Water issues to be key signpost in Party Manifestos

Chennai: Election manifestos of political parties, over the last nearly five decades in Tamil Nadu, have by and large been a game of one-upmanship over how well one could reorganise ‘populist’ redistribution of public money.

The party manifestos’ pro-poor stance, right from the days of the DMK’s founder-leader C.N. Annadurai to the latest ‘Amma Unavagamas’ under the J. Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK regime, have drawn their rationale not just from a Robin Hood image — as Anna’s famous one-liner put it, ‘tax the rich and pat the poor’. It is also backed by a pragmatic view of public finance that a shrewd combination of public expenditure and easing access to welfare/utility goods tends to narrow social imbalances, not to speak of their spin-off effects for other sectors of the economy.   

While the debate over the relevance of freebies would thus naturally continue, more so when the global economy is not doing too well and thus necessitating some domestic drought-proof measures, one other critical set of issues that is bound to take centre-stage in the party manifestos for the 2016 Assembly polls in Tamil Nadu is water resources-centric.

It is not just due to the devastating greater Chennai floods of December 2015, as water-related issues engulf the entire state. Thus, when the ruling AIADMK in its stock-taking through the recent Governor’s address to the concluding session of the 14th Assembly, emphasised two ‘historic achievements’ of Ms Jayalalithaa as Chief Minister – her “perseverance and concerted efforts” in securing the Supreme Court’s nod to raise the water level in the Mullaiperiyar reservoir to 142 feet, the lifeline of six agriculture-based southern districts, and in getting the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal’s Final Award gazetted by the Government of India in February 2013, it was no mere self-congratulation.

This would be borne out by a seminal publication of the late 1980s — in fact now a legacy of the Dr P.C. Alexander era — ‘Tamil Nadu Economy, Performance and Issues’, published as a unique collaborative study of independent, distinguished economists including the late S Guhan, C.T. Kurien, A. Vaidyanathan, V.B. Athreya and others, under the aegis of ‘Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS).

Tamil Nadu, even by then, had almost exhausted ‘its limited internal potential’ for irrigation, the study pointed out and underscored how the reliability of its irrigation hinged on good relations with its immediate neighbours.

“In the case of many of the river systems, notably the Cauvery and the Periyar, what is of relevance is the rainfall in the catchment areas in Karnataka and Kerala,” it says.

Despite the initial euphoria the above two ‘legal victories’ generated, there is still considerable ground to be covered as the Centre is yet to constitute the ‘Cauvery Management Board (CMB)’ and the ‘Cauvery Water Regulation Committee’, while in the case of Mullaiperiyar, Kerala has raised fresh concerns in the apex court. In fact, the MIDS study was far-sighted when it said, that “political aspects will finally decide inter-state cooperation”, and not just the techno-economic factors.

Going beyond these two major river water issues, the Governor’s address also reiterated the AIADMK government’s commitment to get the Centre to expeditiously implement the inter-linking of the peninsular rivers- from Mahanadi-Godavari-Krishna-Pennar-Palar-Cauvery-Vaigai and then on to Gundar. The Pamba-Achankovil-Vaipar link is also hanging in the balance despite a feasibility study already done on the latter by National Water Development Agency. The Governor also stressed the need to ‘nationalise’ all Inter-state rivers.

These core water-related issues flagged by the Governor — which is basically the policy stance of the government in power — are significant pointers to the future as Tamil Nadu’s agriculture gets more vulnerable. Trying to resolve these water-centric issues would be a challenge to the next government, irrespective of the party that wins, as it would bring out the other side of ‘cooperative federalism’, a principle that the main Dravidian parties here have often sworn by. It relates to how well we iron out differences between States, whether it is the Cauvery, Mullaiperiyar or the proposed much more ambitious peninsular rivers’ water grid.

But is the inter-linking of the peninsular rivers technically feasibly at all in the first place? The peninsular rivers inter-link project is “feasible”, says veteran groundwater expert Dr P M Natarajan, a working group member of the Tamil Nadu Planning Commission.

Sharing his findings, based on official data, on this issue with the DC, Dr Natarajan said,  “there is enough water in Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna and Pennar rivers” to help bridge the demand-supply gap in Tamil Nadu.

Already a water-deficient state for a population of 76.66 million (2015), Tamil Nadu now annually needs 2,707 tmcft of water and 3,699 tmcft in the year 2050 for a projected population of 104.75 million, going by WHO norms of per capita water requirement, he said. With the available water resources of 1,643 tmcft, Tamil Nadu might be able to at best improve it ‘ultimately to 2,000 tmcft’ through better water management practices and rainwater harvesting, he said.

Thus, the shortfall would go up from 1,064 tmcft now to 1,699 tmcft by 2050. The demand-supply gap would only widen further after the year 2050, he said.  
On the other hand, the sharable surplus in the Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna and Pennar rivers, which is 5,138.26 tmcft of water now, would still be 4,301.31 tmcft in 2050 after factoring the respective states’ growing demands, he said.  

And unlike the Ganga-Cauvery link, which needs astronomical sums as water from the Ganges would need to be pumped from a ‘great height’ over long distances, in this project, “the water can be transferred by force of gravity,” thus avoiding huge costs, Dr Natarajan added. But the political will to pursue it is an aspect for the parties’ poll manifestos to ponder.