[LINK] "India, Bangladesh to Swap Land in End to Decades-Old Border Spat"

[rfmcdonald]

Bloomberg reports on the much-needed rectification of the India-Bangladesh border.

At midnight, India and Bangladesh will swap pockets of territory strewn along their 4,100-kilometer frontier to end one of the world’s biggest border disputes.

Residents of the border enclaves have lived stateless for 68 years, an anomaly dating back to Britain’s hasty partition of the subcontinent. They plan to light 68 candles, release 68 balloons and explode 68 firecrackers to celebrate the settlement, said Habibur Rahman, deputy commissioner of Lalmonirhat, a northern district that borders with India.

“They will become citizens of their choice,” he said by phone from the district. Boundary pillars demarcating the enclaves, known as the British Pillars, will be removed.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina’s administrations had ratified the deal in Dhaka in June to swap 111 Indian enclaves for 51 Bangladeshi ones. Ending the dispute will help boost bilateral trade in the world’s least integrated region.

The enclaves are islets of territory completely encircled by the other nation, sometimes several times over. These include what’s probably the world’s only counter-counter-enclave -- a piece of India inside Bangladeshi territory inside an Indian enclave inside Bangladesh.