was an issue. But wasn't the main issue. Water sharing is. India should have signed the Tista agreement. Instead they played us and said, 'oh we really want to sign it but its all Mamata Banerjee's fault.'
Which of course is a very bad excuse.
And now I am worry what will happen when Ganga treaty will expire in 2026.
In principle, India has a perception problem in BD as a good faith actor. Almost every trade deals seems to be one sided. Not very mutually beneficial.
What usually end up happening is, given the current government is illegitimate, its primary job is to get political support from foreign powers in exchange for (very often) one sides trade agreement. not necessarily to cut a fair and beneficial deal for the country.
billions dollars adani power deal is a recent exmaple. Only reason Hassina gave it to Adani becuase Modi asked her too. And now we have to pay three time extra to buy the same power that we could have gotten from our own powerplants with much less. BD is a very poor country and genuinely cannot afford such political appeasement deals. Thus, for public's perception, it appears that India is exploiting us. And in this case, it is actually very true.
Hence, the problem seems to be with India's BD policy, it is a short term thinking about how can much we get by
any mean as long as Hassina is in power. Otherwise, if India's stablishment really wanted a long term state to state relation (independent of whatever party is in power in either countries) based on trust and
mutual benefits, Modi should have never pressed for such an extremely unfair deal. (And now we are hearing, the deal could be even legally void)
What will end up happening in the future is, anytime the illegal government slipps from power the next government will be very cautious and distrustful of India and understandably so based on previous experience of exploitation, and may even try decoupling on some fronts.
In short, India foreign policy fails to capitalize on good opportunities when it's there, yet jump on short term bad opportunities and extend itself too much.
And right now India cannot even fully trust Hassina, because economy is going more and more in the gutter and she is becoming isolated as US ramp up its pressure gradually, yet India cannot do much to help her. So, she already started to lean more and more guess where? Where the power and money is, and It's PRC. She seems to realise if USA and west goes all in, only PRC will be able to provide her with political and economic shelter to the extent that she needs.
So don't be too surprised if you see another submarine deal. (This time good ones)