India, Feb. 11 -- India is watching keenly while Bangladesh stands at a crossroads, as it goes to polls on February 12, the first national vote since a students-led uprising swept Sheikh Hasina from power in August 2024.

The scale of the elections - being conducted under an interim government led by Nobel laureate economist Muhammad Yunus - is formidable by numbers alone.

Nearly 13 crore or 130 million Bangladeshis are registered to cast ballots at close to 43,000 polling stations across the country.

We will come back to the immediate context in a bit.

First, let's see why India is so keenly invested in the Bangladesh political situation:

The India-Bangladesh relationship has its roots in the bloody partition of British India in 1947...