"Delhi Tells Dhaka to Forget Ganges", [Dhaka, The New Nation in English, 29 Apr 91, pp. 1, 8].

A couple of days before the latest round of water talks between Bangladesh and India in Dhaka last Tuesday, a senior official informally asked the Irrigation Secretary M.A. Malik whether he was hoping for any kind of breakthrough during the two-day negotiations.

Given the complex nature and the history of water talks between the two countries, there was perhaps no reason for the Irrigation Secretary to be optimistic and he said so.

Yet the meeting ended on Wednesday with Bangladesh claiming "some progress." What it means is not quite clear. According to press reports, the net outcome of the secretary-level talks with an agreement on "attaching priority to sharing the flows of the rivers Ganges and Teesta."

A closer look at earlier negotiations reveals that the latest agreement is just the repetition of what was already agreed upon at the secretary-level talks held in Dhaka on June 21 last year.

In fact the latest exercise was a futile one and it appears that the entire efforts of Bangladesh were concentrated on nullifying the agreement signed last October in Delhi.

The October meeting decided that in addition to the Ganges and the Teesta "immediate priority should be accorded to Brahmaputra and Barak/Meghna, substituting the major flows in the two countries so that sharing arrangements are word out with a 20 to 25 years time perspective before the commencement of the next dry season."

The last agreement was against the interest of Bangladesh, a member of the delegation said. It proves that Ershad was desperate to win over India in an effort to get Delhi's support to save his towering presidency from collapse. The October meeting coincided with the beginning of the anti-Ershad movement that finally swept him out of power last December.

To persuade Delhi to agree to go back to the June, 1990 agreement was not altogether easy. During the marathon meeting this time the point Dhaka emphasized was that the new, democratic government in Bangladesh was not prepared to accept the agreement signed by the Government of the fallen dictator in his last days.

"Happily, the Indian side accepted our argument," said the delegation member, ostensibly "in deference to the peoples' mandate given to the new government."

Although the latest round of negotiations ended with a positive note, the Indian side raised something during the talks that gave Bangladesh a real cause for concern.

New Delhi told Dhaka that it should look for alternative sources for its water needs in the future as the flow in the rivers "particularly the Ganges and the Teesta will be getting reduced progressively due to ever increasing water utilization for consumptive purpose." It can however, be replenished from Brahmaputra waters, the Indian delegation suggested.

In plain terms, it means that Bangladesh must include Brahmapurta in the future talks on water sharing with India and be mentally prepared to forget about the Ganges.