Chennai: Between June 2, 1990, when the Centre notified the constitution of the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal (CWDT) and June 1, 2018, when the Union Water Resources ministry notified the ‘Cauvery Water Management Authority (CWMA)’ scheme to give effect to the Tribunal’s decisions as modified by Supreme court’s February 16, 2018 final order, 28 years elapsed for the legal process to reach a closure even if the litigations meandered since early 1970s’.
By any reckoning, the Cauvery waters dispute has been one of the most protracted inter-state river water tangles, wherein farmers and leaders of the two principal basin states Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, besides Kerala and Puducherry, unable to arrive at an acceptable distress sharing formula in a bad monsoon year, finally took recourse to a legal remedy that binds all. When rains pound with the fragrance of the earth, as it seems this year, none can stop Cauvery’s flow with the Central Water Commission monitoring on a real-time basis.
But any Insurance is with a bad year horizon in view. The Central notification specifying the “functions, powers and duties” of the Authority are, and functions of the ‘Cauvery Water Regulation Committee (CWRC)’, which will be the implementing body and the New Delhi-based Authority’s point-person at Bengaluru, has at last raised hopes of an assured, periodic quantum of water for delta irrigation for Tamil Nadu farmers. Thankfully, the apex court has closed all the Cauvery cases, at least for the next 15 years.
The CWRC has been enjoined to meet “once in ten days during the months of June and October when the Southwest and Northeast monsoon set in.” Going by the order it should have already had its first sitting in Bengaluru to decide when Mettur dam, the gateway to Tamil Nadu, is to be opened for releasing water, in the backdrop of the traditional release date of June 12 set for the purpose.
However, with a new government just settling down in Karnataka, it is using this to buy time to nominate its representatives both to the Authority and to the CWRC. Tamil Nadu government was initially helpless, but with the rains now, prospects for ‘Kuruvai’ paddy have brightened, even as the Centre has also indicated it would take time for the new CWMA and CWRC to be fully in place.
Amid the euphoria of having finally got something legally tangible after nearly five decades - despite the politics over the Cauvery issue and political observers even doubting whether the CWMA notification would have come so promptly had the BJP formed the government in Karnataka - farmers’ and their representatives in Tamil Nadu were led to believe that the water-sharing process will be a matter of automaticity from day one.
Unfortunately, that is not to be. First, both these top bodies are yet to be fully constituted. The bureaucratic wheels have their own laws of motion. Secondly, even a cursory reading of the Central government gazette would show that the implementation steps to end in actual outcomes of periodic release of Cauvery water, presupposes a huge amount of stage-setting by all the basin states.
Just sample a few provisions and it would show us the enormous responsibilities the Authority has to carry on its head henceforth. At the beginning of every ‘water year’ namely, June 1, the CWMA would have to “determine the total residual storage in the specified reservoirs”. The notification itself says there are some inherent limitations to this exercise and so “it will assume inflows will be according to 50 per cent dependability basis”, taking a current annual yield of 740 tmcft in the overall Cauvery basin, where average inflows have only declined.
Nevertheless, the gazette says, “the share of each state will be determined on the basis of the flows so assumed together with the available carry-over storage in the reservoirs. The withdrawals will be allowed during the first time interval of ten days of the season on the basis of the share worked out for each party state, limited to the water requirements during the same period, indicated by each party state by placing an indent of water demand with Cauvery Water Regulation Committee (CWRC).” Getting this June 1 arithmetic right every year may need a quasi-Ramanujan genius.
In fact, the gazette itself says, “for giving effect to the aforesaid provision, the Authority may have to repeat this exercise for two or more time intervals.” This implies that it would at least take one full irrigation year for the implementation mechanism to get operationally robust. Equally important, each ‘party state’ has to give an ‘indent’ to the CWRC in advance on the water needs for that season. This would be based on the crops, coverage area, etc. Will farmers be able to say all this upfront given their financial vulnerability and climate change factors?
The second crucial aspect - though as some veteran farmers’ leaders like Mannargudi S Ranganathan were pressing for the Authority taking over the control of all the irrigation dams in the basin - is that the important reservoirs in the river basin, namely “Banasurasagar in Kerala, Hemavathy, Harnagi, Kabini and Krishnarajasagara in Karnataka, and Lower Bhavani, Amaravathy and Mettur in Tamil Nadu “shall be operated in an integrated manner by the concerned State under the overall guidance of the Authority.”
Does this mean that Tamil Nadu cannot even open its own Mettur dam in farmers' interests if there is enough storage, unless it crystallises with a pattern of operating all the main reservoirs in the entire basin? Thus, it would still be baby steps in knowing the implications of such niceties for individual states vis-a-vis the Authority. Again, at the beginning of the irrigation year, the “indent for the supplies required” has to be placed by each state at the respective reservoir site, says the notification. It implies each state having its back-up infrastructure for crop planning, forecast and communication systems, though the Agriculture department, in conjunction with PWD, has been setting out the crop water needs.
Farmers leaders and water experts like Mannargudi S Ranganathan and Prof S Janakarajan, who have given almost their entire lifetime for this issue, were basically correct when they slammed fledgling politician Kamal Haasan for suggesting the dialogue mode with Karnataka at this stage of the Cauvery saga, for it will take at least a year to come to grips with implementing the final order of the Apex court. The Central government also gets a new role under this scheme.
Talks could be premature, unwise, even inadvisable and ‘sub judice’ now. But given the enormity of the issues involved, dialogue between the basin states' representatives would be relevant later, in getting this new ‘CWMA’ and ‘CWRC’ juggernauts moving smoothly for all. It should set a benchmark for a new cooperative federalism in water sharing among states. At that level, people-to-people trust would be as important as hide-bound legal certainties.
