Canals, climate and continuity: BNP to revisit Zia-era idea, but with higher stakes this time

Illustration: TBS

In the late 1970s, during the dry months before the monsoon, villagers across rural Bangladesh lined up before dawn along half-dead canals, spades on their shoulders and food tins in hand. Under Food-for-Work schemes launched during the presidency of Ziaur Rahman, labourers were paid in grain to dig silt out of canals that had stopped carrying water.

By the following rainy season, many of those canals held water again, feeding fields, reviving small fisheries and, in places, allowing boats to pass where none had moved in years.

Nearly five decades later, canal excavation is back at the centre of Bangladesh's political imagination.

This time, the argument is not only about irrigation and employment, but also climate adaptation. Leading the revival is Tarique Rahman, who has pledged in Bangladesh Nationalist Party's (BNP) election manifesto that a future government led by the party would excavate or re-excavate up to 20,000 kilometres of canals and rivers.

The proposal taps into a powerful memory of visible, labour-intensive development. It also arrives at a moment when Bangladesh is grappling with more intense rainfall, recurring floods, dry-season water scarcity, and the steady loss of its natural drainage systems.

The question now is not whether canals matter — experts broadly agree they do — but whether such an ambitious pledge can be designed and governed well enough to deliver lasting benefits under today's far more complex hydrological and political realities.

The political pitch

Defending the plan, Saimum Parvez, Special Assistant to BNP Chairperson's Foreign Affairs Advisory Committee, links the proposal directly to President Ziaur Rahman's earlier programme.

"Ziaur Rahman's canal excavation programme ushered in a transformative era in Bangladesh's irrigation system and agricultural production," he says.

Building on that legacy, he argues, the new plan aims to ensure water flow for irrigation while also generating environmental, economic and social returns.

Parvez says the party sees canal excavation as a multi-dimensional intervention. Alongside irrigation, he points to fisheries, local employment, tourism potential, and improved connectivity through restored river navigation.

"We believe canal excavation can bring about a major transformation, with a significant positive impact on Bangladesh's economy," he further says, adding that expanded fish production could strengthen food security and dietary diversity.

The proposal is closely tied to river restoration. Parvez argues that Bangladesh has lost hundreds of rivers since independence and that reviving navigability could help the country reclaim its river-centric transport system. 

The plan, he says, envisions excavating canals and restoring rivers over a combined length of 20,000 kilometres, implemented in phases over five years rather than all at once. Initial months would focus on mapping, prioritisation and technology choices, before scaled-up execution.

He also highlights employment generation and community-based maintenance as central pillars, with tree planting along canal banks and fish cultivation within canals meant to support local livelihoods. 

This echoes economist John Maynard Keynes' theory that the government should engage in deficit spending to fund massive public works projects, thus not just improving infrastructure, but also putting cash directly into the pockets of the people who are most likely to spend it immediately.

Even the large volumes of excavated soil, Parvez suggests, could be put to use domestically in chars and coastal islands — or potentially exported for land reclamation.

Why experts welcome the idea — up to a point

Among water and climate specialists, there is broad agreement that restoring canals and their connections to rivers and wetlands can play a constructive role in Bangladesh's climate response.

Md Sarwar Hossain, an associate professor at the University of Glasgow, frames canal excavation as a form of nature-based solution.

Re-establishing connectivity between wetlands and rivers, he argues, can help store excess water during heavy rainfall — whether from cloudbursts or sudden upstream flows from transboundary rivers — while also reducing water scarcity during drier periods.

"The ecological and geographical conditions of 1977–81 were not the same as today's. At that time, only the Farakka Barrage on the Ganges had come into operation. There were no Indian dams or barrages upstream of rivers like the Teesta, Gomti, Muhuri, Khowai, Someshwari, or Piyain, and there were no Chinese dams upstream of the Brahmaputra either. The situation today is very different, and canal excavation carried out in the same way as in the '70s may not work under current transboundary water constraints."

Sheikh Rokon, general secretary, Riverine People

Done well, such interventions can bring multiple benefits at once: mitigating flood risks, supporting irrigation and fisheries, and protecting biodiversity. In a country where concrete-heavy drainage has often displaced natural storage, restoring canals can reintroduce flexibility into the water system.

Civil society voices echo that assessment. 

Sheikh Rokon, general secretary of Riverine People, a civil society initiative promoting citizen stewardship of rivers, estuaries and other inshore wetlands in Bangladesh, argues that reviving small rivers and canals has become unavoidable. Retaining water across the landscape during the monsoon, he says, would improve year-round water use, benefit agriculture and fisheries, and generate positive ecological effects.

In that sense, the experts say, political instinct is broadly aligned with scientific thinking: Bangladesh does need to restore its degraded network of canals and waterways.

The agreement ends, however, when discussion turns to scale, sequencing and governance.

"Poorly designed canal excavation can actually increase vulnerability rather than build resilience," says Hossain.

"This is a time- and resource-intensive intervention that requires a systems approach, combining scientific analysis with locally led knowledge and co-design involving both national and local stakeholders. Rolling out such a programme nationwide all at once would be risky. A phased approach that prioritises highly vulnerable areas — such as the drought-prone Barind Tract and the flood-exposed southern and north-eastern wetlands — would be far more effective," he explains.

There is also the political reality of short planning cycles. Large environmental interventions often outlast a single parliamentary term. Without mechanisms to lock in long-term commitments, Sarwar warns, targets set in one manifesto can easily be abandoned when governments change.

Rokon raised even more questions. He notes that public statements and manifesto language remain unclear on whether the promised 20,000 kilometres refer to canals, rivers or a combination of both — and whether the work would involve new excavation or the restoration of existing waterways. Without detailed documentation, he says, meaningful assessment is impossible.

He also cautions against romanticising the past. When Ziaur Rahman's canal programme was implemented between 1977 and 1981, upstream conditions were fundamentally different.

"It is important to remember that the ecological and geographical conditions of 1977–81 were not the same as they are today," says Rokon. "At that time, only the Farakka Barrage on the Ganges had come into operation. There were no Indian dams or barrages upstream of rivers like the Teesta, Gomti, Muhuri, Khowai, Someswari or Piyain, and there were no Chinese dams upstream of the Brahmaputra either. The situation today is very different, and canal excavation carried out in the same way as in the 1970s may not work under current transboundary water constraints."

That concern is shared by Maminul Haque Sarker, a senior adviser on river, delta and coastal morphology at Center for Environmental and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS). He takes direct aim at what he sees as a fixation on headline numbers. Dredging, he argued, is not an objective in itself but a tool that must serve clearly defined goals — whether flood mitigation, drainage, irrigation, or navigation.

Without that clarity, Sarker warns, large-scale excavation risks becoming another expensive "white elephant". Bangladesh has seen ambitious dredging claims before, he notes, with significant spending and limited lasting impact. Area-based planning grounded in hydrological realities is essential; otherwise, excavation can even worsen problems by disrupting flows or narrowing natural channels.

Past experience, critics say, offers sobering lessons. During the past decade and a half, the government placed emphasis on river dredging and restoration. Yet allegations of weak governance, poor soil management and encroachment persisted, with some projects reportedly damaging wetlands and biodiversity instead of restoring them.

Back to politics: Can the gaps be addressed?

Parvez insists the BNP is mindful of the concerns. 

The emphasis on phased implementation, mapping and prioritisation, he says, is meant to avoid indiscriminate excavation. Community-based maintenance, he adds, is designed to prevent canals from re-silting or being encroached upon once work is completed.

On feasibility, Parvez rejects the idea that the 20,000-kilometre target is meant to be achieved overnight. The figure, he says, represents an overall ambition rather than a promise of immediate delivery. Progress would depend on technical assessments, available resources and institutional capacity.

Yet for many observers, the success of any future canal programme will hinge less on ambition than on governance. 

Legal protection against encroachment, credible monitoring, transparent soil management and sustained maintenance budgets will matter as much as the initial digging. Without them, even well-intentioned projects risk repeating familiar cycles of excavation followed by neglect.

Canal re-excavation is not a silver bullet for Bangladesh's water woes. But neither is it a nostalgic distraction. As climate pressures mount, restoring natural drainage and storage is increasingly seen as unavoidable.

Ziaur Rahman's programme endures in public memory because people could see and feel its effects — at least for a while. Whether Tarique Rahman's ambitious vision can translate that memory into a modern, climate-resilient system will depend on whether Bangladesh has learned enough from its past mistakes.