Political Crisis in Bangladesh and its impact on bilateral water diplomacywith India: A Hydro-political Perspective

Abstract

The sharing of rivers across political boundaries is a source of controversy and conflict, whether
at the international, national, regional, or local levels. Water conflicts have progressively risen in
frequency for a variety of reasons. The severity of these confrontations has also grown in areas
where water is a limited commodity and a declining resource. South Asia as a region has also
witnessed the tremors of water crisis. And rightly so, because water is essential to life and survival,
and issues around the management and distribution of this limited resource have been hotly
debated in the region. The problem of transboundary water-sharing has emerged as an emotive
and politically charged issue in South Asia, because of the structural scarcity of the resource. In
the Indian sub-continent, states have been actively involved in prolonged water sharing disputes.
India and Bangladesh have had a mixed experience of sweet and sour relations in the arena of
transboundary water-sharing. Bangladesh is currently grappling with political instability and the
sudden exit of Sheikh Hasina from Bangladesh’s political landscape is expected to have farreaching consequences on the nation’s bilateral relations with its neighbours in South Asia,
particularly with India. The longstanding, crucial hydropolitical relations between India and
Bangladesh may face new challenges in the wake of this political turmoil. The matter at the anvil
might be the long pending Teesta dispute between India and Bangladesh and the ratification of
the 1996 Ganges Water treaty, which is set is expire in 2026. This paper attempts to unravel the
dynamics of hydropolitics between India and Bangladesh and the potential impact of Sheikh
Hasina’s exile on the bilateral water sharing between the two South Asian neighbours.