Few rivers carry as much weight, literally and otherwise, as the Ganga. It is sacred to over a billion Hindus, the backbone of agriculture and fisheries across one of the most densely populated river basins on Earth, and the freshwater lifeline that keeps the Sundarbans mangrove forest from being swallowed by the Bay of Bengal. For Bangladesh in particular, the river's health is a matter of survival.
Since India built the Farakka Barrage in 1975 to divert dry-season water toward Kolkata's port, Bangladeshi farmers, fishing communities, and the Gorai river branch have borne the cost of reduced water downstream. This grievance pushed both governments toward the 1996 Ganges Water Sharing Treaty and now drives the tension over what happens when that treaty expires on December 31, 2026.
For most of the treaty's life, the obstacle to deeper cooperation was not New Delhi's intent, but West Bengal's politics. Although treaty-making with a foreign country is the central government's constitutional right, any water-sharing arrangement still has to work through a river that runs through Indian states and West Bengal's government.
The Teesta water deal was agreed upon in theory over 10 years ago, but it was never officially signed. This was mainly because Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress party argued that the deal would leave North Bengal’s farmers with too little water. Following central governments, including the BJP after 2014, chose not to pick a fight with West Bengal's leaders. They preferred to leave things as they were rather than argue with the state government that actually controlled the river.
That dynamic has now changed in a way few South Asia watchers anticipated.
The BJP's victory in West Bengal's May 2026 assembly election, which removed the Trinamool Congress after 15 years and installed Suvendu Adhikari as the state's first BJP chief minister, means that for the first time since the Ganges Treaty was signed, the party governing the centre and the party governing West Bengal are the same.
In principle, that should remove the single biggest domestic hurdle India has faced in offering Bangladesh more generous terms: There is no longer an opposition-run state government with an incentive to resist Delhi's negotiating stance.
But removing one obstacle does not guarantee a smoother outcome, because the political landscape on the other side of the border has shifted just as dramatically.
The BJP government's working relationship with Bangladesh over the past decade was built substantially around the Awami League and Sheikh Hasina -- a relationship that collapsed when Hasina was driven from power by a student-led uprising in August 2024. That she was given refuge in India still irritates segments of Bangladeshi public opinion.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which took office under Tarique Rahman after February 2026's election, carries a longer history of strategic caution toward Delhi. Its supporters, along with the opposition Jamaat-e-Islami and the student movements behind the 2024 uprising, have little patience for a government seen as too accommodating to India.
That leaves an open and genuinely uncertain question rather than an obvious answer. Will a BJP government, newly unconstrained by West Bengal's politics, use that freedom to negotiate more flexibly with Bangladesh, recognizing that goodwill now carries less domestic political cost than it used to?
Or will it use the same freedom to negotiate from a position of strength, since there is no longer a state government it needs to manage at home?
And on the other side, can Tarique Rahman's government, without the close relationship the BJP once had with the Awami League, still extract meaningful gains?
Perhaps it can, precisely because it has more nationalist credibility to spend than Hasina's government did in its final years. Or will the absence of established trust simply make every concession harder to close?
Neither government has revealed its hand definitively, and a realistic reading of the moment should resist predicting one. However, India's main excuse for delaying is now gone because the local state government can no longer block the deal.
While this removes a big hurdle, it doesn't guarantee the new deal will be great. What matters now is whether both sides will finally fix a 30-year-old system that doesn't work anymore.
Since India and Bangladesh share a long border and depend on each other, both governments must act rationally. It should not be too much to ask to ensure millions of everyday people can live normal lives.
The Ganga River will outlive any government. It would be a tragic legacy if both countries chose to play political games right at the moment a fair deal became possible.
Protity Taufiq is a student of International relations, Jahangirnagar University.