An Analytical Review of Media Reports Context of Trans-boundary Aspects of the Teesta River Research and Text Bharat Bhushan Jamil Ahmed Editor Bharat Bhushan Technical Editor Syed Badrul Ahsan Research Associate Madhurilata Basu Shahreen Haq Ecosystems for Life: A Bangladesh-India Initiative PREFACE Bangladesh and India share three major river systems:the Ganga, the Brahmaputra and the Meghna. Along with their tributaries, these rivers drain about 1.75 million sq km ofl and, with an average runoff of 1,200 cu km. The GBM system also supports over 620 million people.Thus, the need for cooperation on trans-boundary waters is crucial to the future well-being of these millions. That is precisely the motivation for the Ecosystems for Life: A Bangladesh- India Initiative (Dialogue for Sustainable Management of Trans-boundary Water Regimes in South Asia) project. IUCN wishes to promote a better understanding of trans-boundary ecosystems between Bangladesh and India, by involving civil society in both counries and by providing a platform to discuss issues common and germane to the region. The overall goal is an improved, integrated management of trans boundary water regimes in South Asia. This four-and-a-halfyearinitiative is supported by the Minister for European Mfairs and International Cooperation, the Netherlands. Ecosystems for Life will develop, through dialogue and research, longer-term relationships between various stakeholder groups within and between the countries. It will develop a common understanding to generate policy options on how to develop and manage natural resources sustainably such that livelihoods and water and food security improve.Inter-disciplinary research studies will be conducted by bringing together experts from various fi elds from both countries so that relevant issues are holistically grasped. The initiative centres around fi ve broad thematic areas: • food security, water productivity and poverty; • impacts of climate change; • inland navigation; • environmental security; and • biodiversity conservation. The media have an important role to play in awareness raising, consensus building and internalising integrated water resources management in decision making. During the consultation processes of the project, the civil society stakeholders have identifi ed the need for involving media in the dialogue processes and emphasized that keeping the concerned people fully informed is an important strategy to deal with ‘misinformation’. It is foreseen that media activities will become more proactive as the project progresses. The engagement of media in the dialogue processes is an important strategy but due to sensitivities surrounding the project, clear protocols and guidelines need to be established for interacting with the media. Monitoring media is an essential tool to understand and analyse on how key issues relevant to trans-boundary water management are reported in national and regional media outlets. Over time it will also be a useful tool to evaluate the project’s impact on media and subsequent links to policy formulation. The main objectives of media monitoring are to provide baseline information on how the media is reporting on specifi c issues related to water and environment, to assess the scientifi c accuracy of reporting, to identify opportunities for the project to proactively engage with the media and to monitor and evaluate the infl uence of project activities on media reporting and explore subsequent links to policy formulation. The focus of this report will be the anticipated Teesta agreement. The media monitoring report will thus identify the refl ections of journalists on bilateral relations regarding trans-boundary rivers, the concerns of the people affected regarding different issues related to water management with focus on the Teesta agreement and also document the interaction of media with the scientifi c community and researchers regarding these issues. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This report is a case study of how the media in India and Bangladesh report on trans-border resource sharing between the two countries. The focus of the study is the Teesta water-sharing agreement which the two countries were expected to sign in September 2011 but were unable to do so. Expectations ran high both in India and Bangladesh on the possibility of an agreement being reached on sharing the waters of the Teesta in the lean period. India and Bangladesh have 54 rivers in common and at present a treaty exists only for one of the rivers – the Ganga. Therefore, it was thought that an agreement on the Teesta could become a model for sharing the waters of the rest of the common rivers too. However, this was not to be so as the agreement on Teesta did not fi nally come about after the last minute objections about its share of the waters raised by the Indian state of West Bengal, through which the Teesta fl ows before crossing into Bangladesh. India-Bangladesh relations which were expected to be propelled into a higher orbit after the Teesta Accord, in fact slipped a few notches following the non-starter of a visit by the Indian prime minister to Dhaka. With the West Bengal state coming up with its reservations on a possible deal between Delhi and Dhaka, the government of Bangladesh has found it diffi cult to explain why things had suddenly taken a negative turn. This report examines the hope, confusion and despair surrounding the Teesta water- sharing agreement refl ected in the Indian and Bangladeshi media in the run up to the scheduled signing of the agreement, the inability of the two governments to do so and the subsequent loss of political energy to push the agreement forward. The analysis of the media reportage is, therefore, segregated into three phases – the period of run-up to the scheduled signing of the agreement; the period of realisation that the agreement was unlikely to come through and its eventual unfolding; and the aftermath of the inability of the two governments to ink the agreement. The broad issues which were focused on were: the manner in which the media in India and Bangladesh perceived and communicated the issue; the differences in reportage in the two countries; the sources used by the media; the media’s own understanding of the issue of trans- boundary resource sharing between neighbouring countries; the extent of interaction between media functionaries and experts/researchers on trans-boundary resources; and fi nally, whether the media in India and Bangladesh could have addressed the trans-boundary resource sharing issue differently. The choice of the news media chosen for analysis ensured both national (India and Bangladesh) as well as regional coverage (the states of West Bengal and Sikkim through which the Teesta fl ows and irrigates agricultural land). In India, six English language newspapers and three Bangla newspapers were selected for content analysis in addition to four English weekly news magazines. In the case of Bangladesh, fi ve Bangla newspapers, two English language newspapers and two online news media sites were chosen for content analysis. In the run-up to the scheduled signing of the Teesta Accord, media reportage in both India and Bangladesh was situated in a co-operative framework. The media refl ected the expectation of bilateral relations moving into higher gear after the water-sharing agreement was 6 An Analytical Review of Media Reports • Ecosystems for Life signed. During this period, the Indian media even invited Bangladeshi commentators to write for their op-ed pages and editorials criticised the government for not being forthcoming enough to the friendly overtures of Bangladesh. There seemed to be no expectation of anything going amiss on the Teesta water-sharing agreement. This was the case with the Bangladesh media too, although unlike in the Indian media in general there seemed to be a recognition that the eventual agreement would depend on the Indian border state of West Bengal coming on board. In general, the media did not go into the complexities of the potential agreement. The second part of this media analysis – beginning a month before the scheduled date of the signing of the agreement and ending a month after the inability of the two governments to sign it – began in hope and ended in disappointment. However, one fi nds that media reportage in both India and Bangladesh quickly moved to analysing the reasons why the deal could not come through and its consequences for bilateral relations. A blame-game was refl ected in the media as well as arguing for a tit-for-tat attitude in the Bangladeshi press – no transit treaty without the Teesta agreement. This was equally matched by a sense of despondency that an important opportunity had been missed by the leadership of the two countries. The difference between the Delhi-based media and the West Bengal media in India was that while the former supported the water-sharing agreement and blamed the West Bengal government for throwing a spanner in the works, the West Bengal media by and large took a state centric attitude in justifying the position taken by its state government and defending its position on the anticipated agreement. The least detailed aspects of the proposed Teesta agreement in the media during this period were: the rationale on either side of the border for the water-sharing agreement, the contours of the agreement, and the strategies being explored, if any, for pushing for the agreement to take place in the near future. In the year following the inability of the two countries to sign the water-sharing deal, the Indian media focused on efforts being made by India to still push through the agreement and the pressure from Bangladesh to do so, the political fallout of not signing the agreement and the lessons learnt by Delhi on taking the views of border states into account while entering into trans- boundary resource sharing agreements with neighbouring countries.