Kushiyara River Treaty

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

During Bangladesh Prime Minister visit to India from September 5 to 8, the two sides signed a slew of agreements, including the first water sharing agreement since the landmark Ganga Waters Treaty, 1996.

• A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed on sharing of the waters of the Kushiyara river, a distributary of the Barak river which flows through Assam, and then on to Bangladesh. 
• The agreement comes in a year when both lower Assam in India and Sylhet in Bangladesh have witnessed deadly floods highlighting the requirement for greater cooperation on flood control and irrigation-related issues between the two countries.

Kushiyara River 

• Kushiyara river is a distributary of the Barak River which originates in the uplands of Assam and flows through it, and then on to Bangladesh.
• Barak River rises in Manipur and is part of Surma-Meghna River System.
• The agreement is aimed to benefit the southern areas of Assam in India and the Sylhet region in Bangladesh.
• Bangladesh will be able to withdraw 153 cusecs (cubic feet per second) of water from the Kushiyara out of the approximately 2,500 cusecs of water that is there in the river during the winter season.
• The water of Kushiyara will be channelled through the Rahimpur Canal project in Sylhet.

What is the Kushiyara agreement?

• Over the last century, the flow of the Barak river has changed in such a way that the bulk of the river’s water flows into Kushiyara while the rest goes into Surma. 
• The agreement is aimed at addressing part of the problem that the changing nature of the river has posed before Bangladesh as it unleashes floods during the monsoon and goes dry during the winter.
• Approximately 10,000 hectares of land and millions of people will benefit from the water that will flow through a network of canals in Sylhet benefiting the farmers involved in Boro rice, which is basically the rice cultivated during the dry season of December to February and harvested in early summer. 
• Bangladesh has been complaining that the Boro rice cultivation in the region had been suffering as India did not allow it to withdraw the required water from the Kushiyara. 
• The agreement addresses Bangladesh’s concern over water supply along the river, during the winter months but flood control in the basin of Kushiyara is expected to require much more work.

Why is the water from the Kushiyara so important for Rahimpur Canal?

• The water of the Kushiyara has been used for centuries in Sylhet’s subdivisions.
• The utility of the river and the canal during the lean/winter season had gone down, affecting cultivation of rice as well as a wide variety of vegetables for which Sylhet is famous. 
• The additional water of Kushiyara through the Rahimpur Canal therefore is the only way to ensure steady supply of water for irrigation of agriculture fields and orchards of the subdivisions of Sylhet.

Concerns

• India objection to the to the Rahimpur Canal of Sylhet which was built to help the farmers access Kushiyara’s water – and claimed that the dyke and other infrastructure interfered in border security.
• Similar pact for Teesta River – which is a tributary of the Brahmaputra, originates in the Teesta Kangse glacier and flows through the state of Sikkim and West Bengal before entering Bangladesh; has been in the works for around a decade and is currently disputed.
• Impact of climate change on South Asian rivers that can affect communities and trigger migration.
• Bangladesh has cited low water flow in its rivers during the winter months as a matter of concern as it affects its agriculture sector.

What are the hurdles to the Teesta agreement?

• The Kushiyara agreement is relatively smaller in scale in comparison to Teesta that involves West Bengal, which has problems with the proposal. 
• The Kushiyara agreement did not require a nod from any of the States like Assam from which the Barak emerges and branches into Kushiyara and Surma.
• The reduced water flow of the Kushiyara during winter and Teesta too, however, raise important questions about the impact of climate change on South Asian rivers that can affect communities and trigger migration.