On 22nd February, China said that it is willing to move forward with the Teesta River Comprehensive Management and Restoration Project which has been pending for a long time. Notably, China made the announcement within a week of Tarique Rahman becoming the Prime Minister of Bangladesh. The development is likely to cause strategic unease for India.
Foreign Minister of Bangladesh, Dr Khalilur Rahman, met with Chinese Ambassador Yao Wen on Sunday. Following the meeting, Wen spoke to the media and said that China and Bangladesh had engaged in discussions over the Teesta River project for several years. He claimed that the work on the project would begin soon.
Wen added that China is ready to execute the project and stated that its implementation would depend on the priorities set by the newly elected government in Bangladesh. China’s remarks, which came via Wen, are being seen as its intent to operationalise a major infrastructure commitment following regime change in Bangladesh.
Interestingly, Wen described the recent General Elections in Bangladesh as “smooth and orderly” and called them a “victory of democracy”. He added that China is ready to work with the new leadership in Bangladesh and strengthen bilateral relations across sectors. Furthermore, high level discussions between the two nations would continue in the coming months.
Beijing signals deeper Belt and Road push under new Bangladeshi leadership
The recent statements made by Chinese leaders make it clear that Beijing wants to expand its approach towards Bangladesh beyond diplomatic engagement. On 17th February, Chinese Premier Li Qiang sent a congratulatory message to Rahman following his swearing in. The message reaffirmed China’s willingness to work with the new administration to advance “high quality Belt and Road cooperation”.
In his message, Li called China and Bangladesh long standing Comprehensive Strategic Cooperative Partners. He emphasised that China is willing to provide support for the priorities of Rahman’s government. He added that China is ready to elevate bilateral cooperation across multiple sectors, including infrastructure and river management. The wording of the message indicated that the Teesta project may now be formally embedded within the broader Belt and Road Initiative framework.
China emphasised expanding strategic cooperation at the very outset of the new government’s tenure, which indicates that it wants to increase its influence in Bangladesh’s infrastructure planning ecosystem, specifically in sectors that carry long term operational and geographical significance.
The proposed Teesta management project includes large scale dredging, embankment strengthening, flood control infrastructure, irrigation canals, land reclamation, and reservoir construction along a transboundary river system. Notably, Teesta flows close to India’s eastern frontier. In case a third party gets involved in the project’s execution, especially if that “third party” is China, it is likely to be closely watched by the Government of India.
What the Teesta project entails, and why it is more than a river plan
The Teesta River Comprehensive Management and Restoration Project is officially being presented as a development-oriented river management programme. However, its scope goes far beyond routine flood control or irrigation modernisation.
When executed as intended, it would involve dredging of riverbeds, strengthening of embankments, construction of reservoirs for dry season storage, development of irrigation canal networks, erosion control infrastructure, land reclamation, transport linkages, and long-term hydrological monitoring systems.
When these projects are considered together, it effectively amounts to the creation of a permanent river basin management ecosystem. Such projects require the sustained presence of foreign contractors, engineers, survey teams, project management units, equipment corridors, and monitoring stations across multiple sites along Bangladesh’s Teesta basin.
If Bangladesh undertakes such projects, it does not concern India per se. However, Chinese involvement in the project in a geographically sensitive zone along a transboundary river that originates in India’s eastern Himalayan region and flows into northern Bangladesh before joining the Brahmaputra does raise serious concerns for Delhi.
The Teesta originates in Sikkim and travels through North Bengal before entering Bangladesh. It is a critical upstream resource for India and a key downstream dependency for Dhaka. Any basin wide management intervention downstream inevitably has implications for upstream flow dynamics, seasonal storage patterns, and long-term water release expectations.
Dispute history, why the Teesta issue has remained unresolved for decades
The Teesta water sharing dispute between India and Bangladesh is not a recent development. It is a long-standing bilateral issue. Despite efforts made by governments on both sides for decades, the matter has remained unresolved.
The two nations have been engaging in discussions over equitable distribution of Teesta waters since the early 1970s. In 1972, the Joint Rivers Commission was established to facilitate discussions on transboundary river management.
In 1983, India and Bangladesh reached an ad hoc arrangement that allocated 39% of dry season flows to India and 36% to Bangladesh. The remaining portion was left unallocated pending further agreement. However, the formula was never materialised into a permanent treaty framework.
A notable development came in 2011 when an interim agreement was proposed that would have allocated 42.5% of Teesta waters to India and 37.5% to Bangladesh during the lean season. However, the proposal was shelved at the last moment due to objections raised by the then West Bengal government over concerns that increased water sharing could adversely impact irrigation needs of farmers in North Bengal.
Since then, several rounds of dialogue have taken place between India and Bangladesh, but nothing concrete has been materialised into an acceptable settlement. This has left Teesta as the most significant unresolved water sharing dispute between the two neighbours.
The absence of a formal treaty means that Bangladesh depends on upstream releases from India during the dry months between December and April. In the case of India, specifically the agrarian districts of North Bengal, any commitment to increase the downstream release of water raises concerns over irrigation security and hydropower generation in the region. Notably, North Bengal already faces seasonal water stress.
Bangladesh’s move to seek help from China for comprehensive basin management is thus being seen as an attempt to bypass the limitations imposed due to the stalled bilateral framework with India.
Why Chinese involvement near the Siliguri corridor raises security concerns for India
The renewed push for a China backed Teesta River management project raises concern for India when viewed through the lens of geography rather than development rhetoric. The lower Teesta basin in Bangladesh lies in close proximity to India’s strategically vital Siliguri corridor which is often referred to as the Chicken’s Neck. It is a narrow stretch of land measuring roughly 20 kilometres in width that connects the northeastern states to the rest of mainland India.
This corridor is not just a logistical route but a critical strategic lifeline for troop movement, civilian connectivity, supply chains, and infrastructure access to India’s northeastern frontier. Any long-term infrastructure activity involving external actors, especially China, in its immediate neighbourhood is a concern for national security.
A comprehensive river basin project of the scale that is being discussed between Bangladesh and China will require construction activity across multiple locations that include embankments, water storage systems, monitoring stations, and dredging sites along Bangladesh’s northern districts adjoining the Indian border.
From India’s standpoint, the prospect of Chinese companies, engineers, technical personnel, and project management units operating for extended periods in areas geographically contiguous to the Siliguri corridor presents a new layer of complexity.
Furthermore, while the river management projects are being shown as civilian in nature on paper, such projects often involve detailed terrain mapping, soil analysis, floodplain modelling, and satellite assisted hydrological monitoring. In a sensitive frontier region, such activities could potentially generate granular topographical and environmental datasets that hold value beyond developmental planning.
There are concerns regarding the revival of the Lalmonirhat airbase in northern Bangladesh which is not too far from India. While Bangladeshi authorities have maintained that the facility is being developed for civilian aviation and aerospace education purposes, the infrastructure initiatives in the same geographical belt have drawn attention in Indian strategic circles.
In effect, what is being presented as a river restoration effort could also enable the creation of a sustained third-party footprint in a zone that directly abuts India’s most vulnerable land corridor linking its northeast.
India’s dilemma, water security versus geopolitical leverage
For India, the current situation presents a layered dilemma that is not limited to just water sharing. On the one hand, India has legitimate hydrological concerns regarding the availability of Teesta waters during the lean season. The river provides crucial water resources to several districts in North Bengal. The water from Teesta is used for irrigation and drinking purposes.
The Teesta Barrage project in West Bengal was developed to irrigate over nine lakh hectares of farmland and generate hydropower for the region. An increase in downstream release commitments could adversely affect water availability for Indian farmers, especially during the stressful dry months.
On the other hand, prolonged inability to conclude a bilateral agreement with Bangladesh risks creating space for external intervention, allowing Dhaka to frame Chinese involvement as a necessary developmental alternative in the face of stalled negotiations with India.
This places India in a difficult negotiating position. Accelerating talks may invite domestic political resistance in West Bengal, where water sharing remains a sensitive electoral issue. Delaying engagement, however, could enable China to entrench itself deeper within Bangladesh’s infrastructure planning ecosystem under the rubric of development cooperation.
The result is a strategic balancing act between safeguarding India’s own water security interests and preventing the emergence of an external operational footprint in its immediate eastern neighbourhood.
What changes under Tarique Rahman, and what India should watch next
China’s open signalling on Teesta immediately after Tarique Rahman’s government took office suggests that Beijing sees the political transition in Dhaka as an opportunity to push through projects that had remained in limbo, either due to Bangladesh’s internal politics or because of the unresolved India Bangladesh water sharing framework.
For India, the key shift is not merely that Bangladesh is exploring a river management project with China, that conversation has existed for years. The shift is the timing and tone, China is publicly projecting readiness to execute, praising the election outcome, endorsing the new government’s policy positioning, and creating a narrative of forward movement at the start of Tarique Rahman’s tenure.
What India should watch first is whether Dhaka formally lists Teesta as an early priority item in its new government programme and whether the project moves from broad political signalling to specific operational decisions. That would include fresh MoUs, feasibility studies, revised financial commitments, tendering processes, and mobilisation of technical teams.
Second, India should watch the diplomatic choreography. The Chinese envoy has already hinted at the tradition of high-level exchanges and expressed hope that Tarique Rahman would visit Beijing soon. A Beijing visit early in the tenure would likely be used to announce headline projects, including Teesta, under the language of Comprehensive Strategic Cooperative Partnership and Belt and Road cooperation.
Third, there is the domestic pressure layer inside Bangladesh. Over recent months, political and civil mobilisations around Teesta in Bangladesh have increasingly framed the issue as “water injustice” linked to India’s upstream control during the lean season. If that narrative is amplified under the new government, Teesta could be used as a political weapon to harden public opinion against India while simultaneously justifying deeper Chinese involvement as a sovereign development choice.
Finally, India will also have to factor the broader calendar of transboundary water diplomacy with Bangladesh. The Ganga Water Sharing Treaty signed in 1996 is due for renewal by December 2026. Even though Teesta and Ganga are separate issues, Dhaka’s domestic politics may increasingly link both under a single headline, India must deliver water fairness. That linkage, combined with China offering an alternate framework through river basin infrastructure assistance, could sharpen bargaining pressure on New Delhi in the coming months.
For India, the Teesta question is no longer only about hydrology and state level politics in West Bengal. With China attempting to convert an unresolved bilateral dispute into an entry point for strategic infrastructure presence, Teesta is fast turning into a security and neighbourhood policy test case, one playing out uncomfortably close to the Siliguri corridor.
