We are concerned for more than one reason; most primarily, for the unmitigated disaster that the project might bring about that has been echoed not only by experts and environmentalists from Bangladesh; the fear of an environmental disaster of the dam is shared equally by the Indian experts, particularly from its Northeast.

Rivers are our lifelines and their unpredictable behaviour is a gamble we have to take every year. The consequence of the Farakka barrage on our life system brings into stark focus the dangers of tinkering with nature. And this reality was brought out immensely clearly at a seminar organised by several Bangladeshi non-government organisations and participated by water experts and environmentalists of the countries of South Asia and other countries including China that was held in Dhaka recently.

We feel that there is much merit in involving all the stakeholders in a project like this. And where countries are undertaking planning and projects based on basin system one wonders why we as a stakeholder of the Brahamaputra basin system should have been left out of a project that involves integrated management of water resources and which also has the potential of serious consequences on the ecology of the region.

It is also worrisome that not enough information gets to be exchanged in matters related to management of common water resources when there is indeed a mechanism in the form of the Joint Rivers Commission (JRC) in existence. While there is a need for further reinvigorating the JRC, it would also be well for the Bangladesh government to express our apprehension to India not only about the deleterious consequences of the project for Bangladesh as well as the people of the Indian Northeast, the fact that we were not even consulted must be strongly registered with the Indian government.