The North-East region of India has remained underdeveloped for two reasons, the principal one being the short-sightedness of the Indian central government, and its neglect of, if not outright hostility to, the legitimate aspirations and demands of the people of the region.

New Delhi has never shown this region any sensitivity with respect to its linguistic, religious, and cultural differences from the rest of India, and desire to maintain this differentiation, and has deliberately under-funded development and tried in an extremely heavy-handed manner to bring the North-East within the "mainstream" of the country.

In addition, New Delhi has always remained cool to the very practical solution of permitting Bangladesh to step in and fill the economic gap that the North-East's geographic distance from the rest of India has occasioned.

But when it comes to the question of the underdevelopment of the North-East, Bangladesh is also culpable.

The most obvious way in which Bangladesh has contributed to the continued stagnation of the North-East has been in our steadfast refusal to grant India transit rights through Bangladesh to the North-East.

One argument made in defense of this refusal is that it has helped protect Bangladesh's trade with the North-East. But the reality is that we have never really made any effort to develop a market for our goods in the region, and so there is not much to protect.

The biggest victims of both the Indian and Bangladesh policies have been the inhabitants of the North-East, who are denied cheap goods from the rest of India due to the lack of transit rights, and are also denied cheap Bangladeshi goods due to a combination of India's protectionist trade policies and lack of any Bangladeshi efforts to develop this market.

The truth is that a cornerstone of the Bangladeshi policy on transit is that it does hurt India. That is the whole point. The idea is that by instituting a policy that does considerable damage to India, we can use this as leverage to get a better deal with respect to Indian policies that are harmful to Bangladeshi interests.

The trouble with this formulation is that the Indians who are hurt by the policy are primarily those who reside in the North-East. This is the crux of the problem with respect to how we envision and deal with India.

When we think of India, we think of Calcutta and New Delhi, and not of the North-East. When we think of Bangladeshi policies harming Indian interests, the interests we have in mind are supercilious bureaucrats in New Delhi and rapacious businessmen in Calcutta. We don't think about the effect of our policies on the people who they actually effect the most, the long-suffering inhabitants of the North-East.

The thing is that India and its regional dominance, economic, military, and cultural, and the fact that it surrounds Bangladesh on three sides and is often insensitive to our interests, has created a sense of vulnerability and inferiority in the minds of our policy-makers (and possibly the nation as a whole). It is this mind-set that contributes significantly to much of the tension we have in our relations with India.

But if we didn't think of India as this monolithic "big brother" we would not be so quick to act in such a way as to harm the interests of the North-East, which in no way can be thought of as a "big brother" to Bangladesh.

Essentially, the national mind-set with respect to India completely ignores the dynamics of our relationship with the North-East and lumps the North-Easterners in with the rest of the country, without giving much thought to the reality on the ground.

If we were to ever think of India in terms of the North-East, then we would see that our transit policy is actually contributing to the continuing underdevelopment of this backward region. We are not only keeping money out of the pockets of businessmen and bureaucrats from New Delhi and Calcutta, we are also contributing to the continuing impoverishment of the most neglected corner of India, one that we could have far better relations with than we do at present.

It would be both in our own national self-interest and the interest of our neighbours in the North-East if the Bangladeshi attitude towards India were to take the North-East into consideration. In fact, such a realignment of thinking with respect to India could help us move the bilateral relationship to a more productive and cooperative footing.

What would this mean in practical terms?

In practical terms it would mean recognizing, as Nagaland MLA Alok Jamir said to me, that for the North-East, it is Bangladesh who is the "big brother," and that a more fruitful relationship with the region and its people can be built if we acknowledge this reality and make policy decisions accordingly.

In fact, the people of the North-East share many commonalities with Bangladesh in their view of New Delhi, and would welcome a more nuanced and mutually cooperative relationship with us.

But this means that we would need to pay real attention to the concerns of the North-East, instead of permitting the region to get caught in the cross-fire (if you'll pardon the expression) of the tensions between Dhaka and New Delhi.

This means paying serious attention to issues such as illegal migration from Bangladesh to the North-East. The policy of total denial on the part of the Bangladesh government is in response to the absurd allegation from New Delhi of 20 million illegal migrants, the apparent inability of New Delhi to tell the difference between economic migrants and "infiltrators," and the cynical exploitation of the issue by politicians to win votes.

But if we were to look beyond this and speak with North-Easterners, we would see that their fear of demographic domination is a very real one that we would do well to address.

In fact, from transit, to insurgency, to border disputes, to water sharing, to smuggling, almost all of the issues that are irritants in the India-Bangladesh relationship might be addressed more productively than they are today if we were to approach the issue from a perspective that created space for the concerns of the North-East.

There is much more that we can do to nurture this relationship that would be of great benefit to us.

One thing that North-Easterners consistently request that we might wish to consider cooperation on is a rail link between Akhaura and Agartala that would greatly diminish the cost of transporting goods to the region.

Similarly, permitting the North-Eastern states to use Chittagong port as entry and exit point for goods would be tremendously beneficial to them, and of course, earn Bangladesh considerable revenue, too.

In fact, Bangladesh could consider realigning our economy to a certain extent to benefit from our proximity to the North-East and comparative advantage in certain sectors. We could set up industries, perhaps in Comilla, with an eye on the North-Eastern market, and we could think of more direct investment in the region, perhaps creating linkages with industries here. There is no good reason why commercial and cultural ties between Bangladesh and the North-East have remained so tenuous.

Opening ourselves up to the North-East and extending an olive-branch of conciliation in that direction could reap enormous benefits to the Bangladesh economy. It would also create friendlier relations with our neighbours with whom we unfortunately have had few links with in the recent past. And it could help realign our problematic relationship with India as a whole.

We might find that when we focus on the North-East, that many of our problems vis-a-vis India diminish considerably. Of course, we cannot simply side-step New-Delhi, but there is much to be gained from enhancing people-to-people contacts with the North-East, and dealing with the government at the state level to break down barriers and create understanding and opportunity on both sides of the border.

Zafar Sobhan is Assistant Editor, The Daily Star.