“The rights of the river means the rights of the people who live on the bank of it. About managing the flow of rivers, Dr Nishat said the average annual flow or pick flow should be never taken into consideration rather the month-by-month flows should be considered. On the Teesta River issue, he said: “Teesta has been turned into a zero-flow river.”He suggested that the solution could be to conserve the high flow during monsoon and use it in lean periods. Dr Rohan D’Souza, associate professor at Kyoto University in Japan, said large dams often ignore people’s indigenous rights to rivers. “We should be talking about the rights of rivers as it will mean talking about the rights of individuals,” he added.

Source: Dhaka Tribune January 29, 2021 11:37 UTC