However, our experience of Farakka Barrage has been different. Bangladesh had to wait for a long time to get a meaningful response from India. Our experience is not at all pleasant with Berubari and other similar issues either.

Coming back to what would happen in cases of lower riparian rivers such as the Surma, Kushiara and Meghna spreading the adverse effect in Bangladesh may very well be imagined from what we have experienced after years of water withdrawal in upper Assam by India during East Pakistan period, and particularly after Bangladesh was born. I was born in a village named Ballah on the bank of the Surma in Zakiganj thana and had seen in my childhood steamers plying even in winter months. But the river got silted up so much that near the old Kaliganj Bazar Indian BSF people now walk across the river to come to our side of border patrol where border pillars had been fixed during the 1960s upon agreement between Pakistan and India ignoring the internationally accepted norm of agreeing to the midstream of a river as the boundary of two independent countries. This also resulted in drying up of about six canals, which originated from the Bangladesh side of the Surma and in the last 30 years Zakiganj upazila has been deprived of enough water and alluvial soils.