THE TEESTA RIVER DISPUTE AND ITS ROLE IN SHAPING BANGLADESH’S PERCEPTION OF INDIA’S SOFT POWER

Abstract

The Teesta River dispute — a long-running transboundary water-sharing issue between India and Bangladesh — has produced outsized diplomatic, political, and perceptual effects beyond the hydrological domain. This paper examines how the unresolved Teesta negotiations and episodic breakdowns of agreement-making have affected Bangladesh’s perceptions of India’s soft power. Using a mixed-methods approach — synthesizing historical documents, secondary literature, press reporting, and public-opinion data — the study shows that the Teesta question functions as both a concrete resource conflict and a symbolic indicator of Indian willingness to accommodate Bangladeshi interests. The dispute has weakened certain channels of Indian soft power (development assistance, cultural influence, goodwill gestures) while simultaneously pushing Bangladesh to diversify its external partnerships, most visibly with China. Domestic politics in India — especially in West Bengal — and institutional asymmetries in water governance have repeatedly stalled agreements, creating recurring cycles of disappointment in Dhaka. The paper argues that India’s soft power in Bangladesh is conditional and transactional: where political concessions on high-salience issues (like Teesta) are absent, material and symbolic goodwill is discounted by Bangladeshi publics and elites. The study concludes with policy recommendations for both states: for India, to separate interstate resource management from subnational electoral politics and institutionalize transparent hydro-diplomacy; for Bangladesh, to pursue pragmatic technical cooperation while leveraging multilateral mediation and regional water governance platforms.