The rivers and canals of Bangladesh are being made to die. Bangladesh is a country of water, where land and water are entwined and ever shifting. Monsoon rains (borsha) were once described by colonial administrators as the “blessing of fertility” of Bengal. Yet since the 1960s, the construction of permanent flood-protection embankments (beribad)—initiated during Ayub Khan’s rule with the technical assistance of Western development agencies—has fundamentally altered the hydro-ecology of the delta. These embankments have disrupted sediment flows, intensified siltation, and in many cases worsened flooding rather than preventing it. These transformations have been further exacerbated by transboundary interventions, including India’s unilateral construction of the Farakka Barrage.

Despite this history, donors and successive governments have continued to frame coastal water problems as technical deficiencies: too much silt, too much salinity, too much erosion, too little infrastructure. In this framing, the delta appears unruly and resistant to management. Yet my research on the Bengal delta shows that the problem is not an unpredictable environment, but a persistent misreading of how water, land, labour, and governance are entangled. The delta is not failing; the political and economic priorities shaping interventions within it are.

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