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Maria Siow

Every dry season, the Teesta River shrinks a little more – and with it, the livelihoods of millions of Bangladeshis who depend on its waters to survive.
Dhaka has been asking India to help for years. Now, it is asking Beijing instead.
Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, who took office in February, formally asked China earlier this month to help with its Teesta River restoration project, Bangladeshi state media reported.
The US$1 billion scheme aims to dredge and rehabilitate more than 102km (63 miles) of a waterway that originates in the eastern Himalayas and passes through India’s Sikkim and West Bengal before flowing into Bangladesh.


Dhaka’s request came after Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman met his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, in Beijing on May 6, where Wang reaffirmed Beijing’s readiness to align its Belt and Road Initiative with Bangladesh’s development agenda.
China has long shown an interest in reviving the Teesta River, which passes close to the Siliguri Corridor: a 20km wide, 60km long sliver of land also known as the “Chicken’s Neck”.
The chokepoint in West Bengal, surrounded by Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan, is India’s only overland link to its eight northeastern states and is susceptible to blockades and military threats.
New Delhi’s discomfort with Chinese infrastructure investment along its periphery is well documented, according to Aparna Pande, a senior India and South Asia fellow at the Washington-based Hudson Institute.
“Many of these neighbours have historically asked India for support but sometimes it takes too long to approve or start the project so they turn to other countries,” she said. “All of them know India views with askance any Chinese investment and involvement in infrastructure projects.”
Pande suggested that one solution might be direct bilateral dialogue between Delhi and Dhaka, with a neutral broker such as Japan brought in if talks were to stall.

Dhaka desperation
India has never signed a treaty guaranteeing upstream water flows in the Teesta during the dry season, leaving Bangladesh – the downstream party – to watch its agricultural heartland parch a little more each year.
The Power Construction Corporation of China is expected to submit a final master plan for the project by year’s end. India, by contrast, is still at the stage of proposing technical studies.
The Teesta project was “an issue of survival for millions of its population” said Lailufar Yasmin, an international-relations professor at the University of Dhaka.
Reduced water flow during lean months devastates harvests, threatening food security and the livelihoods of millions living across Bangladesh’s northern regions, according to Yasmin – consequences she said Delhi had persistently failed to take seriously despite its stated “neighbourhood first” foreign policy.

Shafi Md Mostofa, a security studies scholar at the University of Dhaka, said bringing Beijing into the picture was a way for Dhaka to shake Delhi out of its complacency. But he was blunt about the risks.
“If Bangladesh presents the project as a China-backed strategic move against India, then Delhi will react strongly,” he warned.
Dhaka’s best play would be to present the initiative strictly as a river management and climate adaptation project, he said, “not as a geopolitical move”.
“The best approach would be transparency, technical cooperation and keeping the project open enough so that India does not feel completely excluded,” Mostofa added.
Elizabeth Roche, an associate professor at O.P. Jindal Global University’s Jindal School of International Affairs, echoed the call for openness, saying the least destabilising path forwards demanded that both sides be “completely transparent” with each other.
Political change
Paradoxically, India’s domestic politics may have just cracked open a rare diplomatic window.
For years, the opposition-held government of West Bengal – the eastern Indian state bordering Bangladesh – had opposed any Teesta water-sharing treaty, arguing that rationing the river’s lean-season flow would starve the neighbouring region of water for drinking and agriculture.
But last month, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept to a historic victory in the state, becoming the first ruling party to do so in nearly five decades.
“Now, they are in power there as well. So India should show positive intent in resolving the Teesta water-sharing treaty,” Mostafa said. “Otherwise, Bangladesh naturally wants to look for other options.”

Whether Delhi seizes the opportunity or not remains to be seen.
The BJP’s parallel pursuit of anti-immigrant politics – including crackdowns on undocumented Bangladeshis that have reportedly involved killings and forced expulsions – threatens to poison the well further amid a drumbeat of “anti-Muslim rhetoric”, according to Pande.
If the party continued with the harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric that won voters’ hearts, its ties with its neighbours were likely to be affected, she added.
“If India seeks to become a regional and global power, if it wants to push back against China’s presence in its neighbourhood, it must ensure domestic politics does not hurt foreign policy,” Pande said.


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The Teesta River flows through Sevok in India’s West Bengal state, around 60km north of the Bangladesh border and some 20km east of Siliguri. Photo: AFP

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The Teesta River is seen during a flash flood in India’s Sikkim state in 2023. Photo: Indian Army/AFP

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India’s Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar (right) shakes hands with his Bangladeshi counterpart, Khalilur Rahman, during a meeting in New Delhi on April 8. Photo: India’s Ministry of External Affairs/AFP

Muhammad Yunus speaks after signing the July National Charter, aimed at ensuring democratic reform, on October 17, 2025. Photo: AFP

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (right) poses with Sheikh Hasina before their meeting in Delhi on September 6, 2022. Photo: AFP

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Traffic passes along a street decked out with Trinamool Congress flags in Kolkata, West Bengal, on Tuesday. Photo: Reuters

Mamata Banerjee gestures during a post-election press conference at her office in Kolkata on Tuesday. Photo: AFP

BJP supporters in Kolkata celebrate their party’s commanding lead in the West Bengal state assembly election on Monday. Photo: Reuters

Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Tarique Rahman pictured during his oath-taking ceremony in Dhaka on February 17. Photo: Reuters

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Indian vessel ‘Nanda Devi’ carrying LPG arrives at a port in Gujarat state on Tuesday after Iran allowed it to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Photo: AFP via Getty Images/TNS

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets his then Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina in New Delhi in 2024. Photo: AP

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Bangladesh Nationalist Party Chairman Tarique Rahman. Photo: AFP

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Tarique Rahman, chairman of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), shows a victory sign following the BNP’s victory in the general election, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on Saturday. Photo: Reuters

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has conveyed his “best wishes and support” to the BNP’s Tarique Rahman. Photo: AFP

Supporters of Bangladesh’s Jamaat-e-Islami party during an election campaign rally in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in January. Photo: Reuters

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Bangladesh’s new prime minister has formally asked China to help with a long-delayed river project near the sensitive Siliguri Corridor


Bangladesh’s new prime minister has formally asked China to help with a long-delayed river project near the sensitive Siliguri Corridor.


Bangladesh tests its India ties by seeking China’s aid for Teesta River

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Bangladesh’s new prime minister has formally asked China to help with a long-delayed river project near the sensitive Siliguri Corridor

Bangladesh’s new prime minister has formally asked China to help with a long-delayed river project near the sensitive Siliguri Corridor