JBS Vol 10. Num 2. 2008 - The Ganges Treaty: Parsing the Dynamics of the Final Negotiations1 What have we learned from it?

Prior to its resolution, the dispute over the sharing of the Ganges River waters between Bangladesh and India had come to be viewed as the defining function of bilateral relations between these two countries. It had held hostage all other matters from resolution. Once the treaty was signed, it opened up the doors to progress in other sectors that had become dormant. It is another matter that many subsequent opportunities for resolving other contentious issues, or even moving forward on areas where cooperation was feasible, were frittered and lost. The Ganges Water Treaty between Bangladesh and India is an outstanding testimony to the fact that despite two decades of wrangling and acrimonious bickering (including ceasing all dialogue for almost a decade), once the two sides were able to mobilize their political wills and seriously negotiate for a resolution of the dispute, Bangladesh and India were able to finalize negotiations on sharing the Ganges waters and did sign a 30-year treaty, that became a landmark achievement This paper will present a summary of the details of the various stages of the long and tortuous negotiations over the Ganges River, and light the beacon particularly on the penultimate and final stages that led to the agreement finally being reached. It will then parse that narrative and from it identify and extract those elements that constitute a lesson for possible application to future seemingly intractable negotiations that continue to dog the region. Can the wheel that has already been invented, i.e. the lessons learnt from the Ganges negotiations, be fruitfully applied, with such adaptations as may be necessary or prudent, to resolving other festering issues and enable the sub-region in South Asia of which Bangladesh is a part? Will it enable the various national and sub-national entities of this sub-region finally, to embark on cooperative ventures that could well result in the transformation of the sub-region from the doldrums into a role model for cooperation, environment-friendly development and prosperity? With this precedent, one may hope that the lessons gleaned from the Ganges negotiations could very well serve to show the way to addressing the larger challenges now confronting the sub-region as a whole.