India Should be a More Generous Neighbor to Bangladesh

During Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s visit to India on September 5-8, the two countries signed seven memorandums of understanding (MoUs), which envisage cooperation in the fields of river water sharing, border management, trade, railway infrastructure, science and technology, and capacity building.

An interim agreement on the sharing of the waters of the Kushiyara River is perhaps the most important. A tributary of the Barak that forms at the India-Bangladesh border, the Kushiyara has a flow of around 2,500 cusecs (cubic feet per second) of water during the winter season. Under the MoU, India has agreed to allow Bangladesh to withdraw 153 cusecs.

This is expected to benefit the people of Assam in India’s Northeast, who suffer due to severe flooding of rivers, and farmers of the Sylhet division in Bangladesh, who will now be able to cultivate rice during the dry months of December to January.

During Hasina’s visit, India and Bangladesh announced that talks on a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) would begin soon. Bangladesh is India’s number one trade partner in South Asia while New Delhi is Dhaka’s second largest trade partner in the world, behind only China. India-Bangladesh trade grew from $9 billion to $18 billion in the last five years.

Based on trade data for the two countries between 2015 and 2020, a feasibility study by the Bangladesh Foreign Trade Institute and the Indian Centre for Regional Trade found that the proposed CEPA has the potential to boost Bangladesh's export earnings by $3-5 billion and India’s by $4-10 billion in the next seven to 10 years. India and Bangladesh have called for negotiations on CEPA to be completed by the end of 2026, when Bangladesh will graduate from Least Developed Country status.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Hasina jointly inaugurated two projects – the 5.13 km-long Rupsha rail-bridge and the first unit of the 1,320 MW Maitree coal-fired thermal power plant at Rampal in Khulna, which was constructed under an Indian concessional financing scheme.

Hasina’s visit to New Delhi was therefore productive. However, she is likely to have gone home disappointed.

Bangladesh is scheduled to hold general elections by December 2023. Hasina likely hoped to hold up some big ticket deals from her India visit. She would have liked to announce that she had finally cajoled India into signing a long-elusive agreement on the sharing of the waters of the Teesta River. She could not.

The text of a deal on the Teesta has been ready for over a decade. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was to sign the agreement during his visit to Dhaka in 2011. However, an eleventh-hour flip by West Bengal’s Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee – the Teesta runs through the Indian state of West Bengal before it enters Bangladesh – sabotaged the signing.  Banerjee, still chief minister in West Bengal, remains opposed to the agreement to date.

The announcement of an agreement on the Teesta would have been a big deal for the Hasina government. It would have shored up support for the ruling Awami League (AL) and boosted its electoral chances substantially.

India and Bangladesh have 54 transboundary rivers. Bangladesh is the lower riparian country. It suffers from severe water shortages, which have deep implications for the lives and livelihoods of its people, who are largely employed in the agricultural sector.

Agreements on river water sharing would alleviate Bangladesh’s problems to some extent. However, cooperation on the matter has been elusive. In 1996, the two countries signed the Farakka Treaty. The interim agreement on the Kushiyara, which is the second bilateral pact on water sharing between the two countries, came 25 years later.

A part of the problem is that since water is a state matter in India, New Delhi has to bring on board state governments when it is discussing water management with Bangladesh. On the Teesta, it has to secure the cooperation of the West Bengal government as the river runs through West Bengal before it enters Bangladesh. But successive governments in New Delhi have failed to persuade Banerjee on water sharing.

India and Bangladesh have a strong relationship. India’s supportive role in Bangladesh’s liberation war provided ties with a solid foundation. However, the assassination of Bangladesh’s founding father and Awami League chief Mujibur Rehman in 1975 was followed by many years of military rule, which also saw the return of pro-Pakistan Islamist forces in Bangladesh. Relations between Dhaka and Delhi weakened.

However, the Delhi-Dhaka relationship has flourished during periods of Awami League rule in Bangladesh (1996-2001 and 2009 to date). This is largely because Hasina is seen in New Delhi to be sensitive to Indian security concerns. Her government dismantled Bangladesh-based training camps of anti-India militant groups like the United Liberation Front of Assam and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland, and wanted militant leaders like Anup Chetia were handed over to Indian authorities. The AL government also cracked down on jihadist groups that had India in its crosshairs.

Importantly, although Bangladesh’s relations with China have grown – Beijing is its number one investor and trade partner – the AL government has been cautious in handing out infrastructure projects to the Chinese. It canceled the Sonadia port project that was initially given to the Chinese. Environmental concerns were cited as the reason, but Indian security concerns drove Dhaka’s decision to call off the project.

It is in this context that India’s reluctance to be a more generous neighbor to Bangladesh appears particularly churlish.

The AL government is in a difficult situation at home, having to defend its policy of giving India more than it gets back. Being more generous to Bangladesh especially on the issue of river waters will not only boost the AL’s chances of returning to power, but also win India goodwill among the Bangladeshi people. It makes eminent sense for India to be more generous in sharing river waters.

Getting the West Bengal government on board may be challenging for the Modi government; the BJP and Bannerjee’s Trinamool Congress are fierce rivals. The Modi government could turn to sealing deals with Dhaka on rivers that flow from the northeastern states instead, as that will require the cooperation of governments in states like Assam, which are ruled by the BJP.

This is what New Delhi did regarding the Kushiyara agreement. It must press ahead with this strategy.

Importantly, Modi needs to rein in his party leaders and ministers. They have a bad habit of vilifying Bangladeshis. In 2018, Home Minister Amit Shah described Bangladeshis as “termites.” And while Hasina was in New Delhi, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma called for Bangladesh (and Pakistan’s) reintegration into India to create an Akhand Bharat (Greater India).