There was a man missing from the intense talks on the Teesta river during Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s three-day visit to India, which concludes today. His name is Pawan Kumar Chamling, and he’s the chief minister of Sikkim.
The Teesta originates from the 17,487 feet high Lake Cholamu in Sikkim as a small stream, but turns into a raging river barely a 100 km downstream, powered by tributaries from other streams along the way until it meets the mighty Rangeet. It then enters West Bengal and flows downstream till Jalpaiguri district, where it enters Rangpur district in Bangladesh, and then eventually merges with mighty Brahmaputra. Bangladesh complains that owing to hydel and irrigation projects in India, it is starved of water during the summer and winter months, and wants a treaty which shares the waters in a 50:50 ratio.
But water is a state subject in India, and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee believes such a proposal would severely impact irrigation and other water intensive projects in the northern part of her state. She dramatically torpedoed a possible agreement in 2011 by refusing to travel with PM Manmohan Singh to Dhaka at the last minute. But during a visit to Dhaka in 2015 with PM Narendra Modi, she pledged to play a “positive role” in resolving the issue without compromising the interests of either West Bengal or Bangladesh.
This time, during her meeting with Hasina and Modi in New Delhi, she suggested other solutions like sharing the waters of other rivers, like the Torsa, which flows down from Bhutan through West Bengal before entering Bangladesh. But after the effusive summit meeting on Saturday, where India announced a $5 billion line of credit for Bangladesh’s development and defence purchases, Modi expressed his firm belief that there would be an “early solution” to the sharing of Teesta waters. But even in the unlikely event of Banerjee relenting, the chances of any such solution without Chamling’s approval are bleak.