Water experts, environmentalists, and economists on Thursday gave mixed reactions to the Padma Barrage phase-I to be built at Tk Tk 33,475 crore to offset ecological damage in Bangladesh caused by the controversial India’s Farakka Barrage across the border.
They said that economic activities would increase, creating employment if the aim of the project of supplying more fresh water in the saline-hit southwestern regions was achieved.
But instead of becoming a boon the project may prove bane if the overall management of the multi-billion-dollar infrastructure goes wrong, they said.
The mixed reactions came on Thursday after the government on Wednesday decided to implement the project aiming at rejuvenating Bangladesh’s moribund river system – Hisna-Mathabhanga, Gorai-Madhumati, Chandana-Barashia, and Baral and Ichhamati.
Water resources minister Md Shahiduddin Chowdhury Anee has already stated the project does not intend to counter the function of the cross-border Farakka Barrage -- some 300 kilometres upstream in West Bengal of India, but to improve the life and livelihoods of many people as well as the bio-diversity in the country’s southwestern region.
M Inamul Haque, chairman at Institute of Water and Environment said that many were giving observations on the proposed barrage to be built on one of the tricky rivers on earth.
Originating from the southern Himalayas in Uttarakhand, most part of the 2,510-kilometre-long Ganges River enters Bangladesh as the Padma before falling into the Bay of Bengal via the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta of Bangladesh.
Inamul Haque said that he would detail positive and negative aspects of the project in the next week.
Despite long discussions on the project, the feasibility study on the Padma Barrage was started in 2009 and completed in 2013, but the Awami League regime, which was ousted in August 2024 amid a mass uprising, had decided not to build the barrage apparently because of reservations from India.
Ainun Nishat, country’s leading water management expert and professor emeritus at BRAC University, said that much of the project remained unknown to him since his initial involvement in it was snapped during the Hasina regime.
Making general comments is unwarranted because of environmental sensitivity associated with the project, he said.
Highlighting not-too-happy experiences by Indians with the Farakka Barrage, operational since 1976, the Bangladesh Poribesh Andolan, a rights body that works on protecting environment, in a statement on Wednesday said that alternative options should be ascertained to rejuvenate the moribund river system in the southwestern region instead of building the barrage.
The Padma Barrage, like the Farakka Barrage, can spell disasters for Bangladesh, said the BAPA.
Indian media reported that the Farakka Barrage often caused floods in the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and parts of West Bengal while it largely failed to achieve its primary objective of maintaining the navigability of the Kolkata Port and the Bhagirathi-Hooghly river system.
Md Tauhid-Ur-Rahman, an environmental engineering expert at the Centre for Advisory and Testing Services of the Military Institute of Science and Technology, said that the Padma Barrage would not cause the same experience as the Farakka structure if the modern technology was applied in dealing with sedimentation in the water reservoirs.
Referring to improper management and poor maintenance turning many politically motivated and big-budget projects into white elephants in the country, economists said that same kinds of error were unwarranted with the proposed barrage.
Mohammad Safiqul Islam, chairman of the department of economics at Jahangirnagar University, said that the project aims looked good.
But, he hastened to add, the government needs to link general people of the country’s southwestern region to the barrage to eradicate many socio-economic problems in the region.
The decision of approving the 2.1-kilometre-long barrage between Pangsha in Rajbari and Sujanagar in Pabna was an electoral pledge of prime minister Tareque Rahman made during his campaign in Rajshahi before the February 12 Jatiya Sangsad polls.
ANK Noman, chairman of the department of economics at the University of Rajshahi, expressed doubt about the economic benefits while recommending for a greater scrutiny of the project.
