Inter Basin Water Transfer Link Project of India

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Bangladesh's Perspective

Hydro-Politics of The Farakka Barrage
M. Maniruzzaman Mia

Bangladesh is a land of rivers. Some 250, large and medium rivers criss-cross the country. Rivers provide the life-blood to the people, so to say. Agriculture, the mainstay of our economy is dependent on water. Fish, the major source of protein of the people is caught from the rivers. Our water-courses also serve as the main arteries of inland communication. Briefly speaking they provide employment to millions of poor people of the country. However, 57 of our large and medium rivers have their origin outside the country, 54 in India and 3 in Myanmar. Most of the rivers of the country are, in fact, the tributaries or distributaries of the large ones originating in India or traverse that country before entering Bangladesh. And, therefore, any activity inter­fering with their flow-regime will affect water-availability in the territory of the lower riparian, Bangladesh. Coupled with this is the seasonality of the flows of the rivers in South Asia. Bangladesh being in the lowermost reaches of the Ganges-Bramaputra-Meghna systems of rivers suffers from both the extremes of high flows dur­ing the rains in summer and abnormally low flows dur­ing the dry months. The sensitivity of the Bangladeshi people to the issue of river-water is to be appreciated in this context. No one is there, in fact, to share the woes and sufferings of the people inundated by floods in sum­mer or to sympathize with them when they cry for water, even for drinking purposes, let alone for their essential economic activities like agriculture, fishing or communi­cation, during the meteorologically dry and consequent­ly lean period of water flow in winter down the rivers. Thus when the news of construction of a barrage across the Ganges came to be known in 1951 the people of the then East Pakistan became sad and at the same time fretful for the simple reason that it was not expected of a big neighbourendowed with abundant natural resources as compared with ours. Anyway the exchange of communication, which began in 1951, ran through a tortuous course till about 1977 when a short-term shar­ing arrangement of the Ganges waters was arrived at between the Governments of Bangladesh and India. Later a 30-year Water-Sharing Treaty has been signed between the two governments. The pros and cons of this Treaty form the subject matter of this book.

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