Teesta River dispute | Mamata Banerjee's stance may pour cold water on warming India-Bangladesh ties

Mamata Banerjee

A treaty on sharing the Teesta River waters could further consolidate India-Bangladesh bilateral relations which currently are the warmest in some years.

But West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee stands in the way of its implementation, because the move brings no political dividends.

Banerjee’s argument is that the water levels in the Teesta have drastically reduced over the years and, hence, there was very little for West Bengal to offer to Bangladesh. She said that the two sides should instead work out arrangements on water sharing from the other rivers that flow between the two countries.

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, however, has struck an optimistic note during her visit that began on Monday. She said India and Bangladesh have resolved several pending issues in the past and hoped the Teesta River water sharing agreement would also be implemented soon.

To deal with scarcity of water in the lean period, a preliminary arrangement was made in 1983 that gave 39 percent of water to India and 36 percent to Bangladesh. The two sides agreed on another interim arrangement in 2011 that would give India 42.5 percent and Bangladesh 37.5 percent of the water from the Teesta for a 15-year period.

But the agreement could not be signed as Banerjee, who was part of the then Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s delegation to Dhaka, opted out of it at the last minute.

The visiting Bangladesh PM has written to Banerjee expressing her desire to meet the Bengal CM, who she said is like a ‘sister’ to her, during the official visit from September 5 to 8. However, Banerjee was not on the Modi government’s list of invitees to meet Hasina.

In the past, Bangladeshi commentators have lamented that though the two sides share 54 rivers, not a single agreement has been signed between India and Bangladesh in nearly 25 years. The last agreement on water sharing between the two countries was in 1996 when the Ganga River Treaty was signed.

That long hiatus came to an end on Tuesday afternoon when Dhaka and New Delhi entered into an agreement to share the waters of the Kushiyara River during a bilateral meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Hasina at Hyderabad House in the capital.

Though sharing waters of transboundary rivers is an emotive issue in both countries, those close to Banerjee said she does not gain anything politically by agreeing to a treaty on the Teesta. On the contrary, she might lose a significant number of voters in the state if she gives her consent for such a treaty.

She has often been accused by her political detractors of pursuing pro-Muslim policies in the state to consolidate her minority vote bank. If she were to support a treaty on the Teesta, observers say the credit would go to Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), while she could end up being accused by her political opponents of sacrificing the state’s interest in favour of Bangladesh.

The BJP is keen to expand its electoral map by winning the next assembly election in West Bengal. In recent years, it has succeeded in significantly increasing its vote share in the state and has become the principal opposition party, sidelining the left parties and the Congress.

For Hasina, on the other hand, the Teesta deal is crucial given that she is perceived in Bangladesh as a more pro-India leader than her main political rival, Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

Apart from the inherent tension that exists between upper riparian and lower riparian states and come into display during water sharing talks, the inability to resolve the Teesta issue has often given an additional handle to critics of India in the neighbouring country.

Many in Bangladesh expect Hasina to clinch a deal on the Teesta. These expectations have gone up several notches since Modi came to power in India in 2014 since under his leadership a number of pending and knotty issues had been resolved.

Over the years the free flow of water in the Teesta has been inhibited by governments in both Delhi and Kolkata by building dams and hydropower projects that have significantly reduced the volume of water flow.

The Teesta originates in the eastern Himalayas and flows through Sikkim and West Bengal before merging with the Brahmaputra in Assam and finally entering Bangladesh as the Jamuna.

Of its 414 km length of the river, 150 km lies in Sikkim, 123 km in West Bengal and 140 km in Bangladesh. Nearly 83 percent of the river’s catchment area is in India, while 17 percent is in Bangladesh.

States in India have an important role to play in agreements for sharing waters of rivers that pass through their territory. Therefore, it is also a major challenge for the Indian prime minister to get the Teesta treaty done. He may even face resistance from his own party in the state if he were to ram the agreement through as that would jeopardise the BJP’s standing in the state.