Winning the neighbourhood

Mains Paper: 2 | IR
Prelims level: NRC
Mains level: India and its neighbourhood relations.

Introduction

•  When it comes to trade relations with its immediate neighbours, India is strikingly different from other regionally-dominant major countries.

•  Despite being the region’s largest and fastest growing economy, India absorbs as little as 1.7 per cent of Bangladesh’s exports, and accounts for only 14 per cent of its imports.

•  India should take the initiative to free the movement of goods and people between India and Bangladesh.

Analysing the situation

•  India treats Bangladeshis as foreigners and has an “extremely costly infrastructure to prevent illegal immigration” Nepalis are treated as “permissible aliens”.

•  Moreover, the district of Sylhet in Bangladesh was a part of the province of Assam; and for a brief period from 1905 to 1911, Eastern Bengal and Assam constituted a single province. But Nepal was not a part of British India.

•  However, like the neighbouring Himalayan kingdoms of Bhutan and Sikkim, it was part of Britain’s informal empire.

•  Ethnic Nepalis form the social basis of the Gorkhaland movement in Darjeeling.

•  But what are the chances of India making policies vis-à-vis, Bangladeshis that are in India’s economic interest?

Way forward

•  Whatever else one can say about the Citizenship Amendment Bill, it is hard to argue that it will promote greater economic integration between India and Bangladesh.

•  Cuban immigrants according to the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 could not be treated as illegal in the US. They qualified for US residency within a year of being in the US and were eligible for citizenship five years later, no matter how they entered the country.

•  Since they were admitted for humanitarian reasons — allegedly for fleeing communist oppression — Cubans quickly became a significant immigrant group in the US.

•  Within a decade after the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the Cuban population in the US grew by six-fold.

Online Coaching for UPSC PRE Exam

General Studies Pre. Cum Mains Study Materials

Prelims Questions:

Q.1) Consider the following statements:
1. National Register for Citizens is a register containing names of Indian citizens in Jammu and Kashmir.
2. It is updated in the month of April every year.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

(a) 1 only
(b) 2 only
(c) Both 1 and 2
(d) Neither 1 nor 2
Answer: D

Mains Questions:
Q.1) How implementation of NRC will affect India Bangladesh relation?