| Summary/Abstract |
The thumping victory of the 2014 Lok Sabha Election gave Modi a better space to initiate Act East Policy with Bangladesh. Within this short span of time, his gesture towards the Bangladesh government remains quite constructive in its entirety. One of the prime goals of current NDA government was to ‘Make in India’ where inviting foreign investment remains the core idea. To implement this, India needs better connectivity with its immediate neighbors, where Bangladesh, Myanmar and North-Eastern states are directly connected and Nepal and Bhutan are indirectly connected. This connectivity constitutes the major component of India’s current Act East Policy, where economic improvement of the North-Eastern region also remains a prime segment. It is too early to evaluate the current NDA government’s performance with the past government, because both initiated better ties with Bangladesh. However the current trend of Modi’s outlook towards Bangladesh is way ahead of its predecessor. This positive outlook of India was evident from the speech delivered by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at Dhaka on 6 June, 2015, where he said: “We are not just neighbours. We are two nations bound by the threads of history, religion, culture, language and kinship - and, of course, passion for cricket….We will work together to harness the rich potential of our relationship. And, we will address our challenges in a spirit of friendship and from a position of mutual trust and confidence”.This is no doubt a major pragmatic shift of India’s Bangladesh policy in recent times under NDA government and it is hoped that it would perform much better than the past years and also for the come days.
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