Bharat Rakshak

chetak wrote: ↑15 Aug 2024 09:03 Instead of accepting the reality and deducing reasons for Western interference in India’s neighborhood, many find it easier (and safer) to downplay US regime change operations. Mislabeling facts as conspiracy theories tells much about their intentions.

chetak wrote: ↑15 Aug 2024 09:03 Instead of accepting the reality and deducing reasons for Western interference in India’s neighborhood, many find it easier (and safer) to downplay US regime change operations. Mislabeling facts as conspiracy theories tells much about their intentions.

De-facto foreign minister, Mohammad Touhid Hossain said that Bangladesh is considering whether to request India to extradite the former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina as legal cases including murder charges continue to mount against her.

In an interview on Thursday, Hossain mentioned that while he did not want to speculate, Hasina is now facing “numerous cases.” Should the country’s home and law ministries decide, Bangladesh may need to request her “return to Bangladesh,” he said.

Hossain said that such a request could pose a diplomatic challenge for the Indian government, adding that India is aware of the situation and he is confident they will handle it appropriately. He did not provide further details.

Adani Power said on Thursday it was committed to supplying electricity to Bangladesh, saying a recent amendment to power export rules does not affect its existing contract.

The amendment by the government facilitates connectivity to the Indian grid but does not impose any obligation on India to buy electricity, Adani Power said in a statement.

"Adani Power is committed to fulfil contractual obligations as per Bangladesh Power Development Board's demand schedule and provisions of the power purchase agreement and would look forward to continuing reciprocal fulfilment," Adani Power said.
Adani Power's 1,600 megawatt (MW) Godda plant in Jharkhand state is the only one in India under contract to export 100% of its power to a neighbouring country.

The amendment, which governs generators supplying electricity "exclusively to a neighbouring country", enables Adani to also supply electricity to the domestic market to hedge against political risks in Bangladesh.

The change came nearly a week after longtime Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled Bangladesh amid deadly protests triggered by quotas for government jobs, and could benefit future power projects where all output is locked into export contracts.

“My parents live in a colony in the Bangladesh port city, where other Hindus too reside. Houses of minorities were identified, and owners received ransom calls of 5 lakh taka. 'Quit the country or face death, if you can’t pay protection money,' the caller said in a stern voice, identifying himself as a member of an Islamist group. We were told to keep the money ready. Others in the locality too received similar calls,” said Haldar.

“I moved to Dhaka after getting a job here, but my parents and relatives stay in their native Chittagong. Mob is killing and looting the homes of Hindus in rural Bangladesh, but those residing in cities are safer. The ransom calls have left us shocked and worried,” said Haldar. The callers say Bangladesh does not belong to minorities, and if they want to live here, they need to pay protection money, he said.

No one has turned up yet to collect the ransom, but minorities are scared as their phone numbers were tracked down by the callers, said Haldar.

wig wrote: ↑16 Aug 2024 07:23 Bangladesh Hindus get calls to cough up protection money or quit country, says engineering student
...

chetak wrote: ↑16 Aug 2024 21:16 Are we going to play kirket with these jihadis
There is a series due in September

In a move that may have ramifications for India’s security, BNP may approach interim govt to secure release of ex-Ministers including Babar convicted of encouraging terror & planning 2004 ten truck Chittagong arms haul case

The World Bank also expressed its willingness to support the interim government in all matters and stand by Bangladesh

...
The World Bank (WB) is expected to provide $500 million worth of budget support to the government within this 2024-25 fiscal, a senior Economic Relations Division (ERD) official said.

Besides, the country's second-largest development partner-the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-is expected to extend $400 million in budgetary support by December this year, he added.

Additionally, the government is expecting at least $200 million worth of support from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and another $100 million from Korea.
...
Bangladesh's reserves have fallen to only about $20 billion from about $46 billion three years back, resulting in tightfisted spending for imports with its domino effect on production and consumer market.

chanakyaa wrote: ↑17 Aug 2024 18:05 As Yunus begins the honeymoon period, lots of wishful thinking articles being written and financial support/commitments coming. Question is will the Islamists agree and for how long?

(USAID Sponsored) The Future of Youth Democratic Engagement in Bangladesh

Bangladesh's debt not a concern, says World Bank

The World Bank also expressed its willingness to support the interim government in all matters and stand by Bangladesh

Forthcoming $1.20b from four major financiers

...
The World Bank (WB) is expected to provide $500 million worth of budget support to the government within this 2024-25 fiscal, a senior Economic Relations Division (ERD) official said.

Besides, the country's second-largest development partner-the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-is expected to extend $400 million in budgetary support by December this year, he added.

Additionally, the government is expecting at least $200 million worth of support from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and another $100 million from Korea.
...
Bangladesh's reserves have fallen to only about $20 billion from about $46 billion three years back, resulting in tightfisted spending for imports with its domino effect on production and consumer market.

chanakyaa wrote: ↑17 Aug 2024 18:05 As Yunus begins the honeymoon period, lots of wishful thinking articles being written and financial support/commitments coming. Question is will the Islamists agree and for how long?

(USAID Sponsored) The Future of Youth Democratic Engagement in Bangladesh

Bangladesh's debt not a concern, says World Bank

The World Bank also expressed its willingness to support the interim government in all matters and stand by Bangladesh

Forthcoming $1.20b from four major financiers

...
The World Bank (WB) is expected to provide $500 million worth of budget support to the government within this 2024-25 fiscal, a senior Economic Relations Division (ERD) official said.

Besides, the country's second-largest development partner-the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-is expected to extend $400 million in budgetary support by December this year, he added.

Additionally, the government is expecting at least $200 million worth of support from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and another $100 million from Korea.
...
Bangladesh's reserves have fallen to only about $20 billion from about $46 billion three years back, resulting in tightfisted spending for imports with its domino effect on production and consumer market.

chetak wrote: ↑16 Aug 2024 21:16 Are we going to play kirket with these jihadis

There is a series due in September

chetak wrote: ↑15 Aug 2024 19:04 pressure tactics by the yunus govt to force hasina to keep quiet

De-facto foreign minister, Mohammad Touhid Hossain said that Bangladesh is considering whether to request India to extradite the former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina as legal cases including murder charges continue to mount against her.

In an interview on Thursday, Hossain mentioned that while he did not want to speculate, Hasina is now facing “numerous cases.” Should the country’s home and law ministries decide, Bangladesh may need to request her “return to Bangladesh,” he said.

Hossain said that such a request could pose a diplomatic challenge for the Indian government, adding that India is aware of the situation and he is confident they will handle it appropriately. He did not provide further details.

UPDATE FROM BANGLADESH

NSA/HM Brigadier M. Sakhawat Hossain, who had apologised to Hindus and expressed regret about not being able to provide them with protection has been transferred to the textiles and jute department. He was trolled and abused by Muslims Bangladesh after his apology.

Was he transferred for this statement? He says here that there must be a thorough investigation conducted against the several reported incidents of people being shot by 7.62 mm rifles. These are not licensed weapons and reserved for military or police operations. He asks who gave the aggressors weapons? Or are they rogue security personnel in civil dress?

facebook.com/share/v/fhho2X…

Hriday wrote: ↑18 Aug 2024 13:31 Nupur J Sharma, editor in chief of OpIndia writes in X, Facebook link of the news given in the tweet.
https://x.com/UnSubtleDesi/status/18245 ... MASQw&s=19

UPDATE FROM BANGLADESH

NSA/HM Brigadier M. Sakhawat Hossain, who had apologised to Hindus and expressed regret about not being able to provide them with protection has been transferred to the textiles and jute department. He was trolled and abused by Muslims Bangladesh after his apology.

Was he transferred for this statement? He says here that there must be a thorough investigation conducted against the several reported incidents of people being shot by 7.62 mm rifles. These are not licensed weapons and reserved for military or police operations. He asks who gave the aggressors weapons? Or are they rogue security personnel in civil dress?

facebook.com/share/v/fhho2X…

Sri Lanka had its own version of a ‘colour’ or ‘maidan’ revolution following an economic meltdown, as well as the Chinese acquisition of its prime port at Hambantota. The rise of Mohamed Muizzu in Maldives on an ‘India Out’ campaign is a more recent story. Bhutan is under intense pressure from the Chinese to ‘settle’ its border, ideally on the basis of ‘never mind India’s interests’.

Is this dramatic turnaround for the worse entirely India’s fault? Or is India a victim?

How can India claim victimhood when it is such a dominant force? Its GDP today is four times that of the rest of the region together, its population three times, and its global power multiple times.

Its people have also earned for their republic that unique quality in this neighbourhood: a stable constitutional democracy where every transition has taken place democratically, peacefully and credibly. Junk that idea of victimhood.

Ours is among the most unstable neighbourhoods in the world. Most neighbours are highly populous, with crowded cities, youthful, and have tasted democracy unlike messy regions in Africa. The combination of a large, young aspirational population with a taste for democracy means that difficult thing called public opinion matters.

In the immediate context, that’s what Hasina and India as her friend overlooked in Bangladesh. These are not nations where a dictator, however powerful, can do things public opinion doesn’t like. Each is a much more imperfect democracy than ours. But none is a perfect dictatorship either. In all these countries, you deal with both the regime and public opinion.

That public opinion also understands sovereignty. If India is seen as hectoring, it causes a dreadful immune reaction. We’ve seen this in Nepal, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. That 2015 blockade is an awful scar.

The fact is, South Block is mindful of this and mostly correct in what it says. But, what is said in the media seen as friendly to the government — which is almost all our news TV channels, especially in Hindi — is tracked closely. This is worsened exponentially by ultranationalist social media handles.

These put out threads of revisionist, often non-factual history of India’s ties with the neighbours and their territories. Some recommend sending in the Army to Bangladesh, opening the borders for Hindus (there are 14 million of them), and creating an enclave in Rangpur.

On the day External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar ended his visit to Maldives, mostly to pour oil over troubled waters, the canard that Malé had “handed over” 28 islands to India spread. It made it to what passes for prime-time debates on some Hindi TV channels. Somebody even said: “Muizzu ne ghutne tek diye.” (Muizzu has gone down on his knees). We can toss it as a joke but Maldivians won’t. A country with about half a million people and a $7-billion GDP has one blessing in the same measure as a rising behemoth like India: sovereignty. Ultimately, South Block had these tweets deleted. Too late.

Put yourself in the chappals of a neighbour who’s watching this discourse from India. All they hear about Indian policies is ‘muscular, muscular, muscular’. Muscularity is great, but what about those other attributes: cerebral, cultural, scientific, intellectual? A nation with the humility to be a teacher to the region, if on the way to be the ‘vishwaguru’, as Swami Vivekananda imagined in his Chicago address.

As the sole superpower’s record tells you, soft power is not an adjunct but critical to hard power. Does India have think tanks to house dozens of scholars from the neighbouring countries, invite them to conferences, run its own track-2 processes? It isn’t as if India doesn’t know this. That’s why we buy power from Nepal and Bhutan but export to Bangladesh. These are vital economic linkages and stakes. Forget Adani.

The other side of the coin is the overplaying of the Hindu card. The prime minister’s visits to Nepal and Bangladesh had temple visits as highlights. The larger reality, however, is that along our longest borders, we face large Muslim majorities. They look at us askance when we ask them to treat their minorities fairly. It is a case of disastrously ‘perfect’ timing that just when Bangladesh is on the boil and our diplomacy is engaged in damage control, Assam last Thursday presented its first CAA citizenship to a Hindu from Bangladesh.

For five years now, and especially since the war in Ukraine began, India has been talking up multipolarity, strategic autonomy and multi-alignment. Good ideas, but these are available to our neighbours as well, especially with the Chinese shadow, much bigger than ours. They can all play China against us as we might play (however bashfully and clumsily) the US against China. The Subcontinent is not our strategic preserve. Even the mighty Americans have failed to subdue Cuba, just next door, and Venezuela, which isn’t far away.

The fundamental construct of India’s neighbourhood policy still needs to be what Vajpayee postulated, Manmohan Singh embraced and Modi energised. It’s just that we need to junk domestic politics and excessive religiosity while acquiring much humility and a renewed respectfulness towards our neighbours.

bala wrote: ↑19 Aug 2024 08:43 ....

Prediction is more trouble is going to brew, the religious divide is going to become sharper and BD is headed down the path of another breakup. Interesting times ahead for India to deal with the fallout.

Manish_P wrote: ↑19 Aug 2024 10:05

bala wrote: ↑19 Aug 2024 08:43 ....

Prediction is more trouble is going to brew, the religious divide is going to become sharper and BD is headed down the path of another breakup. Interesting times ahead for India to deal with the fallout.

If this happens (rather we should make all efforts to make it happen) we need to convert the chickens neck into a bulls neck

chetak wrote: ↑19 Aug 2024 10:39 ...

Which, BTW Manish ji, both the cheen, and the amrikan will oppose tooth and nail and they will use the porki pakis to stir up the jamaati pot to try and scuttle any efforts made in that direction

If we need to, we must be firm and secure our borders, come what may.

...
It's high time that the chicken neck area is ruthlessly cleared of all encroachers / settlers and handed over to the IA, converted as a closed cantonment, run, administered and policed exclusively by the IA
...

Manish_P wrote: ↑19 Aug 2024 11:08

chetak wrote: ↑19 Aug 2024 10:39 ...

Which, BTW Manish ji, both the cheen, and the amrikan will oppose tooth and nail and they will use the porki pakis to stir up the jamaati pot to try and scuttle any efforts made in that direction

If we need to, we must be firm and secure our borders, come what may.

...
It's high time that the chicken neck area is ruthlessly cleared of all encroachers / settlers and handed over to the IA, converted as a closed cantonment, run, administered and policed exclusively by the IA
...

I concur

We lost the golden opportunity in 1971. At that time the percentage of Hindus in bangladesh was also higher and we could have forced a settlement in our favor.

An option is to offer a price to the kangal banglas. They will probably use it to jack up their value from the US/Chinese. Fine, we will have at least extracted a higher cost from their sponsors. We have to keep making it more and more costly to them to feed the leeches.

chetak wrote: ↑19 Aug 2024 11:46 ...
best to limit the cost to economic cooperation as it stands today.

No need to open any pandora's box because teesta waters and cooked up border issues will land on the discussion table

first of all secure the chicken neck before more beedis move in and flood the place in like they surely will under yunus and his jamaatis.

Fence the border ASAP and stop this stooopide train service, restrict air and road traffic, reduce farm goods and also FMCG items flowing freely to the other side.

shut down student visas and drastically reduce medical visas

Manish_P wrote: ↑19 Aug 2024 12:01

chetak wrote: ↑19 Aug 2024 11:46 ...
best to limit the cost to economic cooperation as it stands today.

Agree. Stop aid and funding on friendly terms immediately

No need to open any pandora's box because teesta waters and cooked up border issues will land on the discussion table

They will be opened soon irrespective. The sponsors real aim behind the bangla coup is to pressurize India. They dont care about the beedis

first of all secure the chicken neck before more beedis move in and flood the place in like they surely will under yunus and his jamaatis.

100%. Problem is that WB state goverment forces under the current state goverment will hardly take any efforts. Not unless the CM faces the same threat that the Bangla PM faced. The Bangladeshis have quickly presented it as a facade of 'civilian' and 'student uprising' to the world to preempt India from declaring a international crisis (like the 1971 issue) and intervening militarily.

Fence the border ASAP and stop this stooopide train service, restrict air and road traffic, reduce farm goods and also FMCG items flowing freely to the other side.

Agree completely. I would go further to state that use this opportunity of 'popular uprising of the common people to overthrow the dictator' to push back to bangladesh the lakhs of illegal beedis in India. After all they will be happy to move to a democratic secular Yunus rather than stay under communal dictator Modi right.

shut down student visas and drastically reduce medical visas

or learn from the Amrikis. Simply increase the wait list to 10-15-20 years.

chetak wrote: ↑
...
Not to mention the 4-5 billion$ of Indian loans outstanding with the beedis which is now at risk.

when will they pay it back

Manish_P wrote: ↑19 Aug 2024 10:05 we need to convert the chickens neck into a bulls neck

Manish_P wrote: ↑19 Aug 2024 19:35 Let them take new loan from the IMF (US) or China.