When Bangladesh Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman lands in Delhi for a two-day visit this afternoon, the first high-level political outreach from Dhaka’s new government, he carries something more significant than a diplomatic agenda. He carries the possibility of a genuine reset in one of South Asia’s most consequential bilateral relationships. The visit also marks 50 days of the Tarique Rahman-led BNP government, and the timing is significant.The groundwork was laid quietly but purposefully. In March, Bangladesh’s intelligence chief, Major General Kaiser Rashid Chowdhury of the DGFI, visited Delhi and met counterparts at RAW and Military Intelligence. India’s High Commissioner Pranay Verma met Prime Minister Tarique Rahman just days before the foreign minister’s departure, speaking of a “positive, constructive and forward-looking approach based on mutual interest and mutual benefit.” Delhi had been signalling its intent long before Dhaka responded. That patience is now bearing fruit.AdvertisementThe BNP government that swept Bangladesh’s February 2026 elections inherited a relationship with India that had been placed on ice. The Muhammad Yunus-led interim period – 18 months of accumulated frost – saw visa restrictions, stalled connectivity projects, suspended cooperation frameworks, and a diplomatic silence that served no one. India waited. It did not walk away.Foreign Minister Rahman, a former National Security Adviser and thus no stranger to the Delhi establishment, arrives with a practical agenda. Energy cooperation tops the list, as Bangladesh grapples with a worsening power crisis aggravated by the ongoing war in West Asia. River water sharing, particularly the looming expiry of the Ganga water treaty in December 2026 and the long-pending Teesta pact, will be central. Trade normalisation, visa resumption, border management, and counter-terrorism cooperation round out a list that is neither new nor unsolvable. These are problems that yield to political will, and India has consistently demonstrated that will.Rahman’s statement to Prothom Alo that Bangladesh wants “a normal relationship with India based on mutual respect, dignity, and interests” is crafted language, but it is also honest language. It signals that the new government is not interested in the performative anti-India posturing that sometimes defined opposition politics in Dhaka. India, for its part, never stopped wanting normalcy.AdvertisementThe India-Bangladesh relationship is a strategic cornerstone of South Asian stability. They share a 4,156-kilometre border, one of the world’s longest land frontiers. A cooperative Bangladesh means a manageable border. A fractious one becomes a highway for trafficking, infiltration, and extremist movement in both directions. India’s northeastern states are sensitive theatres. Delhi has always understood that Bangladesh’s stability is inseparable from its own.Also Read | US and Israel don’t get Iran. Their prospects of a military victory are weakFor Bangladesh, the calculus is equally stark, and it has been India that has consistently sat on the other side of the table. India is Bangladesh’s largest regional trading partner. Indian investment, technical cooperation, and infrastructure financing have been woven into Bangladesh’s remarkable development story over two decades. The energy crisis gripping Bangladesh today cannot be resolved without Indian cooperation on power supply and LNG transit. Bangladesh’s ambition to graduate from Least Developed Country status and sustain export-led growth depends on a predictable relationship with its neighbour.As Rahman proceeds from Delhi to Mauritius for the Indian Ocean Conference, the wider frame becomes clear. Both countries are Indian Ocean states with shared interests in maritime security, blue economy development, and freedom of navigation. India’s Indo-Pacific vision has always included Bangladesh. The question has been whether Dhaka would reciprocate.The fall of the Hasina government created a political vacuum that extremist elements have sought to fill. Attacks on Hindu minorities, the emboldening of radical Islamist organisations, and the presence of groups with links to international terror networks near Bangladesh’s border regions are not merely Indian concerns; they are existential threats to Bangladesh’s own democratic project. India has raised these concerns not as a hegemon, but as a neighbour with skin in the game.Bangladesh was born in 1971 on the principles of secularism, nationalism, democracy, and socialism. Its Liberation War was fought against the very forces of religious fanaticism that the Pakistani military represented. India stood with Bangladesh then. Its security concerns today are an extension of that same solidarity, not a contradiction of it.The BNP government must understand that tolerating extremist elements for short-term political gain is a strategic error. These networks do not stay contained. They bleed across borders, attract the wrong international attention, deter investment, fracture social cohesion, and hand hostile actors, Pakistan’s ISI foremost among them, the opportunity to deepen their foothold. The intelligence chiefs’ meeting in March, where Bangladesh signalled willingness to engage on counter-terrorism, was a promising step. It must become a pattern, not a gesture.you may likeNo single ministerial visit dissolves years of accumulated mistrust. But visits like this one matter because they establish momentum. The Ganga treaty must be renewed before December. The Teesta pact, stalled for 14 years by West Bengal’s domestic politics, needs diplomacy creative enough to bring Mamata Banerjee’s government into the conversation, not around it. Visas must flow freely again for the millions of Bangladeshi patients, students, and traders who depend on India. Connectivity projects must resume. Trade barriers must come down.Both governments must also resist letting domestic politics dictate the bilateral temperature. Indian assembly elections may make immigration a charged issue. Political pressures in Dhaka may make any gesture toward India look like capitulation. These pressures are real. Statesmanship lies in managing them, not surrendering to them. India has always wanted to build this relationship better. The question now is whether Dhaka is ready to build it together. Definitely, the signs in the 50 days are encouraging.The writer is a defence and tech policy adviser and author of the book The Digital Decades on 30 years of the internet in India