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Dhaka

Battle for the Teesta

The Teesta is no longer a purely bilateral dispute. With the BNP back in power and China’s proposal back on the table, Bangladesh should leverage India-China rivalry through a three-way water deal.

By Sabria Chowdhury Balland | September 2026

For almost 40 years, the Teesta River has been a thorn in the side of Bangladesh-India relations. For the past 15 years, however, it became part of an implicit political bargain: Sheikh Hasina’s government would go easy on India over the water-sharing issue, while India would go easy on Dhaka over democracy. For both sides, it was a win-win arrangement.

That arrangement collapsed twice: first on August 5, 2024, when Hasina’s government fell, and she fled to Delhi; and again on February 12, 2026, when the BNP returned to power after two decades.

Tarique Rahman’s election has reshaped the dynamics of India-Bangladesh relations. Under his leadership, Bangladesh is no longer treating the Teesta issue as a bilateral matter to be quietly managed for the sake of appeasing its neighbour. Instead, it is approaching it as a strategic negotiation in a much colder neighbourhood.

Under the Awami League, the Teesta was an embarrassment India could afford to ignore. Hasina had built her foreign policy around India—granting transit, cracking down on insurgents, and keeping China at arm’s length on sensitive projects. In return, Delhi provided political cover. The Teesta deal, agreed in principle in 2011, remained unsigned after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee objected. Delhi calculated that there was little cost in waiting. Hasina, meanwhile, could not afford to make the issue a breaking point, even as the status quo imposed a colossal disadvantage on Bangladesh.

The BNP government has no such constraints—and no reason to subordinate its foreign policy to the interests of its larger neighbour.

Since Tarique Rahman took office, relations between Dhaka and Delhi have cooled with a speed that has stunned even seasoned observers. India continues to host Sheikh Hasina and has refused Bangladesh’s extradition request. Visa processing for Bangladeshis has remained largely frozen since late 2024. Border killings, after declining for a period, spiked again in March and April. But the biggest shift may be strategic: instead of reassuring India about China, Dhaka is now openly inviting Beijing in.

It is against this backdrop that the long-stalled Teesta River Comprehensive Management and Restoration Project has resurfaced.

The project—a $1 billion Chinese proposal to dredge, embank and build reservoirs and industrial zones along 108 kilometres of the Teesta from the barrage to the Jamuna—was first offered in 2020. Under intense pressure from India, Hasina’s government put it on hold, giving Delhi time to propose its own conservation project. That proposal, however, never moved forward.

On April 15, the BNP-led government officially revived the Chinese proposal. Within 48 hours, India’s Ministry of External Affairs issued a rare public statement expressing “serious security concerns” over any third-party involvement near the Siliguri Corridor.

That corridor—the 22-kilometre “Chicken’s Neck”—links mainland India to its seven northeastern states and lies less than 50 kilometres from the Teesta project site. To India, a Chinese engineering presence in northern Bangladesh is no longer simply a water project. It has crossed into the realm of strategic security.

For the BNP’s political base, standing up to India is a matter of sovereignty after years of what it sees as Sheikh Hasina’s subservience to Delhi. It is one of the central pillars of the mandate that brought the BNP back to power.

The BNP sees Chinese financing as essential after the reserve crisis of 2023–24 and the de facto slowdown in India’s Line of Credit disbursements since the regime change. Yet it also knows that pushing ahead with the Chinese Teesta project despite India’s objections could turn a water lifeline into a geopolitical fault line.

This is why treating the Teesta as a purely India-Bangladesh issue is no longer merely narrow; it is obsolete. The old bilateral era ended with the election.


Two paths now lie ahead.
The first is the path of competitive bilateralism, which we are already on. Bangladesh could sign the Chinese project, with India viewing it as confirmation that the BNP government is tilting towards China and Pakistan. India would almost certainly tighten water flows during the dry season, restrict visas and trade at land ports, and accelerate construction of its own dams on the upper Teesta in Sikkim. Bangladesh would get embankments but not water. China would gain a foothold, but also take the blame for every dry field in Rangpur. Everyone would win the narrative, but Bangladesh’s farmers would lose the river.

The second path is a Bangladesh-led trilateral basin framework that forces transparency from both powers.

If Bangladesh simply swaps dependence on India for dependence on China along the Teesta, northern Bangladesh will still be dry soon

The logic is transactional. China is not a Teesta riparian, but it is a critical upstream power in the wider Brahmaputra basin, where its dams and water-management decisions can shape downstream flows. The Teesta cannot be understood in isolation from what happens to the Jamuna. India is the critical middle riparian; Bangladesh is the lower riparian that feels the consequences first.

A Bangladesh-led Teesta-Jamuna Management Group would have three narrow, technical pillars, deliberately insulated from the broader India-China rivalry and the Hasina extradition issue.

First, the three countries could establish mandatory real-time sharing of hydrological data during the October–April lean season. India and China already have mechanisms for sharing Brahmaputra hydrological data. Extending such arrangements to Bangladesh through a trilateral framework would be a relatively low-cost, practical first step.

Second, a co-financed but Bangladeshi-implemented restoration fund could be established. India and China could both contribute under a joint audit mechanism, while implementation would be handled by the Bangladesh Water Development Board and the Army’s engineering corps—not by Chinese state contractors. This would address India’s concern about a growing Chinese presence in northern Bangladesh.

The question is whether India would agree to sit at the table with China over a river it insists is a bilateral matter. The answer is: not willingly.

However, India’s calculus has changed since the BNP’s return. For 15 years under Sheikh Hasina, delays came at little cost. Now, every delay carries a price: each month without a credible Indian alternative makes the Chinese proposal more attractive to a Bangladesh government with far less domestic reason to wait for India.

Ironically, the BNP’s colder relationship with India gives it more leverage over the Teesta than Hasina ever had. Hasina could be told to wait. Tarique Rahman can threaten to sign with China.

The Awami League era treated the Teesta as a favour to be requested from a friend. The interim government treated it as a file to be dusted off. The BNP era must treat it as what it is: a sovereignty issue that requires more than one friend—and a formal table where both rivals have to put their data, money and intentions on the table.

If Bangladesh simply swaps dependence on India for dependence on China along the Teesta, northern Bangladesh will still be dry soon. But if it can make both powers operate within a Bangladesh-led rulebook, the story could be different.

The river may finally have a chance to flow.

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