In India and Bangladesh, two recent changes of government on either side of the border have brought two shared river systems into focus: the Ganges and the Teesta.
The Teesta, the tributary of the Brahmaputra river, which flows from the north-eastern Indian state of Sikkim, through West Bengal into Bangladesh, has been at the centre of a water-sharing stalemate for decades. The Ganges’ existing treaty is set to expire this year.
The first political change was Bangladesh’s newly elected government, formed by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which came into power in February 2026. India immediately made key gestures of consequence, such as the restoration of visa services. It appointed Dinesh Trivedi, a veteran politician whose career has been spent in West Bengal, as the next envoy to Dhaka, signalling Delhi’s intent at direct engagement on sensitive bilateral issues and an effort to reset ties strained significantly by its harbouring of deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina.
The second change was in India earlier in May, when the country’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won elections in West Bengal, effectively securing power in most states bordering Bangladesh. The BJP win, its first in West Bengal, could create an effect described by some – especially the party itself – as a “double-engine government”, indicating the seamlessness that ostensibly comes with the same party ruling at both state and national level.
This political shift coincides with the central Indian government’s April 2026 initiation of a five-year River Basin Management (RBM) scheme for select transboundary, Himalayan river basins, including the Teesta and Ganges. The scheme is designed to promote basin-level planning for the sustainable use, protection and development of river resources, and covers potentially contentious issues such as planning for irrigation expansion, hydropower development and the interlinking of rivers; plans that are often sensitive subjects for neighbouring countries, such as downstream Bangladesh.
The political alignment of India’s central and state governments presents a unique and timely opportunity for a transboundary river governance reset, offering opportunities to gradually and systematically shift from the status quo. For instance, India’s central government can now take a stronger stance in its negotiations on water sharing with Bangladesh, where agreement between the central and state government, until recently run by Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress party, could not be reached previously.
While a unified governmental position helps facilitate coordination and implementation, political alignment alone might not be enough to secure a treaty, given structural issues such as water demand exceeding supply during the dry season in both countries. There are opportunities for both the Teesta and the Ganges, but there are also domestic caveats to overcome. What is required are innovations in governance and political will.
The Teesta deadlock
Bangladesh and India have twice come close to finalising a water-sharing agreement: in 2011, and again in 2017. On both occasions, Banerjee, then Chief Minister of West Bengal, opposed the deal, arguing in 2017 that the Teesta did not have enough water to share, offering water from other rivers instead.
In both instances, India’s central government administrations – Manmohan Singh’s United Progressive Alliance government in 2011, which Banerjee was in a coalition with until the next year, and Narendra Modi’s BJP government in 2017 – remained in a deadlock with Banerjee’s state government of 2011 to 2026. This reflected the central government’s hesitation in pushing an international water treaty.
Negotiations for dry-season water sharing of the Teesta started in the 1950s. In 1983, the two countries arrived at a temporary agreement for two years, which gave 39% of the water to India and 36% to Bangladesh, while the rest remained unallocated. However, Teesta’s mean dry season flow has, over time, declined and become highly variable due to factors such as land use change, upstream dam operations and a changing climate.
Both India and Bangladesh acknowledge that reduction in the Teesta’s flow has become a major impediment to meaningful negotiations, especially as it affects planned dry-season paddy cultivation in both countries. In 2005, the Joint River Commission, a bilateral working group to advance common interests including sharing of water resources, noted that any formula for sharing Teesta’s flows must be based on “shared sacrifices”. With neither side willing to make them, the stalemate remains protracted.
The concerns over Teesta are also anchored in issues of security and geopolitics. According to the RBM scheme’s press release, selected river basins have been prioritised due to their importance in India’s national water security and transboundary water management, indicating the growing strategic sensitivity of the Eastern Himalayan region which the Teesta and Ganges are connected to. This is especially relevant as Bangladesh seeks China’s support for Teesta restoration, adding a layer of diplomatic posturing.
As climate change-induced risks emerge, the new Indian political alignment could increase the likelihood of a more unified Indian stance on such shared river-related questions. These include action on mitigating glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) such as those in the Teesta river basin in 2023 that proved disastrous for both West Bengal and Bangladesh.
Yet the alignment does not guarantee water cooperation, given the political tightrope the new government of West Bengal must walk. The BJP outlined holistic development of the state’s relatively economically weaker region of North Bengal, one of the party’s strongholds, as a key priority in its election manifesto. North Bengal is home to growing demands for developmental investment, as well as infrastructural and agricultural expansion. The region’s Teesta Barrage diverts water for irrigation and hydropower and plays an important role in supporting the area’s economic activities.
Such issues show that concerns over the Teesta are more than just a zero-sum contest over lean season flow. Instead, discussions should shift towards a shared understanding of water-related risks and other interdependencies. There have been attempts to undertake an India-Bangladesh joint scientific assessment of the Teesta, and the new political alignment in India presents an opportunity to revisit these.
A Ganges gesture?
The India-Bangladesh Ganges Water Sharing treaty is slated to expire by the end of 2026. The recently elected Bangladeshi government is expected to seek its renewal, potentially alongside obtaining a better deal while the two countries continue to engage through the Joint River Commission this year.
It has been widely reported that Bangladesh may request a guaranteed release of 40,000 cusecs (cubic feet per second) of water within the dry season period of February to May, an increase from 35,000 to reflect population growth and growing needs. The country could also seek a longer treaty renewal period and enhanced flood data sharing. BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir recently remarked that improvement of bilateral relations with India “will depend on the signing of the Ganges Water Sharing Treaty”.
This is consistent with the historic water grievance that Bangladesh has had with India. Bangladesh has long argued that the 30-year-old treaty lacks an enforceable minimum water guarantee during the dry months when the country’s irrigation demand peaks. It contends that floodgates are mainly opened only during monsoon season when excess water aggravates conditions of flooding downstream. As climate change impacts worsen, these may become a larger issue for Bangladesh due to its position downstream.
To deal with these uncertainties, Dhaka recently approved the construction of the Padma Barrage, creating storage capacities downstream of West Bengal border town Farakka. But without a Ganges treaty in place, India is not obligated to release water and the project would only be able to provide a small amount of water during the dry season. This dooms the project to becoming an expensive science experiment.
Diplomatically, India’s central government is now in a better position to accept Bangladesh’s demands for the minimum exclusive use guarantee if it wishes to. This may pave the way for governance innovations addressing the realities and uncertainties along the Ganges created by climate change and the downstream ecosystems’ need for water. These are considerations that were not seen as a pressing need when the treaty-based regime was designed in the 1990s.
Favourable bilateral negotiations on the Ganges will hinge on a calm geopolitical landscape, with issues such as Bangladesh leaning on China as it did under the interim government of 2024-2026, and Hasina’s extradition, being potential sticking points. The Indian government has chosen to use water as a geopolitical tool in the past, as seen with Pakistan and the Indus treaty. It could always do so with the Ganges if tensions were to rise.
Domestically, the political alignment means the BJP in West Bengal could improve conditions in districts like Malda and Murshidabad, where stretches of the Ganges’ densely populated banks have faced unprecedented erosion due to controlled releases of water since the Farakka Barrage was built in the 1970s. Funding of such anti-erosion works is now unlikely to be collateral damage in squabbles between central and state government. For the benefit of the shared delta downstream, water sharing negotiations must cater to these environmental risks and considerations, moving from the reductionist, volumetric water negotiation happening now, towards a framework agreement for long-term water- and livelihood-based environmental cooperation.
Federal coherence
India’s river basin management has long been constrained by its federal structure and multi-party system. The country’s water bureaucracy has largely focused on responding to domestic water insecurities while enhancing its dry season flows in the Teesta and Ganges through upstream storage and diversion barrages as well as river interlinking projects.
Against this backdrop, political reimagining might be a more pragmatic way forward. A few possible scenarios emerge from the political alignment. First, central government schemes for managing irrigation water demand can potentially be pursued more intensely to address lean season water demand. Second, fiscal transfers and ad hoc discretionary grants from the central government become more likely. Together with a conducive state-level policy framework, this should enable investment in West Bengal that broadens the economic base, facilitating a shift away from water-intensive agriculture, and improving livelihood opportunities. Lastly, initiatives like the RBM scheme, with sustained budget allocation, can be institutionalised at the state level to address environmental risks such as flooding, sedimentation and erosion control. Plans under the scheme would benefit from cordial, bilateral relations with treaty-bound arrangements in place, to dispel any potential downstream fears in Bangladesh.
These interrelated strands could usher in a more balanced approach to domestic concerns while providing space for transboundary water cooperation. For the first time, most of the Ganges and Teesta basin states are either directly governed by the BJP or part of BJP-led coalitions. This encourages inter-state cooperation and presents a rare opening to overcome institutional bottlenecks that have long hindered the holistic management of these transboundary river basins.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not represent the views of their affiliated institutions.
