Residents queue to collect water from a tanker
Residents queue to collect water from a tanker in Dhaka on April 27, 2009 in an area which has been experiencing an acute water crisis for more than a few months. Cases of diarrhoea in Dhaka are reaching epidemic levels, a health expert warned, as the Bangladeshi capital faced record temperatures, a severe water shortage and power cuts. Temperatures in Dhaka have reached 42.2 degrees Celsius (108 degrees Fahrenheit), the highest in 14 years, according to weather officials, with no rain forecast for the next week. Photo credit should read MUNIR UZ ZAMAN/AFP via Getty Images

Dhaka — Bangladesh is trying to lock in a new Ganges water-sharing treaty with India before the current 30-year agreement runs out on 12 December, and it wants the dry-season floor that was written into the 1977 pact and left out of the 1996 one.

Water Resources Minister Shahiduddin Chowdhury Anee set that deadline on Thursday after a seminar at the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies titled "Rethinking the Future of Water: Youth Leadership, Justice, and Cooperation." He told reporters the two sides were meeting regularly through the Joint Rivers Commission and that, on the basis of those talks, Dhaka was optimistic a text could be finished in time.

The clock is not flexible. The treaty signed in 1996 expires on 12 December 2026. Anee said a new agreement had to be in place before that date. Technical teams of the Joint Rivers Commission are already at work. He said a ministerial meeting would come only after that technical work was done, which leaves a narrow window if both capitals want a signature rather than a stopgap extension.

Read more

The clause Dhaka is chasing is the guarantee. A five-year agreement signed in 1977, during the presidency of Ziaur Rahman, included a provision meant to protect Bangladesh's share when the river was low. That language was dropped when the longer treaty was signed in 1996. Anee called its restoration one of Bangladesh's top priorities, arguing that a longer deal without a floor would not give the certainty farmers and towns downstream need. The government also wants the new treaty to run longer than a short renewal.

The same briefing tied the river talks to two domestic projects. Anee said work on the Padma Barrage should become visible between January and March next year. The scheme has already cleared the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council, and the site has been inspected. On the Teesta, he said the feasibility study of the multipurpose project would start soon, with the study and the start of main construction both hoped for in 2027. He described the Padma Barrage and the Teesta master plan as projects that could eventually touch about a third of the population.

The Teesta case is the harder engineering problem. Anee called it a fast river whose downstream districts have lived for years with whatever volume arrives from upstream. He said Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology had been given a role, and that local and foreign specialists had already been consulted. Asked whether foreign pressure was blocking either project, he answered that people along the Padma and the Teesta are Bangladeshi citizens, and that their interests were his main concern.

Indian reporting has linked a finished text to a possible visit by Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, with the two prime ministers signing if the draft is ready. That remains a diplomatic hope, not a date on a calendar. What Dhaka has actually committed to in public is narrower: finish the technical talks, restore a guarantee, and do it before 12 December. If the Joint Rivers Commission misses that mark, the southwest goes into the dry season without a treaty at all.

Read more