River dance: why India, Bangladesh should cooperate on water projects like Teesta

The Teesta River, opening out to the strategically significant Bay of Bengal, has for long been an important water source for irrigation and hydropower generation in both India and Bangladesh, playing a vital role in the economy and ecology of the region.

The project to develop the 414km Teesta river basin figured prominently during Hasina’s visit to Delhi in June. The agreement is significant because it can potentially open the way for numerous other rivers that flow from the Himalayas into the Bay of Bengal, observers say.

“Bangladesh’s preference for India over China for the Teesta project is a strategic choice as this is a bilateral issue over a river that these two countries share,” Sohini Bose, associate fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, told This Week in Asia.

Therefore, the issue needed to be resolved “without external involvement, especially if either of the two partners harbours apprehensions about a third party”, she said.

India and Bangladesh have been trying to finalise a river-sharing pact on Teesta and reached a tentative agreement in 2011, but objections raised by West Bengal that it would deprive farmers in a part of the state sank the deal.

Delhi has been apprehensive about China working on a project close to its borders, analysts say, but its anxiousness is probably only a part of the reason for Dhaka to select India as a development partner.

“Rather, securing India’s help on the Teesta project is a domestic triumph for Hasina as her government has long been critiqued by the opposition for its inability to resolve this issue despite harmonious ties with Delhi,” Bose said.

Both China and India had offered to conduct a feasibility study on the Teesta River development plan.

At the same time, Dhaka’s