Bangladesh, May 2 -- Back in 1972 – weeks after the independence of Bangladesh, then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger compared the newly-born country as a “bottomless basket case”. Fifty-three years of its independence, Bangladesh now is amongst fastest growing economies in the world, while it has already become geopolitically extremely important to the world.

A middle power in the Indo-Pacific, Bangladesh is home to the sixth-most spoken language in the world, the third-largest Muslim-majority population in the world, and the second-largest economy in South Asia. Furthermore, Bangladesh, as the gateway to South and Southeast Asia, remains geographically central in the Bay of Bengal region. And naturally, the locat...