‘Calcutta has had its day,’ says Verghese, referring to the future of the port.4

In Bangladesh, more than 30 million people depend on the waters of the Ganges for their livelihood and sustenance. The water at this low flow time is especially needed for irrigation.

Bangladesh’s dependence on river waters is reflected in its ballads and culture as well as the intensive manner in which its people use the rivers as regular highways for transport, commerce and in their daily lives. Indeed, more than three-fourths of the country’s entire land area falls within the flood plain of the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Barak rivers which ultimately fall into the Bay of Bengal. According to B.G. Verghese no other country anywhere ‘faces a flood problem of the nature and magnitude that Bangladesh does.’

The Ganges water negotiations have been among the most protracted and difficult endured by the two countries in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Of course, the discussions began before the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.

An initial short-term agreement took place in 1977, defining the lean seasons when water supply was critical to Bangladesh and specifying the amount that was to be guaranteed under this accord. By the mid-1980s, both goodwill and political resolve had evaporated on either side and the agreement collapsed.

Emotions ran high in Bangladesh. Desultory discussions continued, stalled, governments came and fell in both countries, angry words were exchanged. In 1988, Bangladesh was devastated by the worst floods of the century; the same surge of the Brahmaputra river had overwhelmed Assam earlier.

Nothing came of the negotiations until 1996 when Prime Ministers H.D. Deve Gowda and Sheikh Hasina Wajed of Bangladesh signed an agreement on water sharing, after months of tough negotiations between river experts from either side.

Men like Verghese and others played a significant but background role in the shaping of the accord, which involved figures such as External Affairs Minister (and later Prime Minister) Inder Kumar Gujral when they were out of government, in an informal process of dialogue consultations and joint research that has come to be known as Track II. These informal talks discussed the water-sharing problem in an open manner, had the tacit backing of either government and drew specialists, scholars and policy-makers from both sides.

This is one aspect of the Bangladesh-India relationship that has been resolved bilaterally and the agreement appears to be working. But there is another area that has remained impossible to untangle, one that involves both countries, as well as communities within the North East.