IFC calls Dhaka, New Delhi to sign water treaties to keep rivers alive

International Farakka Committee (IFC) in a statement has expressed the hope that during this visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi the two countries—Bangladesh and India—will, in the light of mutual friendship, take some effective steps for basin-wide management of common rivers by keeping them alive from their sources to the sea.

The organisation said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is coming to Bangladesh to join the celebration of the Birth Centenary of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the Golden Jubilee of Bangladesh's Independence.

Secretary-level water talks held in New Delhi between the two countries on March 16 in the context of the meeting of the prime ministers of the two friendly countries made no visible progress, it said.

The environment and water rights watch group said the brotherly people of Bangladesh hope that this visit will mark progress in the area of joint management of water resources, a question of their life and death.

The IFC said Bangladesh owes its origin to rivers of 54 out of 57 rivers that flow into world's largest delta Bangladesh from outside come through India.

Due to withdrawal of water from upstream in the absence of sustainable water management more than 30 rivers in Bangladesh have become dead.

The Ganges Water Sharing Treaty, based on the faulty idea of water sharing at border, is not serving its purpose in Bangladesh, it said.

The Bangladesh part of the Teesta dries up every lean season due to unsustainable diversion of its entire flow from the Gazaldoba Barrage. But in the wet season the people of Bangladesh suffer from devastating floods from the Ganges and the Teesta, said the IFC in the statement.

It believes, if the rivers die at their downstreams in Bangladesh, the upstreams of these natural water flows are also bound to die overtime.

Rivers flowing through their natural floodplains remain alive and healthy, because groundwater of floodplains keeps them alive during the dry season.

Other than the floodplains soils only suck water. This explains why more than 5000 dams and barrages have been decommissioned in different countries of the world to restore natural flows of rivers, it noted.

A recent survey conducted under the leadership of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) in different countries showed that integrated management of rivers from their sources to the sea (S2S) can ensure sustainable development and pollution control all along their banks, it said .

The signatories to the statement are: Atiqur Rahman Salu, Chairman and Sayed Tipu Sultan, Secretary General, IFC New York; Prof. Jasim Uddin Ahmad, President, Dr SI Khan, Senior Vice Presient and Syed Irfanul Bari, General Secretary, IFC Bangladesh; and Mostafa Kamal Majumder, Coordinator of IFC.