Between the banks: Reimagining the Ganga Water Treaty in an era of strained India-Bangladesh waters

“The aforesaid watercourse of beingness that runs done my veins nighttime and time runs done the satellite and dances successful rhythmic measures.” — Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali

Rivers bash not respect borders, and yet they specify them. For India and Bangladesh – bound by history, geography, and an intimate fluvial geography – the rivers that people betwixt them person agelong served some arsenic lifelines and responsibility lines. At the bosom of their analyzable hydrological entanglement lies the Ganga, oregon Padma arsenic it is known successful Bangladesh, the ineffable and strategical stream whose waters person carried much than sediment: they person carried contest, compromise, and, occasionally, concord.

As the 30-year Ganga Water Sharing Treaty of 1996 approaches its scheduled reappraisal successful 2026, this long-standing statement stands astatine a crossroads. Once hailed arsenic a diplomatic breakthrough, the Treaty present faces mounting pressures – hydrological, ecological, political, and geopolitical. The contiguous downturn successful India-Bangladesh relations that has been shaped by the continuing anti-India sentiment (during and aft the ouster of the Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League authorities successful August 2024), stalled negotiations implicit the Teesta h2o sharing treaty, rising Chinese power successful Dhaka, and India’s increasing unease with the Muhammad Yunus-led authorities and its increasing proximity to some Islamabad and Beijing, lone adds to the urgency. In this infinitesimal of flux, the Ganga Treaty is not simply a method papers to beryllium reviewed, but a awesome of the region’s capableness – oregon incapacity – to stock water, power, and spot successful adjacent measure.

From Farakka to friendship: a little past of a dispute

The origins of India-Bangladesh h2o disputes predate Bangladesh’s commencement successful 1971. As aboriginal arsenic the 1950s, India had conceived the Farakka Barrage, a monolithic diversion task connected the Ganga, hardly 18 km from what would go the planetary border, to flush silt from the Kolkata Port. Construction began successful 1961 and continued done the decade, raising alarm successful East Pakistan (and aboriginal autarkic Bangladesh) implicit downstream travel simplification and ecological damage.

The concern escalated successful 1975, erstwhile India commissioned the barrage, adjacent arsenic Sheikh Mujibur Rahman struggled to stabilise a nascent Bangladesh. The effect was contiguous backlash: successful 1976, Maulana Bhashani led the Farakka Long March, a wide mobilisation against Indian h2o policies. A bid of advertisement hoc agreements followed – 1977, 1982, 1985 – but nary provided durable solutions. Negotiations oscillated betwixt method wrangling and governmental breakdown.

It was lone successful 1996, nether the enactment of Prime Ministers H.D. Deve Gowda and Sheikh Hasina, that a 30-year model was agreed upon. The Ganga Water Sharing Treaty institutionalised a flow-sharing mechanics for the captious adust season

(January to May) and laid the instauration for a Joint Committee to show and instrumentality the agreement.

At the time, the Treaty was wide celebrated arsenic a milestone successful bilateral diplomacy. Yet, similar galore stream treaties forged successful optimism, it was rooted successful a hydrological presumption quo that nary longer exists.

How the pact works – and wherever it falters

The 1996 Treaty established a tiered allocation look based connected the mean regular travel astatine Farakka. If flows fell beneath 70,000 cusecs, h2o would beryllium shared equally. At 70,000–75,000 cusecs, Bangladesh would person 35,000, and supra 75,000, India would gully a minimum of 40,000. A proviso was included for exigency consultations if flows dipped perilously debased for 10 consecutive days.

However, the Treaty contains nary autarkic quality solution mechanism, nary climate-adaptive clauses, and nary explicit biology travel mandates. It assumes static hydrological baselines drawn from the 1949–1988 averages, adjacent arsenic clime change, glacier retreat, and monsoon unpredictability change the river’s rhythms.

Some studies person argued that Bangladesh did not person its just stock of flows successful astir 60–65% of adust play periods post-1996, peculiarly successful March and April erstwhile h2o is astir needed for irrigation. This has generated a cognition successful Bangladesh that the Ganga’s reduced travel has accelerated salinity intrusion, collapsed fisheries, and deepened poorness successful the southwest delta. Thus, the Treaty, it is present clear, was an important diplomatic motion but a fragile hydrological instrument.

The broader landscape: implicit 50 shared rivers, 1 large treaty

While the Ganga gets the headlines, it is lone 1 of the 54 transboundary rivers that nexus the 2 nations. These see the Brahmaputra, Teesta, Manu, Feni, and Barak, among others. Yet, isolated from a humble 2019 statement connected the Feni River, which allows India to gully drinking h2o for Tripura, nary different shared stream has a binding treaty.

The astir contentious remains the Teesta, a captious root of dry-season irrigation for Bangladesh’s north-west. A draught Teesta accord – allocating 42.5% to India and 37.5% to Bangladesh – was negotiated successful 2011 nether Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. However, absorption from West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee torpedoed the deal. The deadlock persists, contempt repeated attempts astatine arriving astatine a breakthrough.

This asymmetric scenery – 1 treaty, galore rivers, small spot – has compounded Bangladesh’s consciousness of vulnerability and India’s cognition of strategical constraint. The Ganga Treaty, successful effect, indispensable present transportation the burdens of each unmade stream agreement.

The downturn: from earthy neighbours to strategical distance

In the past year, India–Bangladesh relations reached a caller debased with the ouster of the Awami League government. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s authorities had gone to large lengths to accommodate Indian concerns: cracking down on

northeastern insurgents, settling the long-pending Land Boundary Agreement successful 2015, and granting larboard entree to India’s northeast.

In return, however, Dhaka perceived a deficiency of Indian reciprocity — peculiarly connected the Teesta and different h2o issues. The transition of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) successful 2019 and references to Bangladeshi “infiltrators” successful India’s home governmental sermon person besides caused disquiet.

Into this abstraction has stepped successful China, offering infrastructure, defence cooperation, and diplomatic courtship. Beijing’s relation successful processing the Teesta River Management Project has added caller dimensions to what was erstwhile a bilateral concern. In addition, the accrued disposable beingness of Pakistan, including the ISI, and the rising enactment for “extremist” parties hazard derailing bilateral relations.

The 2026 review: what is astatine stake?

The 1996 Treaty was signed with a 30-year lifespan. While it does not automatically expire, Article XII provides for review, modification, oregon renewal by communal consent. Both sides person signalled involvement successful revisiting its terms, but from precise antithetic perspectives.

India’s concerns centre on:

Reduced flows successful the Ganga owed to clime alteration and upstream abstraction.

The increasing water–energy–food information nexus, peculiarly successful the Gangetic belt.

The request for much flexibility successful allocations, peculiarly during drought years.

Bangladesh’s priorities include:

Legal guarantees for minimum flows during the thin season.

Ecological considerations, particularly for fisheries and salinity control.

Data transparency and third-party verification of travel measurements.

Inclusion of different rivers, peculiarly the Teesta, successful a basin-wide framework.

Without a originative and cooperative spirit, these divergent priorities could harden into zero-sum bargaining. Yet, if approached with vision, the reappraisal could inaugurate a caller epoch of integrated, climate-resilient, and equitable stream governance.

Beyond the Ganga: towards a basin-wide imagination

India and Bangladesh request to determination beyond the outdated, barrage-centric, volumetric models of the 20th century. The aboriginal lies in:

Ecological flows, not conscionable engineered flows.

Real-time hydrological information sharing, utilizing outer and sensor technologies.

Joint stream basin organisations with quality solution mandates.

Adaptive frameworks that relationship for clime variability and glacial melt.

Integrated absorption that links stream h2o to groundwater, biodiversity, catastrophe resilience, and livelihoods.

Globally, specified cooperative regimes person emerged connected the Mekong, Danube, and adjacent the Indus (before the caller downturn successful India–Pakistan tensions). There is nary crushed wherefore the Ganga — and by extension, the India-Bangladesh stream web — cannot go specified a model.

A infinitesimal of reckoning — and opportunity

As the waters of the Ganga turn shallower and the authorities astir them deeper, 2026 volition beryllium a infinitesimal of reckoning. The prime earlier New Delhi and Dhaka is stark: revert to suspicion and scarcity, oregon reimagine practice and co-ownership.

India, arsenic the precocious riparian and the determination power, indispensable instrumentality the inaugural —as a liable steward of shared waters.

Bangladesh, for its part, indispensable prosecute a strategy that balances its rights portion knowing India’s concerns — insisting connected its rights, but not undermining the relationship’s foundations done overreliance connected China oregon planetary forums.

If handled wisely, the Ganga Treaty reappraisal could acceptable a precedent for the remainder of South Asia, a portion wherever astir each large stream crosses borders, and astir each borderline is fraught.

The Ganga is not simply a river. It is simply a civilisational current. It has flowed done epics and empires, bearing witnesser to the emergence and autumn of dynasties, the migrations of peoples, and the improvement of societies. In the 21st century, it asks thing more: that we larn not conscionable to instrumentality from it, but to stock it — wisely, equitably, and sustainably.

As India and Bangladesh participate the reappraisal of the 1996 Treaty, they person a uncommon accidental to trade a riverine diplomacy for the Anthropocene. Not conscionable a clause present and a percent there, but a model that anticipates the challenges of a warming planet, a increasing population, and shifting geopolitics.

The Ganga cannot negotiate. But she tin guide. And she is watching.

Beyond the Ganga: a riverine archipelago of shared challenges

Although the Ganga commands symbolic and strategical prominence, it is lone 1 thread successful a acold much intricate hydrological tapestry. India and Bangladesh stock 54 transboundary rivers, making this 1 of the densest fluvial interfaces betwixt immoderate 2 countries connected the planet. Yet, remarkably, lone the Ganga is governed by a ceremonial water-sharing treaty. The others stay successful ineligible limbo — negotiated done advertisement hoc memoranda, governmental goodwill, oregon not astatine all.

Among these rivers, the Teesta stands retired not conscionable for its hydro-political salience, but for its embodiment of the contradictions that proceed to bedevil h2o diplomacy successful South Asia. Originating successful the eastbound Himalayas successful Sikkim, the Teesta travels

through West Bengal earlier entering northwestern Bangladesh, sustaining millions of farmers and ecosystems on the way. During the adust season, the river’s travel tin dip beneath 1,000 cusecs, making equitable organisation indispensable — and intensely contested.

A landmark statement connected the Teesta was drafted successful 2011, promising 42.5% of dry-season travel to India and 37.5% to Bangladesh. But governmental absorption from West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who feared adverse effects connected her State’s farmers, led to the deal’s indefinite suspension.

The impasse implicit the Teesta has rippled crossed different stream negotiations. Bangladesh present demands that the Teesta beryllium treated arsenic a litmus trial for India’s sincerity earlier it entertains immoderate revisions to the Ganga Treaty. India, meanwhile, struggles with interior national dynamics wherever h2o is simply a politically delicate home subject, yet indispensable beryllium negotiated astatine the planetary level by the cardinal government.

Other rivers, portion little politically charged, connection their ain challenges and opportunities. The Brahmaputra, which flows done Tibet, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, and into Bangladesh arsenic the Jamuna, is ecologically fragile and strategically significant. India’s hydropower ambitions successful Arunachal Pradesh and China’s upstream dam-building successful Tibet are viewed with suspicion successful Dhaka, wherever downstream travel stableness is indispensable to floodplain agriculture.

The Feni River, though humble successful scale, was the taxable of a 2019 statement that allowed India to gully drinking h2o for Tripura from a shared source. While heralded arsenic a exemplary of cooperation, the woody besides sparked nationalist protests successful Bangladesh, wherever critics alleged it reflected asymmetry and Dhaka’s over-accommodation.

In the flood-prone northeastern portion of Bangladesh, rivers specified arsenic the Manu, Khowai, and Gumti bring yearly devastation. Joint basin planning, embankment management, and aboriginal informing systems are urgently needed. Yet, successful the lack of a binding ineligible framework, these rivers stay footnotes to a Ganga-dominated discourse.

In short, South Asia’s h2o diplomacy suffers from pact myopia. The obsession with 1 stream — nevertheless important — has precluded a basin-wide, multi-river model rooted successful modern principles of integrated h2o assets management, ecological travel guarantees, and transboundary equity.

Towards a caller riparian compact: principles and proposals

As the 2026 reappraisal of the Ganga Treaty approaches, the clip is ripe for a paradigm displacement — from piecemeal, bilateral negotiations to a comprehensive, basin-wide riparian compact grounded successful shared values, communal respect, and ecological realism. The Ganga, Teesta, Brahmaputra, Feni, and dozens of lesser-known rivers indispensable beryllium treated not arsenic abstracted transactions but arsenic elements of a single, interconnected system.

A twenty-first-century water-sharing architecture indispensable clasp 5 halfway principles:

First, hydrological interdependence indispensable regenerate sovereign insularity. The precocious and little riparians are parts of a azygous system. Changes upstream — whether owed to climate, dams, oregon onshore usage — inevitably cascade downstream. This designation indispensable pass each aboriginal ineligible and method arrangements.

Second, equity implicit equality indispensable usher allocations. Not each needs are the same. A just pact recognises differential needs and adjusts accordingly, overmuch arsenic planetary h2o instrumentality enshrines the rule of equitable and tenable utilisation.

Third, ecological sustainability indispensable beryllium integrated into each sharing formulas. The epoch of extractive hydrology — treating rivers arsenic pipelines — indispensable output to the logic of biology flows. The wellness of riverine ecosystems, biodiversity, sediment transport, and fisheries indispensable beryllium built into travel regimes and infrastructure design.

Fourth, organization innovation is essential. The Joint Rivers Commission, though symbolically valuable, lacks teeth. A modern India-Bangladesh Water Commission indispensable person autarkic technological capacity, nationalist reporting mandates, and third-party mediation options successful lawsuit of dispute.

Fifth, future-proofing is vital. Treaties indispensable nary longer beryllium static PDFs but surviving documents. Climate science, demographic pressures, and caller technologies request adaptive, revisable agreements with built-in feedback mechanisms.

From these principles travel applicable proposals. The Ganga Treaty should beryllium expanded to screen the Teesta and different large rivers done an umbrella framework. Data sharing indispensable beryllium digitised and made real-time. Pilot projects connected sediment management, embankment integrity, and flood forecasting tin beryllium jointly funded. Civil nine and section governments should person a dependable successful pact oversight.

None of these volition beryllium easy. River authorities successful South Asia is profoundly entangled with emotion, memory, and home governmental calculus. But the alternate is simply a dilatory descent into hydro-nationalism — wherever each cubic metre becomes a contest, each tributary a trigger.

It is fitting that the Ganga, revered arsenic a goddess successful India and arsenic a lifeline successful Bangladesh, becomes the crucible for a caller imagination; 1 successful which the stream is not a bound but a enslaved — not a root of conflict, but of cohesion. The Ganga has ever flowed forward. It is present clip for argumentation to bash the same.

Amitabh Matto is Dean & Professor, School of International Studies, JNU