Practically, there isn't much to expect from a meeting taking place between two foreign secretaries, but Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri's coming to Dhaka is markedly significant amid growing tension in Bangladesh-India diplomatic ties following former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's fall and fleeing to India. The Indian foreign secretary's visit is also the first high-level-meeting after the Interim Government had assumed office on 8 August.
However, Bangladesh under the Interim Government has witnessed unexpected and unprecedented scale of hostility and bitterness to have strained our bi-lateral ties - ranging from slandering media campaigns, halting issueing visas to Bangladeshi travelers, denying healthcare services to Bangladeshi patients, indiscriminate circulating of fake communal hate stories and imaginative attacks perpetrated on Hindu minorities in here, boycotting our tourists, to limiting cross-border trade to branding Bangladesh as an emerging 'Islamist Fundamentalist state' to vandalizing our diplomatic mission offices in India - we want all these occurrences to end before our ties worsen further.
It is only positive that with the Indian foreign secretary's latest visit, the formal diplomatic channel has once again opened up for regular consultation and official dialogue. Moreover, it has also been reported that both sides agreed to maintain 'secrecy' to some extent on the visit of the Indian foreign secretary. So, no side agreed to make anything public before holding a joint discussion.
Nevertheless, we believe need of the hour demands to normalize our ties by respecting each other's independence and sovereignty. Our expectation from the Indian foreign secretary's latest visit, however, is that to play a key role in terms of convincing the Indian government to acknowledge that there has been a qualitative change in our relation before and after 5 August.
We must accept this reality and work towards moving our relations forward. The most important factor here is that the visit should remove official barrierswhile open up all doors for increased number of dialogues through formal and informal channels.
Usually Foreign Office Consultation (FOC) is a regular and routine affair between two countries, and we expect it would continue with our Indian counterpart in its usual course. What is badly missing in our bilateral-ties right now is political goodwill, not from both sides but widely believed from one side.
In conclusion, Bangladesh and India shares a diverse range of mutual interests - be it water, climate change, tourism, trade, health and education or security to soft power. There is no alternative to working together. That said -Indian political leadership mustrealize this while moving forward.
