What happens when China is invited to invest just across India’s most vulnerable choke point? In this critical episode of Defence Mantra, Editor-in-Chief Nitin A. Gokhakle decodes the strategic and diplomatic significance of Bangladesh’s recent overtures to Beijing — particularly Muhammad Yunus’s call for Chinese investment in northern Bangladesh, an area uncomfortably close to India’s Siliguri Corridor, also known as the “Chicken’s Neck.”
The Siliguri Corridor is India’s only narrow land link to its northeastern states — bordered by Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh — and widely seen as a potential pressure point in any future regional conflict. As Bangladesh offers China access to infrastructure and even proposes relocating Chinese solar manufacturing to the north, questions are being raised about Dhaka’s changing foreign policy posture and how it impacts regional balance.
Defence Mantra unpacks the interplay between the BBIN (Bangladesh-Bhutan-India-Nepal) regional connectivity initiative and China’s ambitions, examining whether Beijing’s economic influence is quietly undercutting India’s long-standing cultural and geopolitical ties in South Asia.
Is the BBIN still a viable alternative to counter Chinese corridors and trade routes? Is India losing its strategic edge in Bangladesh — and by extension, in the entire eastern subcontinent? What role does diplomacy, or the lack of it, play in this evolving situation?
