Teesta River runs dry, farmers under threat of livelihoods

Imagine, even just 30 years ago, the Teesta River flowed fast and strong, sustaining the lives of millions of people of northern Bangladesh. But the river has been reduced to a trickle. Now, nothing is left of the mighty Teesta as it was once. There have been no fish in the waterway. The river is silted and it runs totally dry for at least for six months a year, pushing farmers, fishermen, boatmen and small traders to the brink of dispersion. We are also concerned for the millions of people who depend on the flow of water in the once mighty Teesta River for their livelihoods.
According to a newspaper report, only a couple of weeks ago, farmers could rely on the river water for their farming activities. But now the water body has completely dried up in many places of Lalmonirhat. As a consequence, many farmers in different char areas of the district, who cultivate different crops on the sandy char land, are being compelled to use diesel-run shallow machines to irrigate their croplands. This, of course, is pushing the production costs of farmers, but others who do not have that capacity, making farming impossible for them.
Under the Teesta Barrage irrigation scheme, Bangladesh needs at least 4,500 cusecs (cubic feet per second) of water for the 60,500 hectares of cropland in the north of the country. However, they are not getting much more than 500 cusecs during the lean time. It means India has closed all the gates at the Gajoldoba barrage point to hold back all the water of the international river. Thus, the excessive use of groundwater is causing the water table to deplete by about two feet a year in the northern region, according to officials. People in the 5,427 villages on the banks of the Teesta are dependent on the river for irrigating their fields and for other livelihoods. But they were being forced to change their livelihoods as the river stays dry half of the year.
It is to be noted that Lalmonirhat’s Patgram upazila is the entry point of the Teesta River into Bangladesh. But India has built an irrigation Barrage at the Indian side of Teesta, specifically the Malbazar Town in Jalpaiguri which caused the Teesta River to dry up. The barrage, unfortunately, is working as a blockade and diverting the water. As a result, the Bangladeshi portion of the Teesta River is drying up. However, the situation is quite the opposite in the monsoon when India opens all the gates of their barrage and the river floods both banks. After the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, the Indo-Bangladesh JRC was set up in 1973 to anchor talks on sharing water of 54 trans-boundary rivers. So far, the two countries have only signed one treaty on sharing water of the Ganges in 1996.
We know how important it is for Bangladesh to find a sustainable solution to the decades-long-drawn-out Teesta water sharing issue with India. Despite a number of negotiations and numerous promises from our Indian partner, the Teesta water sharing deal between the two neighbours is nowhere near being settled. We cannot be its victims forever and watch our farmers continue to lose their livelihoods because of it for decades on end.