This is like shifting goalposts. So long as India worked its Northeast on its own, there was no alternative but to go through Assam to access the region. And with all its ethnic conflicts, Assam is not the ideal gateway – be it for accessing the rest of Northeast or the foreign countries beyond.

This is beginning to change as India gets Bangladesh on board and uses it to access the Northeast , as was the case before the Partition. Six years of Awami league rule has seen the turning of the tide. With a slew of agreements ranging from coastal shipping deal to Motor vehcies protocol to surplus bandwidth sale agreement , India and Bangladesh are all set to usher in a new chapter in improved connectivity that would be crucial to the success of India’s Look East policy.

That has changed the geopolitical scenario. No longer is Assam important to access Northeast. There are alternative routes to do that through Bangladesh. The easiest being one through Tripura.  As I write, India has decided to invest 10 billion rupees for the Akhaura-Agartala rail project. The Agartala-Kolkata direct bus service via Dhaka is already up and running. Once the rail service works out after the Agartala-Akhaura route is up and running, Tripura and not Assam will be India’s gateway to its own Northeast. And with Bangladesh sure to allow use of its ports, the Chittagong-Sabroom corridor will be used by Indian freight movers rather than the land route through Srirampur in Assam’s disturbed Kokrajhar region. That saves distance, money and time.

Not that Bangladesh is any less disturbed. The Sitakunda area of the Dhaka-Chittagong saw the worst violence during the BNP-Jamaat’s transport blockade and dozens of trucks and buses were burnt. That could happen again but Sheikh Hasina’s determination to crush all agitation may ensure that Tripura remains the easiest passage between the Indian mainland and the Northeast.

That will mean the tiny state will emerge as a possible industrial destination for both Indian and Bangladesh capital. With the extension of the submarine cable from Cox’s Bazar to Agartala on the cards and the surplus bandwidth sale agreement between India and Bangladesh through, Tripura has the opportunity to turn itself into a destination for IT industry . It is a historic opportunity that Tripura’s Left government should not miss.  The big advantage that Manik Sarkar – and that Buddhadev Bhattacharyya did not have – is the state thankfully does not have an eternal agitprop spoiler like Mamata Banerjee. The state’s major Opposition leaders are from the Congress . Sudip Barman is an engineer with military schooling and will never do what Mamata did to stop the Tatas at Singur. Neither would any of his party top brass in Tripura. They will never stoop to such levels.

So this is Tripura’s moment. The fact that Ratan Tata is taking interest in the state is not just because he is impressed by the Left leadership but because he has a strong sense of geopolitics and geoeconomics. The man who took the Tatas to UK big time is also the man who wanted to take them to Bangladesh and West Bengal bigtime but failed. In Tripura, he has the opportunity to locate his businesses in a safe zone with peace and power and proximity to the two Bengals which comprise a huge 250 million market ( Bangladesh and West Bengal) but where the Tata experience has been less than savoury. 

Tripura needs to get Tata Trust for charity and other reasons – but still better if it can get the TCS for an IT park that will draw on the state’s skilled manpower (now forced to Bengaluru and Hyderabad), surplus power, high speed Internet and social peace to thrive. For that to happen, the state needs smart ministers  (literally smart as in capacity to understand and use IT)   who can make Tripura the next big thing for Indian industry. 

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