Is Teesta project turning into a geopolitical game?

US Ambassador to Bangladesh, Brent T Christensen, along with his wife, visited the Teesta barrage project sites in Lalmonirhat and Nilphamari on 30 August. Senior economic and political officials from the US Embassy in Dhaka were also part of this delegation. The US Ambassador's visit to the remote Teesta area naturally sparked curiosity among people.

Ambassador Christensen's visit was not limited to the Teesta Barrage; he also visited various economic institutions in the area, including Paragon Dairy of Paragon Group in Gangachara upazila of Rangpur, Green Field Tea Industries Limited in Panchagarh, and the country's largest central railway workshop in Parbatipur.

Many experts see a connection between the recent (9 February 2026) trade agreement signed between Bangladesh and the US and the visit by the US Ambassador and senior officials to the Teesta area. A common goal of this widely discussed agreement is to expand the market for American companies within Bangladesh. Among these, dairy products are specifically mentioned.

However, this market is not limited to goods alone; it also applies to various types of services. One of these is construction contracting. The contract work for large-budget projects implemented with government funding is particularly attractive. This trade agreement emphasises, directly or indirectly, that American companies should also be able to secure such work.

Naturally, the Teesta project comes up in this context. Given the Bangladesh-US trade agreement and the nearly Tk 120 billion budget of this project, it wouldn't be surprising if the US shows interest. But Bangladesh has already encountered geopolitical tensions between India and China over the Teesta project. The involvement of the US would undoubtedly complicate the situation further. The question is, how will Bangladesh manage this complex situation?

To understand the issue, one must first know some facts about the Teesta River and the project. The Teesta is Bangladesh's fourth-largest river, originating in the Indian state of Sikkim at the foothills of the Himalayas, flowing through West Bengal before entering Bangladesh, and finally merging with the Jamuna near Chilmari in Kurigram. Being close to the Himalayas, this river is swift (with a steep slope), prone to flash floods, seasonal, and carries sediment. Sediment-laden, seasonal rivers are generally braided because, during low-flow seasons, sediment deposition causes sandbars and the river divides into multiple channels around these bars. As a result, braided rivers become wider than their flow.

For a commercial approach to rivers, India constructed multiple dams on the Teesta and its tributaries in Sikkim to harness hydropower potential. Meanwhile, Bangladesh's water authorities saw irrigation potential in the Teesta and considered building a barrage to implement it. Indian authorities were also interested in using Teesta's water to expand irrigation in West Bengal and completed the Gajoldoba barrage by 1987. Although Bangladesh started the barrage idea before India, it fell behind in implementation and completed the barrage at Dalia in 1990.

However, building a barrage at Dalia without any agreement or assurance on how much flow would be available from Teesta during the dry season doesn't turn out to be a wise decision for Bangladesh since India, taking advantage of its upstream position, gradually increases the irrigated area and the amount of water withdrawn from Teesta. As a result, the purpose of the Dalia barrage gets largely thwarted and instead becomes a problem for Bangladesh.

Firstly, during the dry season, there's not enough water in the river for irrigation. Secondly, if the little water reaching the Dalia barrage is diverted, there's no water left in the main part of the Teesta from Dalia to Chilmari, a stretch of 102 kilometers in Bangladesh. Thirdly, during the monsoon season and flash floods, India opens all the gates of the Gajoldoba barrage to avoid potential flooding, and Bangladesh does the same at the Dalia barrage to prevent flooding upstream.

At that time, a huge volume of water rushes downstream, causing floods. Fourthly, another problem arises. During the dry season, due to the riverbed drying up in Bangladesh, many sandbars form, the river becomes shallow, and it can't contain monsoon waters; instead, the riverbanks, laden with stones and sand, erode and widen. As a result, the width of the Teesta has increased by about threefold to around 3.1 kilometers.

Thousands of families have been rendered destitute, becoming refugees in Dhaka's slums or starting anew on sandbars.

It was the responsibility of Bangladesh's water authorities to find and implement solutions to the human-made crisis of the Teesta. However, they didn't show that capability and instead sought external assistance. This led to the emergence of a project by the Power-China company regarding the Teesta. Power-China arranged for a loan of about one billion dollars on commercial terms from China's Exim Bank for this project.

There's no doubt that China is now the most advanced country in various technological fields, especially in constructing bridges, dams, and barrages over rivers. However, the character of Bangladeshi rivers is very different from that of Chinese rivers. Therefore, understanding the uniqueness of the Teesta River and deriving an effective solution based on that is difficult even for Chinese experts. Initially (according to the 2019 feasibility study), the main features of their proposed project were as follows:

1. Denying Teesta's braided character and transforming it into a single-channel (meandering) river;

2. Reducing the average width of the river from the current nearly 3 kilometers to 816 meters (700 meters from Dalia to Kaunia and 1 kilometer from Kaunia to Chilmari);

3. Increasing the average depth of the river from 5 meters to 10 meters through dredging;

4. Using dredged materials to fill the river bed area and use it for urbanisation, industrialisation, etc. ;

5. Constructing embankments on both sides of the entire Teesta from Dalia to Chilmari to confine the monsoon flow within an 816-meter-wide channel;

6. As part of this process, effectively disconnecting Teesta from all its branches and tributaries by constructing embankments on their banks.

From BAPA (Bangladesh Paribesh Andolon), BEN (Bangladesh Environmental Network), and the Teesta Protection Movement, both I and Professor Khalequzzaman from the University of Pennsylvania in the US closely reviewed the Power-China project design and showed that it's impractical for various reasons.

Firstly, a braided river by natural causes can't be forcibly transformed into a single-channel river; even if all engineering might is used to do that, this unnatural transformation won't be sustainable, and the river will soon revert to its original braided character.

Secondly, the narrow embankments constructed on the river's banks and shores will be prone to erosion, and cities and industries built outside the embankments will be flooded.

Thirdly, the nearly 40 million tonnes of sediment carried annually through the Teesta River will accumulate at the bottom, soon negating any increase in depth achieved through dredging, further reducing the river's monsoon water-holding capacity. Overall, the entire Power-China project will fail, and Teesta's problems will become more complex. (For a more detailed discussion of these issues, see the document titled 'Teesta River in Crisis: Which Way to a Solution'.

Bangladesh's water authorities were annoyed by our criticism because they wanted the project approved and proceeded with its implementation as quickly as possible. They didn't seem too concerned about whether the project would truly solve the Teesta issue. Some residents of the Teesta area were also unhappy, feeling that we were becoming obstacles on the path to solving the Teesta problem.

Of course, we can't really blame them for that, because the government had maintained extreme secrecy regarding the Teesta project. As a result, they had no clear understanding of the detailed design of the project and couldn't arrive at well-considered decisions about its accuracy.

However, it seems that it was impossible for Chinese experts to ignore our analysis. Consequently, they presented a revised project design in 2023. This design maintained the goal of transforming the Teesta from a braided river to a single-channel river and reducing its average width to 816 meters, but introduced significant changes in some areas.

Firstly, instead of constructing embankments parallel to the riverbed, it was proposed to build them at an average distance of about one kilometer from the riverbed (the average distance between embankments on both banks is 2.8 kilometers).

Secondly, instead of increasing the river's depth to 10 meters through dredging, a complex profile was proposed for the river's bed. These changes introduced new issues, such as how urbanisation and industrialisation would be possible if embankments were constructed an average of one kilometer away from the riverbed and if the area within the embankments was subject to biannual flooding. How would they be protected from bank erosion if the river bed width remains at 816 meters?

Thirdly, how would the design of the river bed with narrow, steep gorges survive against the flow of about 40 million tonnes of sand and sediment annually? At a meeting held at the Water Development Board office on 17 July 2025, BAPA, BEN, and the Teesta Protection Movement raised these questions about the revised Power-China project. Power-China couldn't provide satisfactory answers.

While discussions on the technical issues of Power-China's Teesta project were ongoing, the geopolitical tension between India and China regarding the project came to light. According to various sources, India felt uneasy about this Chinese project being so close to its narrow passageway to its seven northeastern states and proposed to Bangladesh to implement and finance the project itself.

This proposal from India put the then-Awami League government in a quandary; although the government had turned to China precisely because it hadn't received a positive response from India on the Teesta agreement, it was difficult to ignore India's proposal.

This change in stance by the then-Prime Minister angered China, which they communicated during her visit in 2024. Thus, the Teesta Project became a geopolitical issue. The US ’s entry into this project would undoubtedly make the situation more complicated. Now the question is, how can Bangladesh solve the Teesta problem and avoid the harmful effects of geopolitics?

#Nazrul Islam is a professor at the Asian Growth Research Institute and former head of development research at the United Nations.

*The opinions expressed here are the author's own.

#This article, originally published in Prothom Alo print and online editions, has been rewritten in English by Rabiul Islam