Discuss the steps required to realise 'hydro-co-operation' between India and Bangladesh. (UPSC CSE Mains 2022 - Political Science and International Relations, Paper 2)
Water remains a politically contested issuein much of South Asia. The region is facing water shortage and agrarian difficulties, and it will continue to face increasing demands on energy and water with rapid industrialisation. India and Bangladesh share 54 common rivers. The Ganga Waters Treaty signed in 1996 for sharing of waters of river Ganga during lean season.
- Sharing the waters of the Teesta river,which originates in the Himalayas and flows through Sikkim and West Bengal to merge with the Brahmaputra in Assam and (Jamuna in Bangladesh), is perhaps the most contentious issue between two friendly neighbours, India and Bangladesh.
- The river covers nearly the entire floodplains of Sikkim, while draining 2,800 sq km of Bangladesh,governing the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
- For West Bengal, Teesta is equally important, considered the lifelineof half-a-dozen districts in North Bengal.
- Bangladesh has sought an “equitable” distribution of Teesta waters from India, on the lines of the Ganga Water Treaty of 1996 (an agreement to share surface waters at the Farakka Barrage near their mutual border), but to no avail.
- In 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Dhaka has generated some expectations to take forward the previous issues on fair and equitable water sharing agreement.
- But Teesta remains an unfinished project,as in India individual states have significant influence over transboundary agreements. This arrangement sometimes impedes the policymaking process. For example, one of the key stakeholders of the Teesta agreement, West Bengal is yet to endorse the deal.
- In 1972, Bangladesh and India established the Joint River Commission which legislated over the Farakka project (Mukherjee 2011). What followed was a series of temporary, trial-based agreements, in 1975 and 1977, over the quantum of water which would be released by India.
- On 9 March 2021, “Maitri Setu”, the bridge on the transboundary Feni River shared between Bangladesh and India was inaugurated by the Prime Ministers of the two riparian nations. Given the urgency of the irrigation needs of the state of Tripura, the joint statement also mentions India reiterating the need to conclude the signing of the interim Feni water-sharing agreement early.
- The decision of the Joint Rivers Commission on widening the area of cooperation by including an additional number of rivers for prioritizing the exchange of data and formulating the framework of the interim water sharing agreements finds a laudatory mention in the joint statement.
As steps, both countries need to relook for treaties that are getting terminated in recent times to see equitable distribution rather than arithmetic hydrology, along with semi-poly-centric approach to create a conducive ecosystem for the resolution of water issues.
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