India, Bangladesh Need To Focus On Doables First: Ex-Envoy Tariq Karim

DHAKA: It’s the golden jubilee year of Bangladesh’s formation, also 50 years of its diplomatic relations with India. Today, India-Bangladesh ties are in a ‘critically sweet spot’, says Tariq Karim, former Bangladeshi high commissioner to India. “We started off with a big bang, there was a lot of euphoria but the relationship then went up and down. It stabilized only when Sheikh Hasina came to power in 1996,” Karim told StratNews Global Editor-in-Chief Nitin A. Gokhale in Dhaka. Asserting that “we will swim or sink together as our destinies are intertwined”, Karim made the point that both countries will have to sequence priorities, starting with things that can be easily done rather than focusing on the tougher ones while carefully skirting politics. Waterways and the blue economy are the other areas where the two nations can cooperate big time, he added.