Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar is a firm believer in regional cooperation. “It will happen because people in both countries want better relations,” the Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader told Business Line . He should know. During a visit to Bangladesh last year, Jitendra Chaudhury, his industry minister, had to face protests by traders from north-eastern Bangladesh. They were demanding facilitation of greater trade and commerce between the two nations.

Sarkar, chief minister of Tripura since 1998, has been a guiding force in the fencing of over four-fifths of the 856-km border his state shares with Bangladesh. At the same time he has also been pushing for better road and rail logistics to facilitate trade and commerce with Bangladesh and the rest of India. Tripura does not have a broad-gauge rail network and the only road from Assam is too narrow to cope with large-scale movement of heavy cargo.

India is now building a broad-gauge rail network that will not only connect Agartala but extend to Sabroom on Tripura’s southern border with Bangladesh. This will create logistics options for a possible railroad link to Bangladesh’s Chittagong seaport, further south of Sabroom. That’s not all. In February, the two countries signed an agreement to build a broad-gauge rail link between Agartala and Dhaka, to be funded by India.

Since Dhaka has already resumed train services with Kolkata (2008), the proposed rail link (Agartala-Dhaka), may, in the long run, connect Agartala and the rest of North-East India with Kolkata, through Dhaka. That would be a much shorter route than the current one, which goes around Bangladesh.

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