Al Mamun Harun Ur Rashid :
India has failed to respond to the cry of thousands of inhabitants of northern Bangladesh who, for decades, have been demanding for water to save their big swaths of agricultural lands and biodiversity of the area. The lands in the region are turning into deserts for want of water in Teesta River. The Indian government seems still not much inclined to share the water of Tessta River. Indian has again bypassed the issue with the empty promises to resolve in a Bangladesh-India a meeting held in Delhi recently.
In 2010, a ray of hope was seen regarding a deal over Teesta water sharing when our Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina visited India, but it was not signed then. The following year when the then Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh visited Bangladesh, all preparations were made for inking a deal on Teesta, but West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Benarjee stalled the agreement saying that such a pact would harm her state’s interests.
However, people here in Bangladeshi expected again that the issue would be settled during Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s meeting with her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi in Hyderabad House on September 6. Bangladesh hoped to solve the Teesta issue candidly in the meeting where West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Benarjee was expected to attend. But West Bengal Chief Minister was not there in the meeting. Bangladesh’s Prime Minister expressed her disappointment at not being able to meet Mamata Benarjee, though as demanded, their relations go beyond politics.
According to Indian cozy narration, the Teesta water sharing issue cannot be resolved without Mamata’s consent as the central government of India has no authority to dictate the state to share water of any rivers flowing over it.
Some political analysts opined that the Modi government’s tug of war with the state government of West Bengal over the control of assembly seats and other issues act as a bulwark for reaching any negotiation over the Teesta water sharing with Bangladesh. This political hitch is thwarting the Indian central government to appease Bengal to sit around the negotiation table over Teesta with its historically cemented (?) neighbour Bangladesh, which has a fair right to get equal share of water from this common and international river. In fact, the internal politics of India is hitting tens of thousands of lives of the people in the northern region of Bangladesh hard as Teesta is the lifeline to save the moribund wasteland straddled with the vast river basin in Rangpur division.
But how long Bangladesh will sustain with the Indian pill of promises to resolve the fair water sharing of Teesta River on which Indian government has constructed dozens of hydro-electric power projects and diverted the water flow through canals to irrigate their lands and left some remnant of water for the nourishment of Bangladesh?
According to the Bangladesh Water Development Board, Bangladesh requires some 5,000 cusecs water flow during the dry season to meet irrigation demands but it is only getting between 1200 cusecs and 1500 cusecs which can hardly quench the thirst of the agricultural lands in this region. As a result, 60 percent of the around 90,000 hectares of lands on Teesta basin remain unused for agricultural produce.
Since the construction of the Gajoldoba barrage on Teesta River in 1985, West Bengal government started diverting around 80 percent water flow of Teesta River through the Mohanonda canal to Darjeeling, Paschim Dinajpur, Malda, Jalpaiguri and Cooch Behar district. Before the construction of the Gajoldoba barrage, the average flow in March was around 7,000 cusecs.
But the situation began to dwindle in the years of 2012 and 2013 when the flow dropped to 3,500 cusecs and 2,950 cusecs respectively in March and shockingly it was only 232 cusecs of water flow in 2015. Currently the flow of water at Dalia point in March remains around 1,200 cusecs in the last couple of years while it is 6,000 cusecs during monsoon, Bangladesh Water Development Board sources said.
This situation, however, cannot go on for an unknown period and Bangladesh must now seriously ponder over how it will save the northern region, a hub of agricultural crops feeding the entire country.
Without the resolution of Teesta affairs, both governments inked a deal to share the waters of the trans-boundary Kushiyara River for the first time in 26 years after the 30-year water sharing arrangement of the Ganga Water Treaty on 12 December 1996.
This Kushiyara will benefit the Southern parts of Indian Assam to a great extent while the benefit of Bangladesh is nominal. Bangladesh, however, has shown its benevolence, but in the context of diplomatic negotiation, Bangladesh should keep some trump cards in hand to negotiate other pending issues with India.
Sheikh Hasina in Delhi said that Bangladesh and India have resolved many outstanding issues in the past in the “spirit of friendship and cooperation”. She hopes that all outstanding issues, including the Teesta, will also be resolved at an early date.
Against this backdrop, experts are of the opinion that the government now needs to comprehensively and constructively think over the alternative ways to reserve Teesta River water for irrigation by using the modern technology and the technical assistance of other countries.
Such a step can save the region’s vast lands from desertification, created out of the unfair treatment of a friendly country. Bangladesh should not swallow India’s pill of promises and should think its own way too for solving the problem.
(The writer is Diplomatic Correspondent, The New Nation).
