Inter-State River Disputes in India: Towards Cooperative Water Federalism

Context

Renewed Diplomatic Friction: Bilateral relations have come under renewed scrutiny after Bangladesh formally protested former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's virtual address from New Delhi, arguing that the event could adversely affect ongoing efforts to restore mutual confidence.
The episode has highlighted the continuing trust deficit amid the political transition in Bangladesh.
Strategic Policy Reassessment: The Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs (2025) has recommended strengthening border management, trade facilitation, water cooperation and developmental partnerships to reinforce long-term bilateral ties.
Simultaneously, the impending renewal of the 1996 Ganga Water Treaty has imparted fresh strategic urgency to India-Bangladesh engagement.

Why Does India-Bangladesh Partnership Matter for Regional Stability and Shared Prosperity?

Historical Legacy: India and Bangladesh share a long historical association shaped by the Bengal civilisation, the experience of colonial rule, the Partition of 1947, and India's decisive support during the 1971 Liberation War, which culminated in Bangladesh's emergence as an independent nation.
The subsequent 1972 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Peace institutionalised bilateral relations, giving the partnership a distinctive historical legitimacy and strategic continuity in South Asia.

Civilisational Affinity: The relationship is reinforced by a shared civilisational and cultural continuum reflected in linguistic traditions, literary heritage, artistic exchanges, religious pluralism and enduring cross-border kinship networks.
These deep societal linkages have sustained vibrant people-to-people interactions, educational exchanges and cultural diplomacy despite periodic political transitions, making soft power an enduring pillar of bilateral relations.
Strategic Geolocation: Bangladesh occupies a pivotal position between India's Northeast, the Bay of Bengal and Southeast Asia, making it central to India's Neighbourhood First and Act East Policy.
Bangladesh’s location near the Siliguri Corridor gives it strategic relevance for India’s Northeast connectivity and security.
Its geography transforms bilateral engagement into an instrument of strategic interdependence, directly influencing regional stability, maritime access and the economic integration of eastern India.
Connectivity Multiplier: Bangladesh serves as India's principal multimodal connectivity bridge through rail, road, inland waterways and maritime corridors linking the mainland with the Northeast.
Operational access to Chattogram (Chittagong) and Mongla Ports, supported by the Protocol on Inland Waterways Trade and Transit (PIWTT), lowers logistics costs, shortens transit time and strengthens regional supply-chain resilience.
Geo-economic Integration: Bangladesh is India's largest trading partner in South Asia, with bilateral merchandise trade reaching approximately USD 14.01 billion during 2023–24.
Expanding commercial integration, supported by discussions on a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), positions the relationship as a foundation for regional value chains and eastern South Asia's emerging geo-economic architecture.
Developmental Statecraft: India has extended nearly USD 10 billion through Lines of Credit and grants, financing transport, connectivity, energy and capacity-building projects, as noted by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs (2025).
This long-term developmental engagement strengthens Bangladesh's infrastructure while reinforcing India's position as a reliable and trusted development partner in the neighbourhood.
Energy Interdependence: Cross-border energy cooperation has evolved into a strategic pillar through electricity exports exceeding 1,160 MW and the operational India-Bangladesh Friendship Pipeline supplying High-Speed Diesel.
This growing energy interdependence enhances energy security, diversifies supply networks and contributes to greater economic resilience on both sides of the border.
Hydro-Diplomacy: India and Bangladesh share 54 trans-boundary rivers, making cooperative water governance indispensable for irrigation, flood management, ecological sustainability and disaster resilience.
The 1996 Ganga Water Treaty, due for renewal in 2026, underscores the strategic importance of hydro-diplomacy in fostering long-term confidence and sustainable basin governance between the two countries.
Cooperative Security: The 4,096-km international border, regularised through the 2015 Land Boundary Agreement, provides the foundation for sustained cooperation against terrorism, organised crime, human trafficking, drug trafficking and illegal cross-border activities.
India and Bangladesh conduct regular defence engagements through exercises such as Sampriti (Army), BONGOSAGAR (Navy), and coordinated maritime patrols along their shared maritime boundary.
This institutional security partnership has significantly contributed to peace along the frontier while strengthening stability in India's Northeast.
Regional Leadership: India and Bangladesh jointly shape regional cooperation through BIMSTEC, BBIN, SAARC, Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative (IPOI) and the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA), extending bilateral engagement into the wider Bay of Bengal and Indo-Pacific region.
Their cooperation promotes sub-regional connectivity, maritime collaboration and economic integration, making the partnership a cornerstone of eastern South Asia's evolving regional architecture.

What Structural Challenges Constrain India-Bangladesh Relations?

Strategic Trust Deficit: Following the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2024, Bangladesh underwent a political transition that brought a BNP-led government to power. This disrupted India’s long-standing engagement with the Awami League, widened the strategic trust deficit, and made routine bilateral issues more vulnerable to domestic political narratives.
Border Governance Constraints: The Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs (2025) noted that 864 km of the 4,096-km India-Bangladesh border remains unfenced, while only 689 km of this stretch is technically suitable for conventional fencing because of riverine channels, chars and the Sundarbans ecosystem.
These geographical constraints continue to facilitate smuggling, human trafficking, narcotics movement, cattle smuggling and unauthorised border crossings, exposing the limitations of infrastructure-based border management.
Migration and Verification Gap: The Parliamentary Committee recorded 2,369 pending nationality-verification cases involving suspected Bangladeshi nationals awaiting confirmation from Bangladesh.
Illegal migration from Bangladesh remains a serious concern in West Bengal and Assam, where the absence of a time‑bound verification mechanism has led to bottlenecks and push‑back incidents. These delays in repatriation prolong detention, raise costs, and turn migration into a sustained diplomatic challenge.
Hydrological Non-Stationarity: India and Bangladesh share 54 transboundary rivers, yet basin-wide water governance remains incomplete while the 1996 Ganga Water Treaty approaches renewal in 2026.
Simultaneously, declining lean-season flows, altered monsoon behaviour, sedimentation and climate-induced hydrological variability have reduced the reliability of historical flow assumptions, making future water-sharing negotiations considerably more complex.
Teesta-Federal Diplomacy Challenge: The Teesta issue has evolved beyond a conventional water dispute into a question of cooperative federalism.
As highlighted in the IPCS analysis, reduced dry-season discharge has intensified competing irrigation and drinking-water requirements in North Bengal and northern Bangladesh, while India's treaty commitments require broad political consensus with the concerned state.
Consequently, domestic federal coordination and international diplomacy have become institutionally intertwined, prolonging negotiations despite sustained bilateral engagement.
Trade and Connectivity Bottlenecks: Despite geographical proximity, the Standing Committee (2025) identified high tariff barriers, land-port congestion, excessive dependence on road transport, inadequate warehousing, limited cold-chain facilities and weak quarantine infrastructure as persistent impediments to bilateral commerce.
These structural deficiencies raise logistics costs, reduce supply-chain efficiency and prevent the bilateral economic partnership from realising its full regional potential.
Strategic Competition and Project Delivery: The Committee observed that although India has extended nearly USD 10 billion through Lines of Credit and grants, implementation has been slowed by tendering delays, procedural bottlenecks, security concerns and execution constraints.
Simultaneously, external powers have expanded their footprint across ports, transport infrastructure, energy and defence, while Bangladesh sources around 70% of its military equipment from China, increasing strategic competition in the Bay of Bengal.
Delayed project execution therefore risks reducing India's developmental credibility and strategic influence in a region central to its Neighbourhood First, Act East and Indo-Pacific priorities.

How Can India and Bangladesh Build a Future-Ready Strategic Partnership?

Institutionalise a Strategic Stability Architecture: India and Bangladesh should establish a Strategic Stability Architecture that institutionalises policy continuity through legally embedded consultation cycles, crisis-management protocols and sector-specific continuity clauses for connectivity, energy, water and security cooperation.
Such a rules-based framework would minimise policy volatility arising from domestic political transitions and reinforce strategic predictability, mutual confidence and long-term policy certainty.
Transition to Adaptive Basin Governance: Future water cooperation should evolve towards an Adaptive Basin Governance Model based on real-time hydrological intelligence, ecological flow thresholds and climate-risk projections, replacing reliance on static historical water allocations.
Dynamic scientific recalibration of river-sharing arrangements would enable both countries to manage increasing hydrological non-stationarity, ensuring water security, ecosystem resilience and climate-responsive river governance.
Create an Eastern Economic Integration Grid: Rather than pursuing isolated infrastructure projects, both countries should jointly design an Eastern Economic Integration Grid integrating industrial clusters, multimodal logistics, inland waterways, digital trade infrastructure, energy corridors and port ecosystems within a unified spatial-development framework.
Such an integrated production geography would deepen regional value chains, enhance economic resilience and transform connectivity into a driver of competitive geo-economics.
Adopt Performance-Driven Development Finance: Future developmental assistance should be anchored in a Performance-Driven Development Financing Framework, where project financing is progressively linked to independently verified milestones relating to implementation quality, completion timelines, institutional capacity and developmental outcomes.
Embedding technical due diligence and ex-ante implementation audits would improve delivery credibility, reduce execution risks and maximise the developmental impact of public investments.
Develop an Intelligence-Led Border Ecosystem: Border governance should transition from infrastructure-centric management towards an Intelligence-Led Border Ecosystem integrating artificial intelligence-enabled risk analytics, geospatial intelligence, predictive surveillance and behavioural threat mapping.
Such a differentiated risk-based model would strengthen responses to transnational organised crime, illegal migration, human trafficking and cross-border smuggling, while preserving the ecological integrity of riverine and forested frontiers.
Build Cross-Border Production Networks: The bilateral economic partnership should progress from conventional trade expansion towards Cross-Border Production Networks built around complementary strengths in textiles, pharmaceuticals, agro-processing, electronics components and clean-energy manufacturing.
Production-led integration would reduce transaction costs, diversify regional supply chains and strengthen economic interdependence, export competitiveness and regional industrial resilience.
Institutionalise Strategic Knowledge Diplomacy: Both countries should establish a permanent Strategic Knowledge Diplomacy Framework bringing together river scientists, climate experts, economists, technologists, strategic scholars and policy institutions to undertake continuous scenario planning, strategic foresight and evidence-based policy design.
Such an institutional ecosystem would strengthen anticipatory governance, reduce policy uncertainty and generate innovative, research-driven solutions to emerging geopolitical, ecological and geo-economic challenges.

Concluding Insight

India-Bangladesh relations must evolve from proximity to strategic predictability, anchored in mutual trust, adaptive governance and shared prosperity. A resilient partnership will not be defined merely by managing differences, but by co-creating a stable, connected and climate-resilient Bay of Bengal. "From Shared Borders to Shared Futures."

UPSC Prelims Connect

Q. Consider the following statements about river bridges connecting India with neighbouring countries: (2026)

'Maitri Setu', built over Feni river, connects Ramgarh in India with Sabroom in Bangladesh.
Jhulaghat suspension bridge connects India with Myanmar.
Mechi bridge and its approaches connect Panitanki Bypass in India with Kakarvitta in Nepal.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

(a) 1 and 2

(b) 2 and 3

(d) 3 only

Ans: (d)

Q. With reference to river Teesta, consider the following statements: (2017)

The source of river Teesta is the same as that of Brahmaputra but it flows through Sikkim.
River Rangeet originates in Sikkim and it is a tributary of river Teesta.
River Teesta flows into Bay of Bengal on the border of India and Bangladesh.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

(a) 1 and 3 only

(b) 2 only

(d) 1, 2 and 3

Ans: (b)

UPSC Mains Connect

Q. Analyze internal security threats and transborder crimes along Myanmar, Bangladesh and Pakistan borders including Line of Control (LoC). Also discuss the role played by various security forces in this regard. (2018)

QuestlinkIAS Practice Question

Prelims:

Q. With reference to India–Bangladesh relations, consider the following statements:

The 1996 Ganga Water Treaty is the only comprehensive bilateral river-sharing agreement currently in force between India and Bangladesh, while arrangements on only two other shared rivers exist.
India and Bangladesh share 54 transboundary rivers.
The 2015 Land Boundary Agreement resolved both land enclaves and all outstanding river-water sharing disputes between the two countries.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

(a) 1 and 2 only

(b) 2 only

(d) 1, 2 and 3

Ans: (a)

Mains:

Q. India–Bangladesh relations have evolved from a traditional neighbourhood partnership into a strategic imperative for eastern South Asia. Critically examine how connectivity, hydro-diplomacy, cooperative security and geo-economic integration have simultaneously emerged as the principal drivers of cooperation as well as the structural constraints in the bilateral relationship. Suggest a future-ready framework for strengthening long-term strategic resilience. (250 words)

Source Editorial- Future of India-Bangladesh Relationship