As the 30-year term of the 1996 Ganga Water Treaty between India and Bangladesh approaches its conclusion, discussions about its future are gathering momentum. Much of the public debate is about whether the treaty will be renewed or revised. But a more consequential question is, what kind of agreement will it be? The political, institutional and ecological conditions that produced the 1996 treaty are vastly different. The negotiations are likely to be about much more than water sharing at Farakka.The 1996 treaty had a single-point agenda of water sharing, following India’s decision to build the Farakka barrage. The treaty provided a flow-dependent water-sharing arrangement that includes a 50:50 pro-rata sharing when the flows at Farakka dip below a limit. Bangladesh has often expressed its dissatisfaction about not receiving its due share during the dry seasons.AdvertisementThe next Ganga Treaty is not likely to be restricted to this one specific transborder issue. It will transcend territories and borders, within and outside, enlarging the scope of negotiations. The negotiations will be challenging, especially given the new political realities in Bangladesh. But they can also offer new opportunities for robust water diplomacy and enduring relations between India and Bangladesh.There are two reasons why the negotiations will have an expanded agenda.First, politics have become more complex. The 1996 treaty, signed after decades of deliberations, reflected a particular political moment of relatively stable bilateral relations. The treaty emerged from sustained Track 1 and Track 2 engagements that built trust and goodwill. Today, the negotiations are likely to be shaped as much by domestic political dynamics as by bilateral diplomatic considerations. Dhaka will find it challenging to navigate the antagonistic sentiment towards India at home. In India, too, the federal politics surrounding Ganga water-sharing are no less complex. West Bengal’s resistance prioritising its own needs and Bihar’s allegations of siltation upstream of Farakka leading to floods will both pose challenges.AdvertisementSecond, the agenda has expanded beyond Farakka. Besides the Teesta, the recent protracted source of tension, disagreements over multiple shared rivers in the past three decades will impact the negotiations. Further, the concerns are unlikely to be just about water-resources sharing and development. The scope will expand to growing water-related risks, with greater uncertainty due to climate change. Climate change pushes the agenda beyond bilateral water allocations to regional-level responses to managing Himalayan glaciers, hydrological extremes, ecosystem resilience and shared vulnerabilities.These changes have a few critical practical implications for the negotiations.First, there is a need to avoid what political geographers call the “territorial trap” — the assumption that negotiations occur between the two sovereigns, represented by Delhi and Dhaka. Water diplomacy cannot be separated from internal diplomacy efforts, both in India and Bangladesh. Dhaka must figure out a way to navigate the polarised politics within. Further, posturing has its limits as a bargaining strategy. Signalling closer engagement with China in the Teesta basin may strengthen Bangladesh’s negotiating position in the short term, but it also risks securitising negotiations and narrowing opportunities to explore mutual benefits. As the downstream riparian, Dhaka’s long-term interests are better served through stable cooperation than through strategic posturing.India, too, will need to invest in some amount of federal diplomacy despite the conducive equations after the recent elections in Bihar and West Bengal. Getting the states on board will not be easy. Water is an emotive subject and can offer opportunities for the parties in opposition to mobilise resistance from within.Second, shared rivers create indispensable interdependencies — a less acknowledged but essential characteristic of transboundary rivers. It is not a zero-sum game when water-sharing considerations accompany those of coping with collective risks. The negotiations must build on this for an enduring bilateral relationship. The interdependencies may not always be bilateral. They may transcend to become regional in character. Framing it as interdependencies shifts the focus to shared gains. Better management of floods, fisheries, inland navigation for trade, improved flood forecasting, and joint ecological restoration efforts could create benefits that extend beyond questions of water allocation.Third, an enabling response to the first two is to invest in institutional avenues. Both India and Bangladesh will need to invest in appropriate institutional processes to channel polarised domestic politics in support of negotiations. Bilateral institutions need revisiting as well. Earlier institutional choices of the overarching Joint Rivers Commission and the Joint Committee for implementing the Ganga Treaty will not be adequate. They were conceived to implement agreements, not to manage uncertainties. The changed realities and greater uncertainties, including water availability, will need robust and resilient transborder institutions to address the enhanced scope of issues — water sharing, data collection and monitoring, dispute resolution, responding to risks, etc.you may likeFinally, both countries will have to reinvent the political capital that made the 1996 treaty possible, and reinvest in it. The treaty negotiations can be a means to do it. Alongside Track 1 diplomacy, both countries should encourage Track 2 dialogues to generate ideas, sustain dialogue and build intellectual and political constituencies to support the dialogue. The 1996 treaty benefitted from such engagement. The Centre for Policy Research was among those at the forefront of such initiatives and contributed to developing a working draft of the treaty.The negotiations can offer an opportunity to revisit the regional vision that India and Bangladesh jointly championed when SAARC was conceived. The institutional form may have to evolve beyond SAARC, but the underlying strategic rationale has become stronger. The next Ganga Treaty, therefore, presents an opportunity not merely to renew a bilateral water-sharing arrangement but to reimagine a regional strategic vision to address challenges of this new age of shared vulnerabilities and fragmented global economy.The writer is president and chief executive, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. Views are personal