<p>The study explores the social and environmental impacts of the long-standing hydro-political deadlock between India and Bangladesh in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna transboundary basin. India’s upstream actions and operational practices are widely debated as they alter natural flow patterns and increase downstream risks in Bangladesh, highlighting key responsibilities outlined in the 1997 United Nations Watercourses Convention. This situation heightens vulnerabilities in local livelihoods and constrains the capacity of riparian communities to adapt to hydrological variability, environmental degradation, and associated socioeconomic pressures. Despite these issues, research on India-Bangladesh water disputes has largely overlooked how hydro-hegemony affects the downstream communities and resilience mechanisms. With the hydropolitics framework, this analysis synthesizes secondary evidence to examine how power asymmetries and governance failures influence water scarcity and ecological decline. It also redefines hydropolitics as an intertwined social and ecological crisis rather than just a resource management issue. The findings show that unilateral water management practices cause cascading socioecological effects on downstream communities. However, these consequences cannot be attributed solely to upstream interventions; mismanagement, maladaptation, structural limitations, accountability gaps, and weak diplomatic engagement also contribute to their severity. The study concludes with policy recommendations to improve water governance in India and Bangladesh, advocating for ecocentric planning, transparent sharing of hydrological data, and cooperative actions aligned with SDG 6 on clean water and sanitation.</p>