The High Court ruled in 2019, defining rivers as ‘living entities’ which implies that rivers have the same rights as human and ordered the state to protect that rights by putting criminals engaged in river filling, pollution and encroachment behind bars. However, that order is still now confined in papers. Even though, the National River Protection Commission began eviction drives after identifying approximately 66,000 river encroachers in 2019 and 2020, the efforts were too small to give back the rivers their youth. Consequently, the living entity river is currently experiencing an existential crisis. Dying rivers of Bangladesh have been putting its identity as a riverine country at risk.

For centuries, people of this delta received enormous benefits from the rivers. From agriculture to consumption habits, from transport to business, from lifestyle to culture, everything was once reliant upon rivers. But we have now deviated from that way. Being still dependent on agriculture very much, we are reluctant to the factor that prepares the base for bumper harvest making the soil so fertile. We have developed an overwhelmingly road-based transport system by constructing bridges and embankments on rivers interrupting their natural course, whereas polluting river water has become a very common scenario in our country. Moreover, making the life of a river more suffocating, some greedy influential persons are constantly trying to grab riverbanks and construct structures for their personal benefits.

All of these have left no alternative for rivers but to die and leave a serious threat to our eco-system and environment. As we know that nature takes revenge and the rivers are also taking revenge in their way. The volume of groundwater in storage is decreasing in consequence of its over extraction instead of using natural sources like rivers.

Oftentimes, the government and other authorities took some temporary steps but most of them proved inadequate; actually, no short-term initiative is effective as far as reviving our rivers is concerned. They should make necessary long-term plans to take proper care of the rivers. The government has a strategic plan: ‘Delta Plan 2100’ that offers a major opportunity for climate compatible development. Though we know little about it, we hope that it includes a detailed effective sketch to save the rivers in the largest delta of the world. However, in the meantime, keeping the lifelines of our people uncared for would be suicidal.