Right now, two things are happening at once, seemingly unconnected on the surface, but together they are quietly shaping where India and Bangladesh go from here.
The first concerns the freshly formed West Bengal government, which has come out swinging on the question of illegal infiltration. The administration has made its intentions crystal clear: illegal infiltrators living in the state will be tracked down and sent back to Bangladesh. Three words have become the rallying cry: Detect, Delete, and Deport.
Under a 2025 central directive that the state government plans to enforce, undocumented Bangladeshi nationals will first be identified, then handed over to the Border Security Force for deportation. It is, without question, a pointed policy statement from the new administration, and nobody is pretending otherwise.
Meanwhile, another very different story is unfolding in Kolkata. A technical delegation from Bangladesh has quietly arrived for talks on water sharing. The team has sat down under the Joint River Commission framework, and the issue on the table is one that never really goes away: the Farakka Barrage.
Farakka has always mattered enormously; it is where the Ganga’s water is measured before the river splits its loyalties. One arm becomes the Bhagirathi-Hooghly, eventually reaching Kolkata. The rest moves toward Bangladesh. Who gets how much has never been a simple question.
What makes this particular round of talks especially significant is the calendar. The thirty-year Ganga Water Sharing Treaty is set to expire in December this year. Dhaka has already flagged renegotiating the Ganga waters as one of its top diplomatic priorities going forward. BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir has also been vocal about it, insisting that water-sharing talks need to happen without further delay.
Water has always been a sensitive subject between these two neighbours, and it gets worse every dry season. When river levels drop and the flow slows to a trickle, the business of measuring and distributing water becomes an excruciatingly delicate exercise. As fresh negotiations approach, Bangladesh is walking in with what its leaders clearly believe is a stronger hand.
India, from what one can gather, is not particularly keen on simply repeating the old formula. There are voices in New Delhi questioning whether another thirty-year arrangement really makes sense anymore. Instead, policymakers are kicking around the idea of shorter, more flexible agreements with room for periodic review. There are also real questions about whether a strict fifty-fifty split serves anyone well; perhaps the distribution should follow actual availability and what the seasons bring, rather than a fixed number.
Bangladesh, for its part, is not waiting around. Dhaka has already given the green light to a large-scale Padma Barrage project. The logic is straightforward: if Farakka causes problems, and Bangladesh believes it does, then they want their own answer to it. Every dry season, southwestern Bangladesh struggles badly with water shortages, and the Padma project is meant to take the edge off that.
All of this brings us to the real question: how does India hold these two things together, the domestic political noise around “Detect, Delete and Deport” and the grinding, painstaking work of keeping ties with Bangladesh on an even keel?
That, it seems, is the riddle sitting on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s desk right now. Bangladesh itself has been through considerable political turbulence. After the upheaval of regime change, Muhammad Yunus stepped in as an interim figure. Now, BNP leader Tarique Rahman is making his presence felt more prominently. Word has come through that Tarique sent a message and held conversations, signalling that Bangladesh remains genuinely interested in a serious working relationship with India.
India is treading more carefully these days than it used to. The criticism had been building for a while that New Delhi had put all its chips on a single political horse in Dhaka, cosying up to certain factions while giving BNP and Jamaat a wide berth. That approach is no longer tenable, and India seems to know it. The shift now is toward engaging a broader range of political actors across Bangladesh’s spectrum.
What is emerging looks more like state-to-state pragmatism, focusing on the relationship between governments rather than betting on any one internal political outcome. And there is a good reason for that rethink: Bangladesh’s geopolitical weight has grown considerably.
China’s footprint in Bangladesh keeps expanding, and New Delhi is acutely aware of it. Wherever India and Bangladesh hit friction, and the Ganga and Teesta disputes are the most obvious fault lines, Beijing has been quietly making itself useful. Geographically, China has no business being involved in something like the Teesta basin, yet it has expressed willingness to fund reservoirs and water infrastructure there. It has also shown interest in helping Bangladesh with the broader Padma water management plans. That is not a coincidence; that is a strategy.
Against that backdrop, whatever Tarique Rahman does next diplomatically is being watched very carefully. India wants to ensure that lines of communication stay open. Quietly, behind the scenes, there is reportedly some diplomatic movement. A visit by Tarique to India, if and when it happens, would carry a weight far beyond the symbolic.
Adding another layer to all of this is the BRICS summit expected later this year, with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin both likely to attend. The regional and global chessboard is shifting, and India knows it cannot afford to be distracted by its own neighbourhood.
So here is where things stand. On one side, there is the BJP’s ideological commitment to infiltration and border management, an issue that has become even louder in West Bengal after the formation of the new government there. Chief Minister Shubhendu Adhikari has never been shy about his position; he has consistently taken a hard line on infiltration and border issues, and that is unlikely to change.
On the other side, Prime Minister Modi clearly understands that letting India-Bangladesh relations slide would be a serious mistake, especially given Bangladesh’s strategic location and the very real possibility that China steps further in to fill any vacuum India leaves behind.
Delhi’s best, for now, seems to be that it can hold both things in tension, fulfil its domestic political obligations without letting the bilateral relationship take a serious hit. Whether that balance can actually be struck, and held, may well determine what the next chapter of India-Bangladesh relations looks like.
