Water and Fire

Mamata Banerjee’s simmering confrontation with the BJP / Politics

- Debaashish Bhattacharya

In the latter half of 2011, the Indian government was on the verge of finalising an important water-sharing agreement with Bangladesh over the Teesta, a 414-kilometer-long river that orginates in Sikkim and swirls through the north of West Bengal before crossing the two countries’ border and merging with the Brahmaputra. After decades of delay, Delhi and Dhaka reached an agreement that, for 15 years, their respective sides would use 42.5 percent and 37.5 percent of the river’s waters during the dry season, with the remainder left unallocated until a later decision. The agreement was to be signed on a visit to Dhaka by the then Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh, who was to be accompanied by the chief minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee. Water is a state subject in India, so finalising the deal, and implementing it, would require the cooperation of West Bengal. But Banerjee, whose Trinamool Congress, or TMC, was part of Singh’s ruling coalition, protested the agreement and refused to go. The Teesta helps irrigate nearly 120,000 hectares of farmland in West Bengal, and Banerjee declared that the proposed deal was against the interests of her state. The agreement was shelved.

Since then, the Teesta has remained a sticking point in the India-Bangladesh relationship. Sheikh Hasina, the Bangladeshi prime minister, is scheduled to visit India in early April. Delhi is eager to use the occasion to finalise an agreement on India’s use of two ports in Bangladesh. But a Bangladeshi diplomat in Delhi told me that Dhaka is keen to resolve the Teesta issue before any agreement on the ports. According to the diplomat, Bangladesh wants 51 percent of the river’s water, with India being apportioned the remaining 49 percent. The TMC member of parliament Sugata Bose told the