[🇧🇩] SAARC---Can it be revived?

[Krishna with Flute]

Our message to India: Please don't normalize open defecation because we, the Bangladeshis, don't like it.

I hope that Mighty BD will arrange to feed its people so that they are not compelled to illegally cross the border and live amongst open defection. Their girls have some other source of living rather than providing sexual services to middle east and on the foot path of Kolkata.

 

[Saif]

I hope that Mighty BD will arrange to feed its people so that they are not compelled to illegally cross the border and live amongst open defection. Their girls have some other source of living rather than providing sexual services to middle east and on the foot path of Kolkata.

Why do Bangladeshi prostitutes go to India? Why not female engineers/doctors/MBAs? May be India has nothing to offer to the educated Bangladeshi girls.

 

[Krishna with Flute]

Why do Bangladeshi prostitutes go to India? Why not female engineers/doctors/MBAs? May be India has nothing to offer to the educated Bangladeshi girls.

Because they are not educated. They can earn more from Sex business than their low skill.

 

[Saif]

Because they are not educated. They can earn more from Sex business than their low skill.

Engineers/Doctors/MBAs are not educated? Are you ok? A lot of Indian Engineers/Doctors/MBAs are working in the corporate sector of Bangladesh. We don't allow Indian prostitutes to come here and pollute the society though. But India allows prostitutes from neighboring countries to come to enrich their society

 

[Krishna with Flute]

Engineers/Doctors/MBAs are not educated? Are you ok? A lot of Indian Engineers/Doctors/MBAs are working in the corporate sector of Bangladesh. We don't allow Indian prostitutes to come here and pollute the society though. But India allows prostitutes from neighboring countries to come to enrich their society

I am talking about those who illegally crosses the border. Do BD engineers and Doctors illegally cross the border? So far as Indians are concerned, they will always be Engineers, doctors and MBA and not illegal intruders engaged in Prostitution.

 

[Saif]

I am talking about those who illegally crosses the border. Do BD engineers and Doctors illegally cross the border? So far as Indians are concerned, they will always be Engineers, doctors and MBA and not illegal intruders engaged in Prostitution.

Our engineers/doctors/MBAs don't cross the border to look for a job in India. They have ample opportunities in Bangladesh to get a job in their related field. It's the Indian engineers/doctors/MBAs who come here with valid visa to get a job but never renew their visas and eventually become illegal. They don't even pay taxes. As for the rest of Indians, they go to Middle East to become gigolo of Arab Sheikhs. Sorry for bursting the bubble

 

[Bilal9]

Because they are not educated. They can earn more from Sex business than their low skill.

Wah Krishan Dada Wah.

Every woman in Bangladesh is uneducated?

Nice.

RIP logic and inference.

 

[Bilal9]

I am talking about those who illegally crosses the border. Do BD engineers and Doctors illegally cross the border? So far as Indians are concerned, they will always be Engineers, doctors and MBA and not illegal intruders engaged in Prostitution.

There are tons of Illegal status Indian Engineers, doctors and MBA's in Bangladesh because they can't either find a job in India, or they find the salaries in Bangladesh much higher. The strange thing is - we are tolerating these people and letting them stay.

If this was India - First of all Bangladeshi Engineers, doctors and MBA's wouldn't even find jobs, how prejudiced Indian people generally are to outsiders, even if jobs were available. Second most Bangladeshis wouldn't even like either living or working in India.

We see and hear stories all the time about 20,000 people in India applying for 2 peon jobs available.

In any case - let's keep the thread on topic and not hijack it by discussing off topic things.

If SAARC can include the 2nd and 3rd biggest economies (namely Pakistan and Bangladesh), then it will survive fine without India.

Also - there are other groupings without India already that Bangladesh and Pakistan are part of, namely D-8 in particular, which also includes Egypt, Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia.

India is not an export-dependent economy, it does fine without exports.

 

[Krishna with Flute]

Because they are not educated. They can earn more from Sex business than their low skill.

You are a poor reader.

 

[Saif]

Dhaka seeks enhanced relations with all SA nations: Alam

Bangladesh wants to enhance relations with all the South Asian countries, including India and Pakistan, as its foreign policy is pro-Bangladesh, Chief Adviser’s Press Secretary Shafiqul Alam said. “Our foreign policy is a pro-Bangladesh one,” he told a press briefing while respon

thefinancialexpress.com.bd

Dhaka seeks enhanced relations with all SA nations: Alam
FE Online Desk
Published :
Apr 15, 2025 21:48
Updated :
Apr 15, 2025 21:48

Bangladesh wants to enhance relations with all the South Asian countries, including India and Pakistan, as its foreign policy is pro-Bangladesh, Chief Adviser’s Press Secretary Shafiqul Alam said.

“Our foreign policy is a pro-Bangladesh one,” he told a press briefing while responding to a question about the visit of Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar later this month.

Chief Adviser’s Special Assistant Dr Anisuzzaman Chowdhury and Chief Adviser’s Deputy Press Secretary Abul Kalam Azad Majumder were also present at the briefing at the Foreign Service Academy, reports BSS.

Alam said Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus repeatedly called for the revival of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) as a top regional platform during meetings at home and abroad.

Bangladesh wants enhanced relations with the SAARC countries, he said.

Prof Yunus is seeking improved relations with all the South Asian nations, the press secretary said, adding, “Pakistan is also part of the South Asian family. We want improved relations with India, Bhutan and Nepal too.”

He mentioned that the interim government has taken a decision to set up an economic zone for Nepal and is looking for land in the North Bengal area, which is part of efforts to have improved relations with the South Asia family.

Alam said works are underway to set up an economic zone for Bhutan.​

 

[Saif]

Resuming SAARC, renewing friendship

THE late poet and film lyricist Kaifi Azmi described a strange method of writing film songs, which has come to bear a close resemblance to the method in prime minister Narendra Modi’s foreign policy...

www.newagebd.net

Resuming SAARC, renewing friendship
Jawed Naqvi 22 May, 2025, 00:00

The first SAARC Summit in Dhaka in December 1985. | X/NSUI

THE late poet and film lyricist Kaifi Azmi described a strange method of writing film songs, which has come to bear a close resemblance to the method in prime minister Narendra Modi’s foreign policy.

Kaifi said that he, like other great songwriters, was required to pen the lyrics — including several chartbusters — along prescribed tunes pre-set by the film’s music director. ‘It was akin to digging the grave first and then looking for a body to fit the size.’

Modi’s diplomacy plies along a similar prefabricated rut of right-wing ideology. Instead of leaning on flexibility and creativity of seasoned diplomats to pick and choose what accords best with national interest, it seems more concerned with running Modi’s saffron agenda.

When national interest gets to be determined by the size of the pro-Hindutva NRI crowds, for example, which the prime minister must attract on foreign visits, or when diplomacy submits to the overreach of the leader’s crony capitalist friends, canvassing support for the tycoons at the highest levels, leaning on India’s diplomatic capital, the result could see India being left at the mercy of global carpetbaggers.

This is what happened in the wake of the recent flare-up with Pakistan. Except for Israel, which is being turned by Benjamin Netanyahu into a fascist state, was there one country that stood by India, or which saw it as an ally deserving solidarity? And now the Indian government is sending a team of MPs on a junket to explain to foreign governments India’s point of view. Has it come to this?

Even the secular military is being reportedly harnessed to accord with the government’s ideological preferences. Defence analyst Pravin Sawhney has been saying this for years and questioning the Modi government for turning the army into a terrorism-fighting outfit in Kashmir, which only widens the gap with China’s advance in high-tech warfare capability.

It was again the ideological expediency with little thought to its diplomatic consequences — and only to fulfil a pending Hindutva agenda — that the government subverted a delicate political arrangement in Jammu and Kashmir, which brought China into the diplomatic-military frame on an issue that had been hitherto handled as a bilateral matter with Pakistan.

Eventually, the edifice, created with great political care in the Simla agreement by Indira Gandhi and ZA Bhutto, would give way to president Donald Trump pressing to mediate between India and Pakistan. Things have happened that Modi’s foreign policy objectives find themselves incapable of negotiating.

To tend to his ideological needs, Modi even embarrassed himself and the country by obsequiously canvassing support for Trump’s second term, which, by the way, Joe Biden won. Now, Trump is rewarding him for the help — by hyphenating India and Pakistan as equal nations worthy of America’s friendship, a hyphen that Indian diplomacy see as infra dig.

As the old movie song goes: ‘Na khuda hi mila, na visaal e sanam | Na idhar ke rahe na udhar ke rahe’ (Pursuing holiness and carnal love at once | I lost them both like a dunce). Pursuing friendship with Trump’s America as a primary goal, Modi found himself courting trouble with the rising powers of Asia — Russia and China. Which explains even if it does not justify the Shashi Tharoor-led junket.

What can Tharoor with his complicated English do that external affairs minister S Jaishankar could not? On the other hand, rather than reflecting on the futility of demonising Pakistan, the BJP is busy drumming up an election rally for Bihar, foregrounding Modi as the victor despite there being no endorsement of that verdict from any foreign quarter.

If anything, foreign governments are busy counting the exact number of planes that Pakistan says it had downed in aerial combat following the Indian attack on Pakistani sites on May 7. They are using the experience from the aerial combat to glean their own lessons for future war strategies. That’s the lot of the global south, sadly — to be used as guinea pigs for war machines vended by great powers. What is the alternative?

As Modi plies the bullock cart of Hindutva along the antediluvian ruts of narrow imagination, the cart is bound to clash with the guardrails of secular democracy prescribed by Gandhi and Nehru, and which Subhash Bose and Bhagat Singh died for. The multicultural, scientifically spirited cornucopia of a nation, the kind that made the world envious, among them Churchill who believed the free India would be ungovernable, needs urgent restoration. That would be opposite of where India is currently headed. Hindutva, unlike Kaifi’s songs, needs a mass grave of not one but all democratic institutions to fit its narrow ideology in.

The world has changed, however, and rightwing governments are facing resistance, be it in Israel or the United States. Hindutva can no longer be offered as a synonym for national interest at home or abroad. What foreign policy then is in India’s national interest?

Modi might want to look around and resume stalled friendships, not across the Atlantic or abutting the Pacific Ocean, but in the neighbourhood where India needs to re-earn the respect and fellowship of the countries that once considered it a friendly neighbour, and didn’t see its leaders as hectoring big brothers. This is also what China is doing with its own neighbours, including Vietnam and Japan. Mend fences at home, before launching the blue water naval capability. And don’t launch it if it only serves someone else’s interest.

In other words, India might consider starting anew with the resumption of a great platform that was created by South Asian countries to sort out their mutual problems in Dhaka in 1985, including terrorism. The seven-member club came to be called SAARC, which grew to eight with the inclusion of Afghanistan.

Modi initially made a welcome gesture to invite SAARC leaders to his inaugural, but then took the view perhaps that India had outgrown the neighbourhood. There’s no rocket, however, that can launch itself into outer space without the assurance of a firm ground beneath.

Jawed Naqvi is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.​