‘Chicken’s Neck’ attack & broken economy: Tarique Rahman needs to sweeten bitter past
His inheroostritance would be defined less by campaign rhetoric and more by geography, history and the hard constraints of statecraft.
Rahman will be sworn in as Bangladesh’s new Prime Minister today. Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla will represent India at the ceremony. He is expected to be accompanied by Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri and Lok Sabha Secretary-General Utpal Kumar Singh, according to people familiar with the matter.
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The BNP’s landslide win on February 12 ends 18 months of interim rule and returns competitive politics to a country of roughly 170 million. But power has changed hands without wiping away the past.
“This victory belongs to Bangladesh, belongs to democracy,” Rahman said after his win. “It belongs to the people who aspire to and have sacrificed for democracy.”
He also set expectations carefully. “We are about to begin our journey in a situation marked by a fragile economy left behind by the authoritarian regime, weakened constitutional and statutory institutions, and a deteriorating law and order situation”.That sentence forms the spine of his premiership.
A mandate, but not a vacuum
Rahman, 60, the party chief and son of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and former President Ziaur Rahman, returned to Dhaka in December 2025 after 17 years in exile in Britain. Within weeks, he led his party to a 212-seat win in the 300-member Parliament. The opposition bloc led by Jamaat-e-Islami secured 77 seats.
Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League was barred from contesting after she was sentenced to death in absentia for crimes against humanity linked to the 2024 crackdown. She is currently living in India.
The BNP’s majority in the Parliament spares Rahman the fragility of coalition arithmetic. It does not spare him institutional ambiguity.
The fragile economy
Bangladesh’s inflation accelerated to 8.58% in January 2026, driven by food prices, while non-food inflation remained at 8.29%. More than 2.7 million people are unemployed, nearly a million of them university graduates.
Weak state investment has compounded the strain. Bangladesh’s garment industry — the world’s second-largest exporter of apparel after China — has faced supply-chain upheavals and shaken investor confidence.
Rahman has outlined a proposed $10 billion social welfare programme prioritising female heads of households, temporary unemployment allowances for educated youth and expanded support for farmers.
A White House announcement cutting tariffs on Bangladeshi goods to 19% from 20%, with exemptions for certain textile products, offers marginal relief. It does not alter the structural challenge: an economy dependent on garments, sensitive to global demand and vulnerable to domestic disruption.
Youth expectations loom large. Roughly 40% of Bangladeshis are under 25, as per a Bloomberg report. The 2024 uprising was fuelled by young people angered by unemployment and the abolition of a job-quota system. Converting protest energy into steady governance is harder than mobilising it.
India’s ‘Chicken Neck’ and the security shadow
The ‘Chicken’s Neck’, also called the Siliguri Corridor, is a slender strip of land in north Bengal, roughly 20-22 km wide at its narrowest and about 60 km long.
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It is the only land link between mainland India and its northeastern states. From a security and strategic standpoint, it functions as a vital lifeline — narrow in geography, immense in consequence.
For India, Bangladesh is not peripheral. The Siliguri Corridor makes stability in Dhaka a strategic necessity. Any hostile posture or permissive environment for insurgent groups reverberates across that corridor.
History sharpens the anxiety.
During 2001-06, when the BNP governed with Jamaat as an alliance partner, Indian insurgent groups operated from Bangladeshi soil. In 2009, former Prime Minister Hasina handed over northeastern insurgents to India, cementing a security partnership with New Delhi.
Rahman has refrained from anti-India rhetoric since Hasina’s ouster.
As per Bloomberg, analysts in India have suggested that a full BNP majority is easier for New Delhi to manage than a fragile coalition beholden to hardline partners. The test will be practical: counterterrorism cooperation, transit rights for India’s northeast and restraint along the border.
Transit is not symbolic. Past BNP governments refused India’s requests for overland access to its northeastern states through Bangladeshi territory, invoking nationalist arguments.
The Awami League granted transit rights, and Bangladesh benefited through royalties. Whether Rahman maintains, recalibrates or restricts these arrangements will signal his strategic orientation.
Security red lines for India are clear. For Rahman, the calculus is more layered: assert sovereignty without triggering confrontation, reassure India without appearing subordinate.
Balancing India, China and Pakistan
Bangladesh’s external balancing act is sharper than before. China is its largest supplier of arms and a major investor in infrastructure and energy along the Bay of Bengal. Pakistan has revived defence contacts and direct trade for the first time since the 1971 war.
During the interim period, remarks in Beijing by the Chief Economic Advisor Muhammad Yunus referring to India’s northeast as “landlocked” and Bangladesh as the “only guardian of the ocean” stirred controversy.
“From Bangladesh, you can go anywhere you want. The ocean is our backyard,” he said, suggesting Bangladesh could serve as a conduit for China into India’s east.
Bangladesh can leverage its coastal access; it cannot escape India’s proximity. India can worry about encirclement; it cannot move the Siliguri Corridor.
Rahman has framed his approach as an “economy-based foreign policy” under a “Bangladesh First” doctrine, emphasising mutual trust, respect and benefit. An economy-centred posture is inherently pragmatic. It suggests engagement with India, China and others will be measured by growth dividends rather than ideological affinity.
But balancing is not static. Chinese infrastructure investments are designed to endure political transitions. Pakistan’s outreach carries symbolic weight in a country born from war in 1971. India’s leverage rests not only on security cooperation but on deep economic integration — electricity imports, fuel connectivity and supply chains that feed the garment sector.
Rahman’s room for manoeuvre is wider than his predecessors’ in some respects. It is narrower in others.
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Trade between India and Bangladesh stood at $11.24 billion in FY25, according to The Financial Express. The bilateral trade had earlier peaked at $15.68 billion in FY22, largely due to a sharp increase in Bangladesh’s imports from India, before easing to $11.26 billion in FY23.
In FY25, Bangladesh’s exports to India rose to $1.77 billion from $1.57 billion a year earlier, while imports from India climbed to $9.44 billion from $9.0 billion. With imports outpacing exports, India maintains a significant trade surplus in its trade with Bangladesh.
Water and the politics of memory
Shared rivers present another long-term challenge. Fifty-four rivers cross the border. The 1996 Ganges Water Treaty expires in December 2026. Bangladesh has alleged insufficient dry-season flows and inadequate data transparency; India cites climate variability and domestic needs.
The Teesta dispute remains unresolved, partly due to political resistance within India. Water management is technical, but its politics are emotional.
Without careful negotiation, water could eclipse trade as the central irritant.
The test of inheritance
India has signalled readiness to work with the new government. Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated Rahman and expressed hope for strengthened cooperation. The BNP responded positively, calling India’s acknowledgement welcome.
Rahman’s premiership will be judged less by symbolism than by sequencing. Can he stabilise prices and reassure investors before social frustration resurfaces? Can he manage constitutional reform without paralysing parliament? Can he reassure India on security while keeping space open with China and Pakistan?
He inherits India’s narrow Siliguri Corridor as a live strategic pressure point, not a distant geographic curiosity. He inherits a garment-dependent economy as a constraint, not a slogan. He inherits institutions weakened by confrontation and a public hungry for stability.
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