Cauvery: All stakeholders fail but Centre biggest culprit

B.S.Nagaraj

The more things change the more they remain the same. That has been the story of the dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over the sharing of Cauvery waters. 2002 is repeating itself now in 2012.

Ten years ago, reservoir levels in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu had plummeted. The monsoons had failed in both states. Karnataka said it had no water to share with Tamil Nadu. The then chief minister S.M.Krishna went on a padayatra in the Cauvery basin districts of Karnataka to express solidarity with farmers. Karnataka's stand was not taken kindly to by the Supreme Court with Krishna having to personally appear before it to apologise for holding in contempt the court's directions.

Things haven't been much different now. Karnataka has had a miserable monsoon and there isn't much water to share with its neighbour. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who also heads the Cauvery River Authority, summoned chief ministers Jagadish Shettar and J.Jayalalitha for a meeting to devise a solution. Release 9,000 cusecs of water every day till 15 October, he told Karnataka. In uncalled for bravado that couldn't have been sustained, Shettar walked out only to be ticked off by the apex court. The bravado vanished, and in the dead of night Shettar ordered open the crest gates of two reservoirs. And even as water started making its way to the border with Tamil Nadu, farmers in Mysore and Mandya districts began setting up highway blockades and stopping trains.

In all these decades, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu haven't learnt how to share distress. Formulae devised by the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal to manage the deficit have not been easy to apply. Emotions run high on both sides. Karnataka doesn't own Cauvery even if she is born there, but how do you tell farmers to be generous when they don't have enough. On the Tamil Nadu side, farmers have historically grown three crops in a year while their counterparts in Karnataka grow only two. But how do you convince them to be understanding.

And politicians will be politicians. So expect grandstanding -- remember Jayalalitha's Marina Beach fast in 1993 --  one-upmanship, and everything else but cool, reasoned thinking. Legal eagles will be what they are. After all they don't have to face the distraught farmer. So they will stick to constitutionality and the rule of law.

The lack of a shared long-term vision by all stakeholders has meant that the century-old riparian dispute continues to evade resolution. While there is not much to expect from politicians from the two states, the biggest failure has been that of Delhi. Its role has been to play impartial referee but partisan considerations have got the better of fair play. No prime minister has taken any initiative so far to strive for a resolution that is acceptable to all. Delhi remembers Cauvery only when inter-state tensions come to the fore.