Imran Ahmed

India has resumed construction of the Tipaimukh dam on the Barak River which splits into the Surma and the Kushiara a kilometre above the international boundary before entering Zakiganj in Sylhet division in north-east Bangladesh.

The dam construction work had remained stalled since March 2007 in the face of protests within and outside India. The Tipaimukh dam will be built 200 km above the Amolshid border, at Zakiganj, to store 162.5M of water for hydro-power generation. When completed in 2012, the project is projected to provide 1500 megawatts (actually 400 MW) of power to the Indian state of Assam.

India would also build a barrage 100 km from the Bangladesh-India border at Fulertal on Barak for diverting its waters for irrigation.

The dam and the barrage on the Barak river will spell disaster for lower riparian Bangladesh drying up the 350 km-long Surma and the 110 km-long Kushiara rivers which water most of the north-eastern regions of Bangladesh. As a result, agriculture in much of Bangladesh, dependent on the Surma, Kushiara and Meghna rivers will suffer setbacks, particularly in winter. The negative ecological, climatic and environmental impact in both Bangladesh and India would be enormous.

The possibility of dam failure due to earthquake is another prime concern. An earthquake will, of course, cause huge devastation and the breaking of the dam will create 5m high flooding in the Surma, Kushiara and Meghna basins.

In April 1975 India commissioned the Farakka barrage, in the name of test running the barrage and its feeder hand. The India action more or less destroyed the Ganges-Brahmaputra basin, most of which lies in the deltaic plains of Bangladesh. In 1990 India constructed a dam on the Teesta making the Teesta irrigation barrage in downstream Bangladesh useless for irrigation and agriculture in its north-west region. What is even more worrying is that India is planning to divert waters, from the 53 rivers in the north to its drought-prone southern and eastern states. All the 53 rivers flow from India to Bangladesh.

Bangladesh shares a common border with India in the west, north and east and with Myanmar in the southeast. These borders also divide 57 rivers which discharge, through Bangladesh, into the Bay of Bengal in the south. The upstream courses of some of these rivers traverse China, India, Nepal and Bhutan. The international rivers are the important source of water for Bangladesh. Upstream intervention by India would affect the flows of all the common trans-boundary rivers into Bangladesh including the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Meghna and Teesta.

The Ganges water sharing agreement between India and Bangladesh is due to expire in 2026. No sharing agreement is there for the other 53 rivers that the two neighbours share. India seems to be going ahead with its Tipaimukh dam, which would put Bangladesh's very survival at stake.

How the AL government would handle the issue of Bangladesh's survival is difficult to say. The government is suffering from a sense of complacency, forgetting the fact that India violated Mujib-Indira Joint Declaration on Farakkah as it flouted the April 1975 agreement for test-running the Farrakah barrage and its feeder canal. As India is known for taking unilateral decisions in the name of bilateralism, Bangladesh, to protect its core interests, should use the option of going to multilateral forums including the UN.