Chance of dispute resolution in Cauvery wiped out by politics

A more excruciating blow could not have been struck against the waters of the Cauvery River. The decision was so blatantly political as to raise fundamental questions over whether a government at the Centre, once in power, has to be nationalistic or should it be driven by the ruling party priorities and be rabidly political in pursuing power.

The shelving of the Cauvery Management Board is a politically-inspired body blow from which the sacred Cauvery will never recover. The slim chance of settling the bitterness over a century plus-old issue has just been wiped out.
The ruling party at the Centre could not get over its lust for power in Karnataka.

The political logic is there for all to see. The BJP is far nearer to power in Karnataka than in Tamil Nadu. It would not be a stretch to say that the national ruling party could be only two years away from grabbing power in the upper Cauvery state while power in the Delta state could be ages away. The grip of the Dravidian duopoly is such no national party has a fair chance of getting to Fort St George except by hanging on to the coattails of one of the two majors.

It may make political sense then that the BJP threw its weight behind Karnataka on the Cauvery issue after having given an undertaking in the top court that it would abide by the orders and form the CMB. The top court was taken by surprise too as the ink on its order to form the CMB by October 4 was hardly dry when the Centre accepted it only to go back in a stunning U-turn a stunt driver in a movie would find difficult to replicate. A nose for power was the national party’s failing, but then, as they say, the BJP is not from another country or another Planet. It is an Indian political party.

Where the shelving of the CMB leaves the Cauvery is the water war will go on forever. Why the management board sounded such a good idea was that a central authority would have taken over the river and all the dams on the Cauvery and its tributaries and distributaries in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The central gathering of data and its dissemination would have taken out the question of bias. Much like neutral umpires in cricket, this would have ensured transparency because the figures churned out by state authorities are bound to be suspect in the eyes of others with a claim to a legitimate share of the water.

The Bhakra Beas Management Board has been a shining example for the sharing or river waters, storing them when needed and releasing them to serve five states – Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi - plus Chandigarh government.

In 50 years we have not heard of any bickering over how the power generated is used or the water shared in irrigating 10 million acres in three states. When a retired Test cricketer was its chairman, a load of national print media journalists had the opportunity to gasp at the sheer marvel of one of the highest gravity dams in the world. This conducted tour took place 40 years ago and in all that time we have only had reason to wistfully admire what is possible in inter-state cooperation in enjoying the largesse of nature as it provides a lifeline in water.

Had a CMB been formed and given the same sweeping powers to govern the use of water as a hydroelectric source, for irrigation and drinking water purposes in good times and bad, we may not have had to fight in each bad year. No one denies that distress must be shared, but that too must have a legal basis in a tested formula that lower riparian states may learn to trust. In denying the very formation of the CMB on the basis of abstruse legal arguments that were somewhat too quickly accepted by a judiciary, which too must be quite vexed with having to adjudicate such an emotional matter, there is not even a fresh starting point to dispute resolution. Let’s not forget this Cauvery issue began in the 1880s with a proposal for a dam in the Mysuru kingdom.

The Cauvery water is by no means the only one causing heartaches in the peninsula. Historically, the Cauvery is a warning rather than an example as the states of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana battle over the waters of the Krishna River in the Supreme Court. If that sounds complicated, imagine what agony the Bramaputra and the Indus are going to cause in the near future as rivers that flow across countries rather than states. And that brings us right back to the predictions about water provoking World War III.