Explained: Why Bangladesh Skipped India’s First Multinational Military Exercise Pragati

Bangladesh has opted out of India's multilateral military drill, "Exercise Pragati," signaling deteriorating bilateral relations since August 2024. The rift follows a political upheaval in Dhaka and provocative comments by its new leadership. In response, India withdrew a key trade facility.

Bangladesh has chosen not to participate in Exercise Pragati, India’s first multilateral military drills, which is underway at the Field Training Node in Umroi, Meghalaya. The exercise started on May 18 and will conclude on May 31.

Dhaka’s decision has attracted attention less for what it is – a single exercise – than for what it signals: a bilateral relationship that has deteriorated steadily since August 2024.

Among other countries from South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Indian Ocean Island, Bangladesh was also invited for the multinational exercise. Apart from India, being a host country, 12 other countries, including Bhutan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, the Philippines, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam are training together in a military cantonment in Meghalaya.

The exercise is an acronym: PRAGATI stands for Partnership of Regional Armies for Growth and Transformation in the Indian Ocean Region. It focuses on counterterrorism operations in semi-mountainous and jungle terrain – the kind of terrain that characterizes much of the northeast.

The training programme includes joint tactical drills and coordinated operations. On the sidelines, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) has partnered with Eastern Command and the Army Design Bureau for a two-day industry exposition on May 30 and 31, showcasing equipment and innovations developed under the Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliance) framework.

A pointed absence

The geographic context sharpens the diplomatic edge of Bangladesh’s non-participation. Meghalaya shares a long border with Bangladesh and the Umroi training node lies within relatively close distance of that border. Umroi also has history: the Joint Training Node there has previously hosted Exercise Sampriti, the India-Bangladesh bilateral military exercise.

The current estrangement between the two neighbours has its roots in the political earthquake of August 2024. A mass uprising ousted the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, who fled to India, where she has remained since.

Matters took a sharper turn in March 2025, when the chief adviser of Bangladesh’s interim government, Muhammad Yunus, made remarks during a visit to China that drew swift condemnation in India. Speaking at a business event in Beijing, Yunus described India’s seven northeastern states as “locked landlocked” and positioned Bangladesh as “the only guardian of the ocean” in the region, explicitly inviting China to treat this as an economic opportunity. “Build things, produce things, market things,” he said, framing Bangladesh’s coastal access as leverage in a regional arrangement involving China.

The comments were received in New Delhi as a provocation. The foreign minister, S Jaishankar, offered a pointed rebuttal, noting that India connects most of its neighbours and provides the main interface between the subcontinent and ASEAN, and that “cooperation is not subject to cherry-picking.”

The Assam chief minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, called the remarks “offensive and strongly condemnable.” India responded by withdrawing a transhipment facility it had extended to Bangladesh in 2020 and formally expanded in 2022, which had allowed Dhaka to use Indian airports and ports, including Delhi’s, for exports to third countries.

A broader realignment

Dhaka has moved to warm ties with Pakistan and has deepened engagement with China, including overtures on the Teesta river conservation project, which would bring Chinese personnel close to the strategically sensitive Siliguri Corridor (also called the “Chicken’s Neck”). Both moves have unsettled New Delhi.

India, for its part, has begun accelerating infrastructure that reduces its dependence on Bangladeshi transit routes. The government has fast-tracked a Rs 22,864-crore, four-lane highway linking Shillong in Meghalaya to Silchar in Assam, designed to integrate with the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project through Myanmar.

The aim is to give the northeastern states an independent land-sea corridor to Indian ports, bypassing Bangladesh entirely.

Bangladesh Prime Minister to Visit China

Bangladesh prime minister Tarique Rahman is likely to visit China in late June. It would be his first abroad trip since the formation of the new BNP government. The visit comes despite an invitation extended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in February 2026 for Rahman and his family to visit India, which remains pending.

In a letter to Mr Rahman, PM Modi expressed his eagerness to work closely with the BNP leader to further strengthen the multifaceted bilateral relationship between the two nations.