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India's northeast is a prisoner of geography. landlocked and ring-fenced by neighbours such as China, Bhutan, Myanmar and Bangladesh, its lone land-based connection with the rest of India is narrow—the 22-km wide 'chicken's neck' in Siliguri—and strategically speaking, easy to disrupt. This means the land-based networks of transport and trade, the lifelines through which goods, progress and prosperity flow, are limited, far-flung and congested.

India has always thought of this problem as having a two-pronged solution. One, activate the river networks in this area to boost maritime trade. Secondly, one of the southern points of the northeast, Agartala, is tantalisingly close to the ocean—just 200 km away, separated by foreign territory. Land-based access to ports there will hugely boost connectivity. But the execution of both parts hinges on Bangladesh and has been tied up in bureaucratic wrangling.

Earlier this month, when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina visited New Delhi, important levers in this regard were pushed into action. The Gangetic network used for the growing Indo-Bangladesh trade, which currently extends from Kolkata to the Narayanganj port near Dhaka, can be extended to reach different points in the northeast—Silghat in middle Assam through the Brahmaputra river (called Jamuna in Bangladesh) and Karimganj in the south of the state through the Kushiyari river. These routes are part of the Indo-Bangladesh Protocol for Inland Transit and Trade (IBPITT) but had fallen into disuse due to various challenges over the years. Efforts are now on to breathe new life into them.