Bangladesh took note in April last year when India suspended the Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan after the Pahalgam terror attack.By setting aside a landmark six-decade-old water-sharing agreement that had survived wars and repeated crises, New Delhi sent a clear message across South Asia: treaties are not eternal.Last week, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s government approved the Padma Barrage, a $2.8 billion project in Rajbari district.The proposed 2.1-km dam on the Padma river – as the Ganga is known when it crosses the border – aims to store nearly 2,900 million cubic metres of monsoon water for redistribution during the dry season across Bangladesh’s salinity-hit southwest region.Officials say it could irrigate 2.88 million hectares of land, revive dying rivers and add around 0.45% to the country’s gross domestic product.The decision comes as the 1996 Ganga Water Sharing Treaty approaches expiry in December 2026. Hailed at the time as a “new dawn” after decades of bitter disputes, the treaty was signed on December 12, 1996, by Indian Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda and Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.The treaty established a 30-year framework for dividing the river’s dry-season flows at the Farakka Barrage, allocating water between the two countries across fifteen 10-day cycles each year from January to May.But with India suspending the Indus treaty with Pakistan, it is evident that Dhaka is building water self-reliance. The Padma Barrage project is an engineering and a geopolitical statement – a sign that Bangladesh is increasingly unwilling to rely solely on upstream goodwill.It also forces New Delhi to confront the failures of its “Neighbourhood First” policy.Women fetch water from the parched shores of Kholpetua river at Parshemari village in the southwest Khulna district, in this photograph from April 2025. Credit: AFP.Two countries, one riverThe roots of the crisis stretch back to 1975, when India commissioned the Farakka Barrage in West Bengal, just 18 km from the Bangladesh border.Intended to divert Ganga water into the Hooghly river to maintain the navigability of Kolkata Port, the project had severe consequences downstream in Bangladesh.Before the Farakka Barrage, dry-season flows in the Padma-Ganga system averaged around 70,000 cusecs. After 1975, they frequently fell to between 10,000 cusecs and 20,000 cusecs.As a result, the Gorai River, once the lifeline of southwest Bangladesh, now runs virtually dry between February and May.Studies have documented the consequences: 79 rivers in Bangladesh dead or dying, groundwater levels in the Barind Tract falling by 10 metres to 15 metres, and rising salinity intrusion in the Sundarbans.Between 1997 and 2016, Bangladesh received its stipulated treaty share during only 21 of 60 critical dry-season periods.The 1996 treaty, based on hydrological data from 1949 to 1988, failed to account for climate change, growing upstream withdrawals, ecological requirements, or sediment dynamics.In effect, it treated the Ganga as a divisible pipeline rather than a living river system.Talks between India and Bangladesh about renewing the water-sharing agreement are already proving difficult. During his visit to New Delhi in April, Bangladesh’s foreign minister, described the treaty as a “life and death” issue, yet returned with little visible progress.India’s proposals for a shorter 10- to 15-year renewal period are viewed in Dhaka as a way of keeping Bangladesh in a state of perpetual diplomatic dependence.A crane installs the last span of the Padma Bridge over its river in Munshiganj, Bangladesh, in December 2020. Credit: Reuters.Infrastructure over diplomacyBangladesh’s logic behind the Padma Barrage is straightforward: capture excess monsoon flows and release them strategically during the dry months. Three offtake canals are planned to feed the Gorai, Chandana, and Hisna rivers.Built entirely with domestic funding, unusual for a project of this scale, the barrage reflects declining confidence that diplomacy alone can guarantee Bangladesh’s water security.After more than six decades of studies and delays since the project was first proposed in 1961, Bangladesh has chosen infrastructure over indefinite negotiation.The political irony is difficult to miss. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party once criticised the Awami League’s mega-projects as debt-fuelled vanity schemes. Now, in power, it is championing the Padma Barrage as survival infrastructure.Yet, the project also faces serious criticism in Bangladesh.First, the barrage can only store the water that actually reaches it. If the treaty renewal with India falters and upstream flows decline further, Bangladesh could end up with an expensive valve at the end of an uncertain river.Second, sediment management is a major challenge. The Padma carries enormous Himalayan sediment loads that have sustained the Bengal delta for centuries.Trapping too much sediment behind the barrage could accelerate land sinking in the coastal southwest, where elevation has already fallen by 1 metre to 1.5 metres, mainly as a result of reduced sediment deposition from upstream river regulation and embankments blocking natural silt flow, compounded by subsidence and sea-level rise linked to climate change.Third – and perhaps most important, diplomatically – is bargaining power. By investing heavily in a project whose effectiveness still depends on upstream flow, Bangladesh may unintentionally weaken its negotiating leverage with India.India knows Dhaka has already staked a great deal on securing reliable water releases.The barrage also symbolises deeper strains in the relationship between Dhaka and New Delhi.The perception that India had supported Sheikh Hasina’s increasingly unpopular government in exchange for strategic alignment has generated lingering resentment among sections of Bangladeshi society.At the same time, Dhaka is diversifying its partnerships, particularly with China, which remains a major infrastructure investor. Every failed dry season and every saline-damaged harvest in Khulna further erodes the grassroots credibility of India’s “Neighbourhood First” policy.India’s domestic politics complicate matters further. West Bengal’s resistance to the Teesta water-sharing agreement – rooted in former CM Mamata Banerjee’s insistence that the river holds too little water to share without depriving North Bengal of irrigation and drinking supplies, and her fury at being excluded from negotiations altogether – demonstrates how state-level politics can constrain New Delhi’s diplomatic flexibility.The change of state government, with the BJP winning West Bengal, may create room for compromise, but Bangladesh’s trust is neither unlimited nor guaranteed.The Padma Barrage is the infrastructure response of a neighbour that believes it has waited too long for a durable solution to a slow-moving crisis.If India and Bangladesh can negotiate a credible successor treaty to the 1996 Ganga Water Sharing Treaty, one incorporating real-time monitoring, binding minimum flow guarantees, climate adaptation, and ecological safeguards, the barrage could complement diplomacy.However, if the treaty lapses or is renewed in weakened form, the project risks becoming a monument to strategic anxiety: a costly hedge for Bangladesh that will still not compensate for unreliable upstream flows.Jannatul Naym Pieal is a Dhaka-based writer, researcher and journalist. He can be reached at jn.pieal@gmail.com.