Don’t read too much into Bangladesh PM’s China visit

Bangladesh Prime Minister (PM) Tarique Rahman made his maiden foreign tour two weeks ago, four months after taking office, to Malaysia followed by China. But he has not visited India yet.

- Happymon Jacob

New Delhi's reaction to Rahman's Malaysia and China visit was swift, sharp, but dated — mostly a litany of complaints disguised as strategic analysis. That he had bypassed India, typically the first destination for a new Bangladeshi leader, showed how vulnerable India’s eastern frontier is. Another neighbour has been lost to Beijing. All this talk brings back a sense of deja vu. In fact, we have watched this script play out before — with Male and with Kathmandu — and we will have to watch it again.

So, do first foreign visits of newly elected leaders in our neighbourhood really matter? Should we care so much about where our neighbours travel, especially at a time when the number of tourists and students coming to India from our neighbourhood is sharply declining? (Why they are not coming to India is a separate discussion altogether.)

To be clear, where a neighbouring country’s leader chooses to go first tells us very little about the state of a relationship, and we must stop treating itineraries as foreign policy outcomes. If we keep treating them as such, they tend to become foreign policy outcomes, at least in our mind.