India says it wants 'constructive' ties with Dhaka; no date yet for Ganges treaty talks

India wants a "positive, forward-looking and constructive relationship" with Bangladesh, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Tuesday. It gave no date for talks on renewing the Ganges water-sharing treaty, which expires on December 12, and said it was "following the situation" as wage protests by garment workers spread around Dhaka.

At the ministry's regular briefing in New Delhi, spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said India had already invited Bangladesh's Prime Minister Tarique Rahman to visit, and would share an update when there was one. Asked about a meeting of the Joint Rivers Commission, the body the two countries use for shared rivers, he said there was no update. He declined to comment on claims by an aide to Mr Rahman that Indian intelligence was working with the opposition Jamaat-e-Islami to destabilise Bangladesh, according to The Business Standard of Dhaka.

What happened

Most of the questions on Bangladesh came from reporters asking whether relations had returned to normal after a difficult two years. Mr Jaiswal did not answer that directly. "We have said time and again from this platform that we want a positive, constructive and forward-looking relationship with Bangladesh," he said, according to PTI and ANI reports of the briefing.

On water, he said the Joint Rivers Commission was "the structured mechanism for discussion on all cross-boundary rivers, including Ganga". Neither government has announced a meeting of the commission before the treaty runs out.

On the garment unrest, he was asked whether it could hurt trade between the two countries. "We have been following all the developments," he said. He gave the same answer when asked about anti-India remarks made by leaders of the National Citizen Party at a rally in Dhaka, The Business Standard reported. He also did not respond directly to a question on whether India saw Dhaka's foreign policy tilting towards Pakistan.

The protests next door

The garment protests went into a fourth day on Tuesday. The manufacturers' association BGMEA said violence had closed about 300 more factories, taking the number affected since October 31 to nearly 1,000, according to a PTI report from Dhaka. Reuters earlier put the number of factories that stopped work on Monday at nearly 700; counts differ by source and day. Workers want the monthly minimum wage raised to Tk 30,000 from Tk 12,500.

The government has blamed supporters of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who has lived in India since she fled Dhaka in August 2024. "I do not believe Sheikh Hasina will let the government remain in peace as long as she is alive," Zahedur Rahman, the prime minister's information affairs adviser, said, according to PTI. Police said more than 100 people had been arrested, about 50 of them linked to Ms Hasina's banned Awami League. The government has not made public any evidence linking the party to the unrest, and the Awami League's response has not been reported.

That matters to New Delhi because Dhaka has repeatedly asked India to send Ms Hasina back. India has not acted on the requests.

Background

The Ganges Water Treaty, signed in December 1996 for 30 years, sets out how the river's dry-season flow at the Farakka barrage in Murshidabad district is shared between India and Bangladesh from January to May. Bangladesh's water resources minister said last month that Dhaka wants a new or revised agreement with an explicit guarantee of its share, a clause the 1996 treaty dropped. Mr Jaiswal said in September that technical-level meetings on the treaty "have continued to happen".

The allegation about Indian intelligence was first made last month by Mohammad Rashed Khan, Prime Minister Rahman's political assistant. He said in a Facebook post that Jamaat's secretary general, Mia Golam Porwar, and two others had met a senior Indian intelligence official at a house in Dhaka's Baridhara area, and released a photograph and video of a vehicle. Bangladeshi papers reported different dates for the alleged meeting. Jamaat called the reports a conspiracy to damage its reputation and challenged Mr Khan to prove them, Prothom Alo reported. When an earlier Jamaat contact with Indian diplomats came to light earlier this year, Mr Jaiswal described it as part of the High Commission's regular engagement with stakeholders in Bangladesh.

Mr Rahman, who leads the Bangladesh Nationalist Party government, was invited to the BRICS summit in New Delhi in September as chair of the BIMSTEC regional group but did not attend, the Deccan Chronicle reported. He has not yet scheduled a visit to India.

Why it matters for Bengal

West Bengal shares more than 2,200 km of border with Bangladesh, the longest of any Indian state. The Farakka barrage diverts water into the Hooghly, which keeps the river navigable for Kolkata's port; any new formula for sharing the dry-season flow will be felt first in Murshidabad, Malda and the port. Bangladesh also buys cotton, yarn and fabric from India, much of it trucked through the Petrapole-Benapole crossing in North 24 Parganas, so a long shutdown of its garment factories would hit traders and transporters on the Bengal side.

What happens next

• November 5: India play Pakistan in the opening match of the SAFF football championship in Bangladesh.
• November 16: Foreign Secretary Asad Alam Siam is due to take up his post as Bangladesh's High Commissioner in New Delhi, the Deccan Chronicle reported.
• November 17-18: The two countries hold a consular dialogue in Dhaka, where Bangladesh says it will ask for Ms Hasina's extradition, The Daily Star has reported.
• December 12: The Ganges Water Treaty expires unless it is renewed or extended.

Key numbers

• 39: days left on the Ganges treaty after Tuesday
• 1996: year the 30-year treaty was signed
• nearly 1,000: garment factories affected since October 31 (BGMEA, via PTI)
• 100+: people arrested over the unrest (police, via PTI)
• Tk 30,000: monthly minimum wage workers want, against Tk 12,500 now