# Koshi Agreement with India (25 April 1954)

URL: https://allhistories.com/nepal/timeline/1954-koshi-agreement-with-india
Location: Koshi Barrage, Sunsari District
Themes: Rivers, India relations

On 25 April 1954 Nepal and India signed the Koshi Agreement, authorising a barrage across the Koshi River near the border at Bhimnagar. The works, designed and built by an Indian contractor, ran from 1958 to about 1962. The structure has 56 gates and carries road traffic between eastern Nepal and Bihar. The Koshi, called the Sorrow of Bihar, floods heavily each monsoon and had destroyed farmland in both countries. India planned flood control, irrigation and hydropower. Nepal, newly open to the world and short of capital and engineers, accepted an arrangement that allowed Indian construction on its land in exchange for promised irrigation and power benefits. Many Nepalis later criticised the agreement as unequal, saying that benefits mostly went to India and that Nepalese villagers bore the costs of displacement and flooding. A revised version came in 1966. The dispute became a template for later debates about hydropower and river treaties, and the embankments breached again in August 2008. At this point in the timeline (1954), King Tribhuvan Bir Bikram Shah (18 February 1951 – 13 March 1955) was head of state of the Kingdom of Nepal, while Prime Minister Matrika Prasad Koirala (15 June 1953 – 14 April 1955) headed the government.

## Why it matters
It was the first major Nepal–India river project and set the pattern of later arguments over who benefits from Nepal's water.

Ruler at the Time: [Tribhuvan Bir Bikram Shah (restored)](https://allhistories.com/nepal/rulers/tribhuvan-bir-bikram-shah-restored)

## Sources
- [Wikipedia — Koshi Barrage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koshi_Barrage)
- [Wikipedia — India–Nepal relations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%E2%80%93Nepal_relations)