Delhi’s BIMSTEC play and Bangladesh’s next move

The recent controversy over Bangladesh’s invitation to the BRICS summit in Delhi is about more than protocol.

Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman’s observation that Prime Minister Tarique Rahman was invited as the “current Chair of BIMSTEC”, rather than personally as Bangladesh’s Prime Minister, accurately reflects how Delhi has chosen to frame Bangladesh’s role.

India’s own spokesperson, Randhir Jaiswal, confirmed that the BRICS invitation was extended in his capacity as BIMSTEC Chair, while a separate bilateral invitation had been sent earlier.

The distinction matters because BIMSTEC has increasingly become the regional framework through which India seeks to move beyond the paralysis of SAARC.

BIMSTEC, the seven-member grouping comprising Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and Thailand, was established in 1997, while its permanent secretariat is based in Dhaka. Crucially, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Maldives are absent.

The transformation accelerated after the 2016 Uri attack. India withdrew from the scheduled SAARC summit in Islamabad, citing cross-border terrorism and interference by “one country”.

Bangladesh issued a remarkably similar statement on the same day, also referring to “one country”.

With Bangladesh, Bhutan and Afghanistan subsequently joining the boycott, the 19th SAARC summit was postponed on 30 September 2016 and has never been held.

Within weeks, India hosted the BRICS-BIMSTEC Outreach in Goa, inviting BIMSTEC instead of SAARC. Almost all the faces expected at the abandoned Islamabad summit appeared in Goa, except Pakistan.

It was aptly described by many as a “Mini SAARC Summit at BIMSTEC”. India was clearly beginning to use BIMSTEC as an alternative regional platform.

Yet the benefits of this architecture have not been equally distributed. India has secured significant connectivity advantages.

For example, under the BBIN Motor Vehicle Agreement signed in 2015, Bangladesh granted India permanent permission to use Chattogram and Mongla ports to transport goods to its north-eastern states.

The route from Kolkata to Tripura, for example, can be reduced from around 1,600 kilometres to roughly 450 kilometres through Bangladesh.

The subsequent story of the BBIN Motor Vehicle Agreement offers an early example of the limitations of this arrangement.

Bhutan’s National Assembly rejected the agreement in November 2016, citing environmental concerns, infrastructure constraints and the absence of limits on foreign vehicles.

Bangladesh, India and Nepal later decided to move ahead, but the agreement remained unimplemented for years.

For Bangladesh, however, BIMSTEC’s economic record remains underwhelming.

Its framework agreement for a free-trade area was signed in 2004, yet more than two decades later, the agreement remains incomplete. Negotiations on rules of origin, services and investment remain unresolved.

BIMSTEC members conduct only around 6–7 per cent of their total trade with one another, compared with roughly 22–25 per cent within ASEAN.

The organisation has also failed Bangladesh on perhaps its most important regional issue: the Rohingya crisis.

Since the 2017 displacement, three BIMSTEC summits have been held—in Kathmandu, Colombo and Bangkok—yet none of their declarations has mentioned either “Rohingya” or “Rakhine”.

Even when Myanmar junta chief Min AungHlaing attended the 2025 Bangkok summit and Muhammad Yunus warned that the unresolved crisis could destabilise the region, the declaration remained silent.

Unlike SAARC, BIMSTEC’s charter does not prohibit discussion of bilateral or contentious issues. The silence, therefore, was a political choice.
This explains why India prefers BIMSTEC.

The issue is not simply economic size but institutional structure. SAARC’s unanimity rule allowed Pakistan to block initiatives important to India.

BIMSTEC has no comparable veto player, no outside observers and no strong dispute-resolution mechanism. As Jaishankar put it in 2025, SAARC is “paused, full stop has not been put”.

Bangladesh, however, appears increasingly unwilling to accept this regional architecture as the only option. Since 2024, Dhaka has openly advocated reviving SAARC.

Muhammad Yunus raised the issue with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and later said that SAARC, despite being born in Bangladesh, had somehow failed to fit “with the politics of one country”.

The present government has elevated this approach into a broader “Bangladesh First” foreign policy.

The shift is visible beyond rhetoric. Bangladesh has deepened ties with Pakistan through direct cargo shipping, renewed flights, defence discussions and other agreements.

At the same time, Dhaka has expanded its engagement with China, including the Mongla economic-zone project and the Teesta feasibility study.

As Khalilur Rahman put it: “We cannot simply sit idle; we have our own work to do.”
Even within BIMSTEC, Bangladesh is now showing greater caution.

Although it signed the Maritime Transport Cooperation Agreement in 2025, it has not ratified it, unlike India, Bhutan, Thailand and Myanmar. The message is increasingly clear: Bangladesh is no longer prepared simply to sign first and calculate later.

That is why the BRICS invitation should not be viewed merely as a question of diplomatic etiquette. Bangladesh currently holds the BIMSTEC chair until 2027, when the organisation’s 30th anniversary summit could potentially be held in Dhaka.

The irony is striking: Shaheed President Ziaur Rahman proposed SAARC, while the government of fascist Sheikh Hasina helped establish BIMSTEC’s institutional presence in Dhaka; now Bangladesh holds the chair of the organisation that India has promoted as an alternative to SAARC.

The real test will be what Bangladesh does with that chairmanship. As Muhammad Yunus discovered in Bangkok, the Chair can speak, but the declaration requires consensus.

In 2027, however, Bangladesh may host the organisation’s most important summit yet. For the first time, the organiser’s pen will be in Dhaka’s hands.

What Bangladesh writes with it will reveal whether BIMSTEC remains primarily an instrument of India’s regional strategy — or becomes a platform that Bangladesh can use to pursue its own strategic interests.

The rehearsal for that moment has already begun.