From Hyper-Dams to Deep Dredging: Geopolitics in the Brahmaputra River Basin

The transboundary Brahmaputra river basin is an important Himalayan river system, with China, India, Bhutan and Bangladesh as co-riparians. China is planning a series of serious surgeries on the head of the Brahmaputra river system in Tibet, upstream of the Siang, where it is known as the Yarlung Tsangpo. The most debilitating of those surgeries is at the Great Bend, a region revered by local communities as the abode of the goddess Pemako, with the Medog hyper-dam of 60 GW, which will heavily disfigure the face of the transboundary Himalayan river system. While China is cutting up the head of the Brahmaputra in Tibet through its hydropower projects upstream, India is planning to cut up the rest of the body of the Brahmaputra with its own series of mega dams downstream.

The race to cut up the body of the Brahmaputra by China and India puts the entire sensitive and ecologically fragile Himalayan bioregion/ecoregion in serious jeopardy. The several hydropower dams being built by Bhutan, adds to this story of Himalayan jeopardy.

Bangladesh’s concerns

Bangladesh is the lower most riparian in the Brahmaputra river basin, and has always looked upstream to its neighbours to manage its water resources, especially India, Nepal and Bhutan. It has actively pursued sub-regional tracks of engagement with India in the past decade, notably involving the Northeast Indian states of Assam, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh. However, regional riparian behavior in South Asia has traditionally been driven by a strong sense of bilateralism, given India’s policy choice of keeping different river basins in separate tracks of bilateral negotiations and engagement.

Water sharing negotiations between India and Bangladesh on the Teesta –  a major tributary of the Brahmaputra once it enters Bangladesh – have been in a major diplomatic stalemate for several decades now. India has also built a series of hydropower dams and barrages on the Teesta upstream in West Bengal and Sikkim over recent years. Bangladesh is also concerned about limited headway in negotiations for renewal of the Farakka Treaty between India and Bangladesh on water sharing from the Farakka Barrage on the Ganges in upstream India that is due in 2026. A similar set of domestic political factors in India has inhibited both the Farakka and Teesta negotiations.

Meanwhile, climate variability affecting river flows and rainfall patterns, glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) and water infrastructure projects have significantly contributed to a build-up of hazards in the Himalayan river system. The Chungthang dam collapse in October 2023 was a major GLOF disaster on the Teesta river in upstream Sikkim. This has sparked concerns in downstream Bangladesh of the feasibility of a future bilateral treaty on a river, which ultimately could be without a substantial flow once it enters Bangladesh.

With China building a series of dams in Tibetan headwaters of the Brahmaputra, and India and Bhutan following the same dam-building trajectory immediately upstream of Bangladesh, the precarious position of the lowermost riparian needs greater strategic attention.

Picking China

It should not be surprising then Bangladesh has chosen to bandwagon with China, as relations with India have taken a downturn since the fall of Sheikh Hasina and given the fact that she is now resident in India. The Khaleda Zia-led Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has also been very vocal against the riparian behaviour of India, and will use this opportunity to harden the public narrative within Bangladesh.

The new government in Dhaka has sent clear signals to China, with an invitation to invest in mega river management projects in its flood plains. During his visit to China in March 2025, Mohammad Yunus, the chief adviser to the interim government of Bangladesh appealed to Beijing to provide technical support and expertise through a 50-years river management master plan for Bangladesh.

This has evoked serious concern within the region, and especially in India but fits well with Chinese plans to have a foothold at the base of the river basin as well. Beijing had also engaged in advanced talks previously with Sheikh Hasina government on the Teesta River Comprehensive Management and Restoration Project. China’s role in the Teesta Project involves dredging activities and channelizing the river to improve water availability, irrigation and inland navigation, reclaim riverine land, and prevent floods and erosion in Bangladesh. India had tried to scuttle this effort by offering its own support to the project.

All told, these developments will have serious repercussions on sub-regional initiatives such as Bangladesh-Bhutan-India-Nepal (BBIN), BIMSTEC and SASEC, which have gained some  traction over the past decade. Efforts for integrated river basin management, climate and disaster risk reduction and inland navigation are all likely to be affected given Bangladesh is an important stakeholder and has a record of accomplishment on regional hydrological data monitoring/analysis.

For a deep time perspective

China and India’s grand plans to convert transboundary Himalayan river systems to taps to be opened and closed at will through hyper-dams and mega-dams, and drainage ducts through deep dredging and channeling rivers rests on a deep hubris of hydrocratic and infrastructural power to be able to control and tame nature, and reshape entire river basins. The sheer sediment load of major Himalayan river systems such as the Brahmaputra and Teesta, which has shaped the region over deep time, makes such activities inefficient over the long-term.

To borrow from Jason Cons’ articulation of ‘sensitive space’ in the context of enclaves along the India-Bangladesh border, the new markers of production of territory in South Asia include the channelizing of river systems and of claiming and appropriating riverine spaces – exactly what Bangladesh is now inviting China to help it do.

Climate change has, however, forced us to rethink our conceptual map and language of understanding the world. The thinking on rivers cannot be in linear, fragmented and boxed perspectives within nation-states attempting simply to territorialize rivers or manage them. A deep time perspective of rivers that considers the natural geography and patterns of the riverscapes is critical for both nation-states and communities engaged with the river and for a sensitive bioregion such as the Himalayas and its foothills. For a planetary thinking on rivers to emerge, we need plural perspectives and go both ways, from the international, global to the planetary, and from the international, global to the grassroots. The views and lived experiences of river communities constitute an archive in themselves, attention to which can promote bioregional thinking on rivers from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal. How the Himalayas are understood – whether as a strategic and geopolitical space or as a sacred and sensitive space – will determine how we can move beyond deep nation-state anxieties over territory.
 

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About the Author: Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman is Visiting Associate Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies, New Delhi. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected] and is available on X @mirzalibra10.