Northern farmers suffer as India withdraws Teesta water
Our Correspondent . Lalmonirhat
Farmers in the northern region are at a loss to know how to irrigate their lands, especially the IRRI and Boro fields, as India has unilaterally withdrawn a major portion of Bangladeshs share of the Teesta water using the upstream Gojol Doba barrage in Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal.
Only 500 to 525 cusec of water is now flowing through the Bangladesh part of the river, rendering the Teesta irrigation project almost inoperative.
New Age on Thursday morning found all the 44 main gates of the Teesta Irrigation Barrage closed, with some employees of the Water Development Board trying to deliver the meagre quantity of water in the river through 12 sub-canals to the project area.
Sources at the Department of Agricultural Extension said the situation had made them totally uncertain about how to achieve their target for the ongoing Boro season of irrigating 112,000 hectares of land in Rangpur, Dinajpur, Nilphamari, Joypurhat, Lalmonirhat, Bogra, and some other northern districts.
They said the Indian authorities had been persistently violating a bilateral accord on sharing the water of the common river struck in a secretary-level meeting of the Joint River Commission held in Lalmonirhat in 2000. According to the agreement, India is entitled to use 39 per cent and Bangladesh 26 per cent of the Teesta water, with the remaining 35 per cent water to remain free of any manipulation or control.
But, various sources alleged, breaching that deal, the Gojol Doba barrage, 60km off the Teesta barrage across the border, had been withholding almost the entire water of the river by keeping all its gates closed during the dry season and causing floods in the northern Bangladesh by suddenly opening up the gates during the rainy season.
The Teesta needs 7,000 cusec of water flow to be navigable. But the flow dropped to 1,033 cusec in 1999 following the construction of the Gojol Doba Irrigation Barrage. After the JRC meeting in 2000, the river in Bangladesh had a water flow of 4,530 cusec for a while but it again fell to 1,406 cusec in January 2001, 1,000 cusec in January 2002, 1,100 cusec in January 2003 and 950 cusec in November 2006, from which it has now reached an all-time low of 500 to 525 cusec.
The misuse of the Gojol Doba barrage now poses a threat of turning a vast area in the north into a desert, WDB officials said, asking for immediate steps to ensure due quantum of Teesta water for Bangladesh.
http://www.newagebd.com/2007/jan/19/nat.html