Allegedly there has been severe floods from India opening the dam in Tripura.
The Dumbur dam in Indian state of Tripura is located 120km away from Feni in Bangladesh. It must be remembered that 120km of area in their country has also been submerged underwater from the dam being opened. And when the water level rises, the gate of the dam opens automatically. If the gate did not open like that, the whole dam would have collapsed and surged down towards Bangladesh. That would have created a greater danger. So we have to assess the situation keeping these in mind.
The rivers Bangladesh has on the downstream of Tripura are relatively narrow. And there are many smaller rivers in that area. Plus, it is more populated than other parts of Bangladesh. A lot of infrastructure has been constructed. As a result, the water while rushing down from the upstream quickly reached these residential areas and submerged them. And, that’s why the intensity of the flood seems higher to us.
There’s infrastructure for flood control in the haor region and in the northern parts of the country. How’s that in the eastern region, where the flood has been this time?
In Cumilla, there are dams on the upstream of Gumti river in the Bangladeshi part. These are about 500 years old and the local people had built them. The dams in the coastal and haor areas were originally used for eight months a year. Means these dams used to be constructed to cultivate crops till the arrival of the rainy season and they were cut down once there was the onrush of water in monsoon. However, I can’t recall about Gumti dam collapsing anytime in the last few decades. But, this time it broke down from the flood. It protected many areas from flooding until it collapsed.
It is right that there is a lot of criticism about the Kaptai dam. However, a vast region in Chattogram including Rangunia has been saved from being flooded because of that power project dam after all. Apart from that, there are no large-scale infrastructures to hold off floodwater in that region. The lesson we must learn from this flood is that not only in the northern or haor region, we must think about the issue of flood control in that eastern part of the country as well.
We do not receive enough information about floods from India, what we do get doesn’t enable us to make accurate and precise forecast. This was stated by the Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre.
Right after the independence of Bangladesh, we formed a joint rivers commission with the two countries in 1972. With that commission, discussions begun on water distribution and flood control of the 54 shared rivers between the two countries. Back then only the information on where the waters of Ganga, Brahmaputra and Teesta rivers have crossed the danger line could be availed from India. After independence, the floods from 1987 and 1988 were the worst. Then India was asked by Bangladesh to provide information on water flow of other rivers as well.
Although we receive information about the rivers on the upstream of Sylhet, we do not receive any other information from India except the increase of water on the upstream of Feni and Cumilla. Even while I was a member of the Joint Rivers Commission, we had discussions with India many times about the information on all the shared rivers. We also invited them to visit our flood forecasting and warning centre and wished to visit them in India. Let the scientists and researchers of the both countries jointly exchange flood forecasting information together. This will be helpful to both countries in terms of flood control.
If that’s beneficial to both countries, why isn’t that happening?
Bangladesh and India have reached a consensus on the expert level about providing forecast for floodwater. Both countries are located in the same river basin and we use the same software to analyse different data including the data of water level in rivers. Plus, there’s no harm for any country rather benefit in exchanging information about the rivers. We have agreed on this at the expert level. But, whenever we go to politicians for policy decisions on this, it gets held up. Therefore, a political decision of both countries is needed in this regard.
How is it possible to have that political decision?
There are inter-state conflicts in India regarding the data of water flow in upstream and downstream rivers. West Bengal’s conflict over the hydropower plant and irrigation projects on the upstream in Sikkim has been going on for years. Besides, there is a lot of criticism regarding India’s policy on river water distribution and sharing water flow data with Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal. The adviser of water resources in Bangladesh has talked about getting flood forecasting data from India in advance. I agree with her spirit. Arrangements have to be made to receive more information on the basis of discussions with India.