The Pulse | Diplomacy | South Asia

With an ‘Obstacle’ Gone, Will the Indian Government Finally Seal the Teesta Deal With Bangladesh?

An agreement to share the waters of the Teesta River will not go down well in northern West Bengal.

The River Teesta winds through Kalimpong district in West Bengal, India.

The victory of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the recent elections to the West Bengal state assembly has been received with mixed feelings in neighboring Bangladesh. On the one hand, it has raised hopes among some sections in Bangladesh that with the defeat of Mamata Banerjee’s government, an important “obstacle” in the way of an agreement on the sharing of the Teesta river’s waters has been removed. On the other hand, Bangladeshis are anxious that with the BJP now ruling four of the five Indian states that border Bangladesh, India could escalate the “push-back” of alleged undocumented migrants into Bangladesh

This two-part series examines how the change of political guard in West Bengal is likely to impact India-Bangladesh relations. While Part One will examine whether the two countries could sign an agreement on sharing the Teesta’s waters in the coming months, Part Two will explore Bangladeshi anxieties around the likely intensification of an anti-migrant drive.

The Teesta, one of South Asia’s most important transboundary rivers, is tame and timid. Climate issues, including glacial retreat, and a series of dams built on this river in India, have reduced the volume of water it carries.

Yet, this 414-kilometer-long river, which runs from India to Bangladesh, can still raise diplomatic storms.

India and Bangladesh have been locked in a dispute over sharing the waters of the Teesta River for several decades. The two sides reached an ad hoc or interim understanding on the sharing of its waters in 1983. This temporary arrangement was meant to guide water allocation, but was never formalized.

Then, in September 2011, just ahead of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Dhaka, the two sides reached a draft agreement on the Teesta.

The details of the draft agreement were never officially made public, but media reports from the time say the two countries agreed that 20 percent of the river’s water would be left for environmental flow, while India and Bangladesh will receive 42.5 percent and 37.5 percent, respectively, during dry seasons. A joint hydrological observation station to gather accurate data for the future was also part of the agreement.

However, objections were raised by Mamata Banerjee, the then chief minister of West Bengal. She argued that the draft agreement did not adequately meet the irrigation and drinking water needs of the north Bengal districts, including Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, and Darjeeling. She declined to accompany Singh to Dhaka, and as a result, the agreement was not signed.

In India’s federal structure, the Union government cannot decide on water sharing without consent from the state involved.

Over the past 15 years, with Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress holding the reins in West Bengal, and continuing to oppose the deal on Teesta, the dispute has festered, with even the Narendra Modi-led government at the center failing to get Banerjee to budge from her position.

There are hopes now that with the biggest “stumbling block” in the way of the Teesta water-sharing treaty removed – Banerjee’s government was ousted from power in the recent election – a deal on the Teesta could be sealed soon.

Since Banerjee’s defeat, Bangladeshi journalists and politicians have flooded West Bengal’s journalists with calls and messages to know whether a Teesta treaty would materialize soon, now that the “obstacle” has been removed.

The issue is not quite that simple.

The Teesta is one of the 54 rivers that India and Bangladesh share. A transboundary river originating near India’s border with China, the Teesta passes through the Indian Himalayan state of Sikkim and the sub-Himalayan terrains of northern West Bengal before entering the Bangladesh plains. It is the most important river in both these regions.

In northern West Bengal, it irrigates multiple districts that depend on its waters for farming and daily water needs. In Bangladesh, it provides........

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