Blame the Brits for the mess they left on India’s borders. But 64 years after India became independent we have wonder what our own government has been doing all this time. If we’re going to seek a permanent UN Security Council seat then it is high time India moved to get off the fence – literally and figuratively.

The Economist has an interesting article ‘The land that maps forgot’:

EVER since Bangladesh achieved its independence in 1971, struggles over territory and terrorism, rather than the exchange of goods and goodwill, have dominated its relations with its mega-neighbour. Forty years on, both countries appear to be nearing an agreement to solve the insoluble—by swapping territory.

The planned exchange of parcels of each other’s territory is concentrated around some 200 enclaves. These are like islands of Indian and Bangladeshi territory surrounded completely by the other country’s land, clustered on either side of Bangladesh’s border with the district of Cooch Behar, in the Indian state of West Bengal. Surreally, these include about two dozen counter-enclaves (enclaves within enclaves), as well as the world’s only counter-counter enclave—a patch of Bangladesh that is surrounded by Indian territory…itself surrounded by Bangladeshi territory.

Via Economist: The Land That Maps Forgot