New DelhiBangladesh has waited 15 years for a Teesta water agreement.
India’s federal structure let West Bengal block the treaty; political shifts there have reopened what New Delhi can offer.
Northern West Bengal farmers still oppose any flow reduction, constraining India’s room in talks with Dhaka.
Sources: The Diplomat
THE RIVER
The Teesta rises in Sikkim, cuts through North Bengal, and crosses into Bangladesh's Rangpur division before joining the Brahmaputra. It irrigates roughly 14% of Bangladesh's cropped area and sustains the livelihoods of about 10 million people on the lower basin.
THE FEDERAL VETO
India's Constitution puts water in the State List but treats interstate and international rivers under the Union. In practice, New Delhi cannot sign a transboundary river treaty over the objection of the riparian state government — a political convention hardened after the 1996 Ganges Treaty with Bangladesh required Jyoti Basu's West Bengal to assent.
THE 2011 COLLAPSE
A draft Teesta accord — proposing a roughly 42.5% / 37.5% split of dry-season flow between India and Bangladesh — was ready for signing during Manmohan Singh's Dhaka visit in September 2011. Mamata Banerjee withdrew from the delegation at the airport. The treaty has sat unsigned ever since.
THE DRY-SEASON ARITHMETIC
In the monsoon the Teesta carries more water than either country can use; the fight is over December–April flow, when discharge at the Gajoldoba barrage in West Bengal falls below 500 cubic metres per second. India diverts upstream for the Teesta Mahananda canal system; what reaches Bangladesh's Dalia barrage is often under 200 cumecs.
THE CHINA LEVER
In 2020 Bangladesh accepted a roughly $1bn Chinese proposal for a comprehensive Teesta river-management project on its side of the border — dredging, embankments, reservoirs. Delhi reads any Chinese infrastructure within 100km of the Siliguri Corridor — the 22km-wide 'Chicken's Neck' connecting India to its northeast — as a strategic threat. The treaty is now also a counter-bid.
THE 54-RIVER PROBLEM
India and Bangladesh share 54 transboundary rivers. Only one — the Ganges — has a formal sharing treaty, and that expires in 2026. Every other river runs on goodwill, draft MoUs, or silence. Teesta is the bellwether: if Delhi cannot sign Teesta, the post-Ganges architecture collapses into 53 bilateral disputes.