River dance: why India, Bangladesh should cooperate on water projects like Teesta

The project to develop the 414km Teesta river basin figured prominently during Hasina’s visit to Delhi in June. The agreement is significant because it can potentially open the way for numerous other rivers that flow from the Himalayas into the Bay of Bengal, observers say.

“Bangladesh’s preference for India over China for the Teesta project is a strategic choice as this is a bilateral issue over a river that these two countries share,” Sohini Bose, associate fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, told This Week in Asia.

Therefore, the issue needed to be resolved “without external involvement, especially if either of the two partners harbours apprehensions about a third party”, she said.

India and Bangladesh have been trying to finalise a river-sharing pact on Teesta and reached a tentative agreement in 2011, but objections raised by West Bengal that it would deprive farmers in a part of the state sank the deal.

Delhi has been apprehensive about China working on a project close to its borders, analysts say, but its anxiousness is probably only a part of the reason for Dhaka to select India as a development partner.

“Rather, securing India’s help on the Teesta project is a domestic triumph for Hasina as her government has long been critiqued by the opposition for its inability to resolve this issue despite harmonious ties with Delhi,” Bose said.

Both China and India had offered to conduct a feasibility study on the Teesta River development plan.

At the same time, Dhaka’s opting for India to undertake the development work did not reflect any diplomatic snags between Dhaka and Beijing, Bose said.

The India-China jostle

“This should not be interpreted as a weakening of Bangladesh’s relationship with China, as the two countries cooperate closely across multiple domains and will continue to do so given their mutual dependencies,” she said.

“Beijing is a crucial developmental partner for Dhaka, and the latter is well-positioned to enhance China’s presence in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region. China will therefore continue to invest in Bangladesh,” she added.

As a major exporter of garments, leather products and frozen foods, Bangladesh is heavily dependent on river and sea routes for its merchandise trade. In 2013, the country bought two submarines from China.

“There is already a Chinese footprint on the Bay of Bengal region and Bangladesh has focused on its key strategic interests and has acted independently,” said Priyajit Debsarkar, a London-based British Indian author who has written extensively on Bangladesh.

Sreeradha Datta, an international-affairs professor at Jindal Global University in Haryana, said the issues relating to river development and water sharing were among the most emotive topics in Bangladesh, and Delhi ought to address Dhaka’s concerns.

She said both sides appeared to be focusing on ways and means of augmenting water flow in the Teesta River in the short term, rather than water-sharing.

India’s West Bengal state, which had raised objections on Teesta water-sharing, is ruled by the regional Trinamool Congress which is opposed to the BJP-led federal coalition government.

Bengal was partitioned in the run-up to India’s independence from British rule in 1947 along religious lines into two separate entities: West Bengal – a state of India – and East Bengal, a part of the newly created Dominion of Pakistan that later became the independent nation.

Blessed with an abundance of water, the region is home to acres of rice cultivation. West Bengal has objected to water sharing because it says farmers on its side will lack adequate water.

Out of 54 rivers in common between India and Bangladesh, there was an agreement on the Ganges River besides the Teesta deal, Datta said.

Delhi is also expected to discuss a pact on Kushiyara River on the India-Bangladesh border that is a distributary of the Barak River. It is expected to facilitate water projects in the northeastern state of Assam and Sylhet in Bangladesh.

However, there had been little mention in public about the project, Datta noted.

India has a geographical advantage of being upper riparian in the common rivers with Bangladesh, which allows Delhi to control the water flow through building dams and hydroelectric plants.

The issue has put a dampener on their relationship, according to Datta.

“It has been a nagging problem for Bangladesh,” she said.