China’s growing footprint and a tangible shift in power dynamics in Bangladesh has weakened India’s leverage in Dhaka. Comment. (Answer in 150 words)

- China’s growing footprint and a tangible shift in power dynamics in Bangladesh has weakened India’s leverage in Dhaka. Comment. (Answer in 150 words)
Introduction
India's leverage in Dhaka has thinned since August 2024, but the cause is less Chinese money than India's over-investment in a single party.

Body
1. The rupture: Sheikh Hasina's fall on 5 August 2024 and her refuge in India left New Delhi without an interlocutor, and the trans-shipment facility was withdrawn in April 2025.
2. China moved into the gap: Muhammad Yunus made Beijing his first major destination in March 2025, returning with commitments near 2.1 billion dollars and calling India's north-east landlocked.
3. The footprint is old, not new: China is Bangladesh's largest trading partner, supplies about seventy per cent of its arms and built the Pekua submarine base; Dhaka joined the Belt and Road in 2016.
4. Pakistan's re-entry compounds it: direct Karachi-Chittagong shipping and revived official contacts reopen a front India had closed.
5. Residual leverage remains: transit, power exports, credit lines, the Akhaura-Agartala rail link and the Ganga Waters Treaty, due for renewal in 2026.

Conclusion
The contention holds, with a correction: leverage was over-personalised, not outbid. Rebuilding it means engaging Bangladeshi parties and society before the next election.