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Amid a surge in anti-India sentiment, Bangladeshis accuse India of opening the floodgates of a dam without warning, and demand better transboundary river management
By Snigdhendu Bhattacharya
August 23, 2024
A large section of Bangladesh’s people has been exhibiting strong anti-India sentiments over the past few years, owing mostly to the public perception that India was helping Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s regime hold power by hook or crook. After floods in northeast India’s Tripura state spilled over to Bangladesh on August 21, India quickly emerged as the villain.
The interim government in Bangladesh and its political establishment blamed India for releasing water from a dam in Tripura without notifying Bangladesh, while students staged protests on many university campuses chanting anti-India slogans.
“India displayed inhumanity by opening the dam without warning,” Nahid Islam, one of the two student representatives in Bangladesh’s interim government headed by Peace Nobel Laureate economist Muhammad Yunus, told journalists in Dhaka.
In a Facebook post, he wrote: “The generation that understands India as our enemy is made of the best children of the nation.” It is an often-repeated quotation from one of Bangladesh’s legendary politicians, the late Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani, one of the first Bangladeshi politicians to allege that India was depriving Bangladesh of waters from transboundary rivers.
India and Bangladesh share 54 transboundary rivers, including the Ganga (Padma), Teesta, and Brahmaputra (Jamuna).
Islam, the student representative in the Yunus administration, even accused India of “water terrorism” in a social media post. In another post, Islam wrote, “India can be fixed if we give the Teesta project to China.”
Teesta water sharing has long been an issue of conflict and tension between India and Bangladesh. The Diplomat had earlier reported how China was trying to utilize to its advantage India’s indecisiveness in accepting Bangladesh’s Teesta water-sharing proposals due to India’s internal compulsions.
Islam’s comments hold weight, as he was one of the key organizers of the student protests that overthrew Hasina’s 15-year rule a fortnight ago. He currently heads the Information Technology Ministry.
On Thursday, sensing the gravity of the situation, India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) issued a statement, clarifying what caused the flood.
“We have seen concerns being expressed in Bangladesh that the current situation of flood in districts on the eastern borders of Bangladesh has been caused by the opening of the Dumbur dam upstream of the Gumti River in Tripura. This is factually not correct,” the MEA said.
The statement said that the catchment areas of the Gumti river that flows through India and Bangladesh “witnessed heaviest rains of this year over the last few days” and that the flood in Bangladesh is primarily due to waters from these large catchments downstream of the dam.
The statement said that the Dumbur dam is located over 120 kilometers upstream of Bangladesh and is a low-height dam, about 30 meters tall. In the event of heavy flow, water is released automatically. India kept notifying Bangladesh about the trend of rising water levels until 3 p.m. on August 21, but a power outage due to the flooding at around 6 p.m. snapped all communications.
The statement highlighted river water cooperation as “an important part of our bilateral engagement” and stressed that India remains committed “to resolving issues and mutual concerns in water resources and river water management through bilateral consultations and technical discussions.”
In the evening, Pranay Verma, the Indian high commissioner in Dhaka, met Yunus. Some of India’s leading English dailies initially reported that Verma had been summoned, but the Bangladesh media reported it as a courtesy call.
According to people in Dhaka familiar with the developments, Verma proactively met Yunus to address the complications created by misinformation. He also raised the issue of security of the Indian High Commission in Dhaka.
During the meeting, Yunus proposed forming a high-level committee between Bangladesh and India to manage floods jointly, according to Bangladesh Sangbad Sanstha, the state-run news agency. The agency said Yunus hoped that disputes over water-sharing of transboundary rivers would be resolved soon.
Complicated Problem
Resolving the disputes would not be easy, though. There are conflicts about multiple river waters, Ganga and Teesta being the main ones.
Bhasani’s last major political program was the Farakka Long March in May 1976. The 96-year-old led the historic march seeking the demolition of the Farakka Barrage that India set up on the Ganga River in 1975. He alleged that the barrage would deprive Bangladesh of its fair share of the river’s water (Ganga is known as Padma in Bangladesh).
Though India entered a water-sharing agreement with Bangladesh in 1996 (following ad-hoc measures between 1977 and 1988), Bangladesh continues to remember Bhasani’s march every year. Over the past few years, the significance of the Farakka Long March Commemoration Day has visibly increased. In May 2024, multiple programs happened in Dhaka commemorating the 48th year of the march. Organizers of most of the events had demanded that Bangladesh should fight for its fair share of all 54 transboundary rivers.
Such sentiments grew over the past two to three years, as Bangladesh agreed in 2019 to allow India to lift water from the Feni River but failed to get the Teesta water-sharing agreement signed.
After the August 21 flood, student activists flooded social media platforms repeating Bhasani’s demand for decommissioning the Farakka Barrage in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal.
An Indian politician, who did not want to be named, said that after being caught unprepared and ill-equipped to face such a natural disaster, Bangladesh’s new political leadership was turning India into a scapegoat
The Indo-Bangladesh Water-Sharing Treaty’s 30-year-term ends in 2026. While the overthrown Prime Minister Hasina had been trying to negotiate with India the renewal of the agreement in 2026, the new government in Bangladesh is also weighing other options.
Economist and Dhaka-based public intellectual Anu Muhammad accused India of blocking water flow in transboundary rivers with dams upstream, the repeated sudden release of water during monsoon season, and unilateral actions on water distribution.
“To get out of this situation, Bangladesh should immediately decide to approach the United Nations Water Convention. India’s arbitrariness must be countered with international law,” Muhammad said.
According to a Dhaka University professor who did not want to be identified, the Water-Sharing Treaty of 1996 improved the water situation from how it was before the treaty was signed. But overall, the Farakka Barrage caused Bangladesh great pain.
“It’s time Bangladesh demands that India decommissions the Farakka Barrage. It will not be an irrational demand. In the past, Nitish Kumar, the chief minister of India’s Bihar state, criticized the Farakka Barrage and called for its decommissioning,” the professor said.
Solving the Teesta water-sharing crisis would not be easy either. This is one of Bangladesh’s biggest demands before India but West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has been opposing this agreement, alleging that her state will be deprived.
The West Bengal government argues that it cannot agree to share Teesta water with Bangladesh as long as the Himalayan state of Sikkim keeps restricting Teesta water flow through its series of hydroelectric dams. Northern West Bengal will be left high and dry if Teesta water is shared with Bangladesh without freeing its flow upstream.
Since hydroelectric dams are among Sikkim’s major sources of income, it wouldn’t be easy for India’s federal government to convince Sikkim to let Teesta flow freely.
Climate Concerns
To complicate the issues concerning transboundary rivers, climate changes in India’s Northeast have made the rain pattern unpredictable.
Waters from rivers in four Indian states flow into Bangladesh. These states are West Bengal in eastern India and Assam, Tripura, and Meghalaya in India’s Northeast. Major floods in Meghalaya, Assam, Tripura, and northern West Bengal usually impact the downstream areas in Bangladesh.
In a column for Bangladesh’s leading newspaper, Prothom Alo, meteorologist Mostafa Kamal nearly echoed India’s point that heavy rainfall caused the flood. He showed that the rain that the districts of Feni and Kumilla in Bangladesh and the neighboring Tripura state in India received in three days was equal to the average rainfall for the entire month of August. “This record rainfall caused this unprecedented flood,” he said.
However, he also blamed Bangladesh’s meteorologists’ failure to predict the heavy rainfall and India’s inability to communicate about the opening of gates in dams.
Going by the recent trends of climate changes, the frequency of both drought and flood is likely to increase in India’s Northeast. There is a rapid, overall drying, meaning a decrease in overall rainfall, and at the same time a steep increase in events of extreme rainfall. The Teesta’s average discharge has also been drastically decreasing. This can impact water availability in downstream areas in Bangladesh.
The new weather pattern indicates longer dry spells to be interrupted by heavy rains in short spells. If Northeast India witnesses increased flood and drought events, the downstream areas in Bangladesh would need to prepare.
By Snigdhendu Bhattacharya
August 23, 2024
A large section of Bangladesh’s people has been exhibiting strong anti-India sentiments over the past few years, owing mostly to the public perception that India was helping Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s regime hold power by hook or crook. After floods in northeast India’s Tripura state spilled over to Bangladesh on August 21, India quickly emerged as the villain.
The interim government in Bangladesh and its political establishment blamed India for releasing water from a dam in Tripura without notifying Bangladesh, while students staged protests on many university campuses chanting anti-India slogans.
“India displayed inhumanity by opening the dam without warning,” Nahid Islam, one of the two student representatives in Bangladesh’s interim government headed by Peace Nobel Laureate economist Muhammad Yunus, told journalists in Dhaka.
In a Facebook post, he wrote: “The generation that understands India as our enemy is made of the best children of the nation.” It is an often-repeated quotation from one of Bangladesh’s legendary politicians, the late Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani, one of the first Bangladeshi politicians to allege that India was depriving Bangladesh of waters from transboundary rivers.
India and Bangladesh share 54 transboundary rivers, including the Ganga (Padma), Teesta, and Brahmaputra (Jamuna).
Islam, the student representative in the Yunus administration, even accused India of “water terrorism” in a social media post. In another post, Islam wrote, “India can be fixed if we give the Teesta project to China.”
Teesta water sharing has long been an issue of conflict and tension between India and Bangladesh. The Diplomat had earlier reported how China was trying to utilize to its advantage India’s indecisiveness in accepting Bangladesh’s Teesta water-sharing proposals due to India’s internal compulsions.
Islam’s comments hold weight, as he was one of the key organizers of the student protests that overthrew Hasina’s 15-year rule a fortnight ago. He currently heads the Information Technology Ministry.
On Thursday, sensing the gravity of the situation, India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) issued a statement, clarifying what caused the flood.
“We have seen concerns being expressed in Bangladesh that the current situation of flood in districts on the eastern borders of Bangladesh has been caused by the opening of the Dumbur dam upstream of the Gumti River in Tripura. This is factually not correct,” the MEA said.
The statement said that the catchment areas of the Gumti river that flows through India and Bangladesh “witnessed heaviest rains of this year over the last few days” and that the flood in Bangladesh is primarily due to waters from these large catchments downstream of the dam.
The statement said that the Dumbur dam is located over 120 kilometers upstream of Bangladesh and is a low-height dam, about 30 meters tall. In the event of heavy flow, water is released automatically. India kept notifying Bangladesh about the trend of rising water levels until 3 p.m. on August 21, but a power outage due to the flooding at around 6 p.m. snapped all communications.
The statement highlighted river water cooperation as “an important part of our bilateral engagement” and stressed that India remains committed “to resolving issues and mutual concerns in water resources and river water management through bilateral consultations and technical discussions.”
In the evening, Pranay Verma, the Indian high commissioner in Dhaka, met Yunus. Some of India’s leading English dailies initially reported that Verma had been summoned, but the Bangladesh media reported it as a courtesy call.
According to people in Dhaka familiar with the developments, Verma proactively met Yunus to address the complications created by misinformation. He also raised the issue of security of the Indian High Commission in Dhaka.
During the meeting, Yunus proposed forming a high-level committee between Bangladesh and India to manage floods jointly, according to Bangladesh Sangbad Sanstha, the state-run news agency. The agency said Yunus hoped that disputes over water-sharing of transboundary rivers would be resolved soon.
Complicated Problem
Resolving the disputes would not be easy, though. There are conflicts about multiple river waters, Ganga and Teesta being the main ones.
Bhasani’s last major political program was the Farakka Long March in May 1976. The 96-year-old led the historic march seeking the demolition of the Farakka Barrage that India set up on the Ganga River in 1975. He alleged that the barrage would deprive Bangladesh of its fair share of the river’s water (Ganga is known as Padma in Bangladesh).
Though India entered a water-sharing agreement with Bangladesh in 1996 (following ad-hoc measures between 1977 and 1988), Bangladesh continues to remember Bhasani’s march every year. Over the past few years, the significance of the Farakka Long March Commemoration Day has visibly increased. In May 2024, multiple programs happened in Dhaka commemorating the 48th year of the march. Organizers of most of the events had demanded that Bangladesh should fight for its fair share of all 54 transboundary rivers.
Such sentiments grew over the past two to three years, as Bangladesh agreed in 2019 to allow India to lift water from the Feni River but failed to get the Teesta water-sharing agreement signed.
After the August 21 flood, student activists flooded social media platforms repeating Bhasani’s demand for decommissioning the Farakka Barrage in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal.
An Indian politician, who did not want to be named, said that after being caught unprepared and ill-equipped to face such a natural disaster, Bangladesh’s new political leadership was turning India into a scapegoat
The Indo-Bangladesh Water-Sharing Treaty’s 30-year-term ends in 2026. While the overthrown Prime Minister Hasina had been trying to negotiate with India the renewal of the agreement in 2026, the new government in Bangladesh is also weighing other options.
Economist and Dhaka-based public intellectual Anu Muhammad accused India of blocking water flow in transboundary rivers with dams upstream, the repeated sudden release of water during monsoon season, and unilateral actions on water distribution.
“To get out of this situation, Bangladesh should immediately decide to approach the United Nations Water Convention. India’s arbitrariness must be countered with international law,” Muhammad said.
According to a Dhaka University professor who did not want to be identified, the Water-Sharing Treaty of 1996 improved the water situation from how it was before the treaty was signed. But overall, the Farakka Barrage caused Bangladesh great pain.
“It’s time Bangladesh demands that India decommissions the Farakka Barrage. It will not be an irrational demand. In the past, Nitish Kumar, the chief minister of India’s Bihar state, criticized the Farakka Barrage and called for its decommissioning,” the professor said.
Solving the Teesta water-sharing crisis would not be easy either. This is one of Bangladesh’s biggest demands before India but West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has been opposing this agreement, alleging that her state will be deprived.
The West Bengal government argues that it cannot agree to share Teesta water with Bangladesh as long as the Himalayan state of Sikkim keeps restricting Teesta water flow through its series of hydroelectric dams. Northern West Bengal will be left high and dry if Teesta water is shared with Bangladesh without freeing its flow upstream.
Since hydroelectric dams are among Sikkim’s major sources of income, it wouldn’t be easy for India’s federal government to convince Sikkim to let Teesta flow freely.
Climate Concerns
To complicate the issues concerning transboundary rivers, climate changes in India’s Northeast have made the rain pattern unpredictable.
Waters from rivers in four Indian states flow into Bangladesh. These states are West Bengal in eastern India and Assam, Tripura, and Meghalaya in India’s Northeast. Major floods in Meghalaya, Assam, Tripura, and northern West Bengal usually impact the downstream areas in Bangladesh.
In a column for Bangladesh’s leading newspaper, Prothom Alo, meteorologist Mostafa Kamal nearly echoed India’s point that heavy rainfall caused the flood. He showed that the rain that the districts of Feni and Kumilla in Bangladesh and the neighboring Tripura state in India received in three days was equal to the average rainfall for the entire month of August. “This record rainfall caused this unprecedented flood,” he said.
However, he also blamed Bangladesh’s meteorologists’ failure to predict the heavy rainfall and India’s inability to communicate about the opening of gates in dams.
Going by the recent trends of climate changes, the frequency of both drought and flood is likely to increase in India’s Northeast. There is a rapid, overall drying, meaning a decrease in overall rainfall, and at the same time a steep increase in events of extreme rainfall. The Teesta’s average discharge has also been drastically decreasing. This can impact water availability in downstream areas in Bangladesh.
The new weather pattern indicates longer dry spells to be interrupted by heavy rains in short spells. If Northeast India witnesses increased flood and drought events, the downstream areas in Bangladesh would need to prepare.
