Floods in Bangladesh in 2020 have affected over one million farmers, apart from damaging crops of worth $ 156 million and floodwaters submerging  257,148 hectares of farmland.

According to UNICEF, over 3.3 million people in Bangladesh, among whom 1.3 million are children, have been rendered homeless or are living in hazardous, unsanitary conditions.

As per data available, around 10 million people in India, Bangladesh and Nepal have been affected by the floods so far in 2020.

This has been the worst flooding since 1998, which have resulted in the death of over 550 people apart from over a million being left displaced or marooned.

Experts in Bangladesh, time and again, have been blaming India for the unprecedented flooding over the years.

It may be mentioned here that India has constructed over 5,000 dams and embankments on transnational rivers.

Most of these dams and embankments affect the flow of water into Bangladesh with rivers like Teesta being reduced to narrow streams in the dry season.

And when monsoon strikes and as India open the floodgates of these dams, the added pressure causes erosion on river banks and affect the nearby settlements.

It is worth mentioning here that Bangladesh has several longstanding issues with India around the sharing of water.

The two countries, over the years, have signed a number of agreements on water sharing- the latest of which was signed in 2019.

However, the treaty has been severely criticised by the people of Bangladesh, who say that the arrangements favour India.

In a recently organised webinar, S Nazrul Islam, founder of Bangladesh Environment Network, said, "Rivers without a sustained flow of water do not have a fixed course and tend to move sideways under a sudden increase in water pressure."

"The more rivers will move sideways the worse will be the erosion," reported newagebd.net quoting Islam.

Deliberating further, Isalm said, "The water flow in Teesta remains almost absent through a part of a year before India suddenly start releasing excessive water during the monsoons."

"Similarly, numerous barrages built upstream the Ganges in India rendered the treaty for sharing water on the Ganges through the Farakka Barrage ineffective," he added.

Islam further shared data showing that there was hardly any change in water flow after the signing of the treaty in 1996.

He urged the Bangladesh government to be more assertive in realising rights of the international river water share.

He further informed that India has the third-largest number of 5,100 large and major dams in the world.

"Most of these dams have been built upstream river blocking water flows toward rivers in Bangladesh," he said.

Professor Md Khalequzzaman, who teaches geology at Lock Haven University, USA, said, "Water diplomacy should be the heart of all diplomacy of Bangladesh."

"We need to make India realise that India can not do whatever it wishes with trans-boundary rivers," he added.