Imagine a world in which geopolitics is decided by motivational speeches at campus podiums. At a recent student gathering in Bangladesh, a young leader- microphone in hand, camera rolling, and a flair for hyperbole- announced that if his country stopped sending money, then India would "starve to death."

The line travelled faster than the facts; social feeds erupted, outrage bubbled up on both sides of the India-Bangladesh border, and the pundit mill ground away like it was producing emergency rations instead of sense.

Let's clear the air before the internet runs out of oxygen. First: the claim is nonsense on stilts. India's economy is measured in trillions; Bangladesh's economic relationship with India is important, but it is not a life-support machine. Treating economic interdependence as a hostage situation makes for neat theatrics- poor on economics, excellent for clicks.

But accuracy was never the point. The line "they’ll starve without us" is textbook political kabuki: a performative claim designed to flatter the home audience, stiff-arm nuance, and invite predictable fury from across the border.

It is the rhetorical equivalent of declaring victory in a football match after winning the toss. Loud, confident, and completely detached from the final score.

Why this works politically is obvious. In an age where outrage is a renewable resource, simple humiliation sells. The suggestion that a vastly larger economy survives on borrowed coins offers instant gratification to nationalist sentiment. It reduces complex trade, energy, and transit arrangements into a crude morality play with heroes and dependents. This framing is emotionally efficient and intellectually lazy- which is precisely why it spreads.

The timing makes it worse. The remark landed amid heightened political tension, when tempers were already raw and public discourse brittle. In such moments, reckless language does not merely provoke online spats; it feeds suspicion, hardens attitudes, and turns diplomacy into a shouting match conducted through social media posts and television panels.

The internet, predictably, did its part. Overnight, economists multiplied. Trade balances were debated with the seriousness of pub arguments. Social media transformed into an amateur think tank where confidence substituted for comprehension. Numbers were cited selectively, context was discarded entirely, and nuance was treated as an enemy of virality.

What this theatre carefully avoids is the less dramatic truth: economic interdependence cuts both ways. Trade routes, power exchanges, transit access, labour movement, and markets are shared arteries, not weapons to be waved about at rallies. Disrupting them harms ordinary people first — truck drivers, garment workers, small traders — long before it bruises national pride.

There is also a domestic political dividend to such remarks. Outrage becomes content. Content becomes attention. Attention becomes leverage. While citizens argue online over an invented starvation scenario, inconvenient conversations about governance, stability, and accountability are politely postponed. Few distractions work better than a foreign bogeyman constructed out of exaggeration.

The real damage, however, lies in normalising this style of discourse. When serious economic relationships are reduced to taunts, diplomacy is trivialised. When leaders-in-the-making are rewarded for incendiary soundbites rather than informed argument, the cost is paid later — quietly, through mistrust, trade friction, and unnecessary escalation.

Mockery is easy here, and deserved. But mockery alone is insufficient. The healthier response is to refuse the premise entirely. Countries do not “starve” because another country stops “sending money.” Economies do not function on chest-thumping. And regional stability is not maintained by viral bravado delivered to cheering crowds.

The antidote is dull, unfashionable, and deeply effective: data over drama, restraint over rhetoric, and an understanding that geography makes neighbours permanent, not optional. Quiet competence does not trend online, but it keeps markets moving and households fed.

In the end, the claim says less about economics and more about the moment we are living in — one where volume is mistaken for authority, and confidence for credibility. It is political theatre dressed up as insight, and like most theatre, it collapses the moment the lights come on.

And when they do, what remains is the same old truth: real power lies not in shouting the loudest, but in understanding what you’re talking about — and knowing when not to speak at all.

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