One minister's sentence

Bangladesh's Water Resources Minister Shahiduddin Chowdhury Anee answered a question about sharing the Teesta with a single formula aimed at India: 'A friend should protect the interests of a friend. We never want our friendly relations with them to deteriorate.' In the same remarks he added that India has interests here and so does Bangladesh. On a file that has not moved for years, the register a party picks matters: the demand is framed as an obligation of friendship rather than as a claim of right.[1]

Behind that formula sits a documented history. The 1983 interim arrangement gave 39 per cent of the water to India and 36 per cent to Bangladesh and left 25 per cent unallocated. The draft agreement prepared in 2011 was never signed, because the West Bengal government objected. Dhaka therefore faces two separate obstacles: Delhi's position, and the objection of a state government inside India's federal structure.[1]

Where Beijing comes in

On the same river, Bangladesh is running the Teesta River Comprehensive Management and Restoration Project with Chinese support. It targets flooding, riverbank erosion and dry-season shortages in five or six northern districts. Prime Minister Tarique Rahman came back from a June visit to Beijing with a commitment to speed up the technical feasibility study. In the minister's account it is a file the prime minister returns to regularly.[1]

Delhi did not let the step pass quietly. India's External Affairs Ministry spokesperson said in July that New Delhi's views on the project had been conveyed to Bangladesh and that it would factor in 'all related developments' when setting its own approach. The weight of that sentence comes from geography: the project area lies close to the narrow Siliguri Corridor that links India's north-east to the rest of the country.[1]

Seen from there, Chinese finance does two jobs for Dhaka at once: it answers the water problem in the northern districts and it puts a clock on Delhi. The only support for that reading is India's own warning, and another explanation fits just as well. Given that the Teesta arrangement has been interim since 1983 and the draft has stayed unsigned since 2011, turning to China may be the only way out of a file that went unanswered rather than a bargaining move.[1]

The clock that runs out in December

The limit on Dhaka's room to move sits in the calendar. The Ganges Water Sharing Treaty, signed in 1996 for 30 years, expires in December, and the two countries manage 54 transboundary rivers through the Joint Rivers Commission. This column wrote on 16 August that Dhaka was trying to build a timing advantage by tying the date of a summit to the extradition file. The water minister's language of friendship shows the same calendar now pressing on Dhaka too.[1], [2]

Here is what can be measured: if a renewal text or a replacement arrangement for the Ganges treaty is published before it expires, Dhaka's friendly language on the Teesta will have been paid for. If no such text appears, the feasibility study on the China-backed project will keep moving outside the water table set with Delhi, and the northern districts will see in the dry season which channel delivers.[1]