After the clouds, the lady

It was only after making a thorough nuisance of myself in Parliament that I was able to get the Prime Minister to overrule his water resources minister and furnish me with the data of actual weekly flows in relation to the weekly flow chart mandated in the award. The figures make shocking reading. In just one week, the last week of October 1999, Karnataka flooded the Mettur reservoir with a quarter (23 per cent) of the total quantity of water to be supplied through the year as a whole.

In contrast, when, according to the Tribunal’s schedule, the highest weekly requirement in the year of the delta kisans the last week of August is 17.65 tmc, Karnataka last year chose to choke off supplies at well under a third of their obligation 5.41 tmc. If we take the first two weeks of July 1999, where the award stipulates a minimum supply of 19 tmc, Karnataka satisfied itself with plugging the drain at just 2 tmc.

The Cauvery delta is being tr-eated like a water closet. When Karnataka feels like it, it pulls the flush. When it doesn’t, it doesn’t. The legal position is that, at the request of the Attorney General, the Supreme Co-urt "deferred for some time" further hearings in the case in order to enable the Union of India to "frame a scheme under Section 8A of the Act for the effective implementation of the Interim Award of the Tribunal" (emphasis added). It is now abundantly clear that what the CMA is, in fact, ov-erseeing is not the effective but the arbitrary implementation of the award.

In not one single week since the Authority was set up in August 1998 has the actual flow into the Mettur reservoir corresponded with the stipulated inflow. Of the 78 weeks for which data has been furnished to me (August 1998 to mid-March 2000), the actual flow has approximated the stipulated quantity in only 21 weeks. Seventeen of these 21 weeks have been when the inflow is least needed. Three of the remaining four weeks were in the immediate aftermath of the much-hailed establishment of the Authority, when Karnataka was on its best behaviour.

There has literally been only one week of 78 when Karnataka has actually met the urgent need of the delta kisan. That was the second week of June 1999 when the inflow into the reservoir was 2.865 tmc against the stipulated requirement of 2.371 tmc. But even in that month, Karnataka blotted its record by slashing to half what it was supposed to supply in the week immediately preceding and immediately following the solitary week in which the Authority could have been said to have ensured "effective implementation".

Karnataka knows this. Which is why they have put off attending the meeting of the Authority called by the Prime Mi-nister earlier this mo-nth. But what is Kar-unanidhi doing sitting on his haunches? The Cauvery is much more than a parochial issue of the delta. It enve-lopes the whole of the state. When, therefore, the CMA eventually meets, Karunanidhi will have to choose between playing junior partner to the Prime Minister and asserting himself as the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. For Amma is waiting in the wings. And the state assembly elections are only a few months away.

Karunanidhi owes it to his state and my constituency to denounce the CMA for the fraud it is and return forthwith to the Supreme Court with the demand that it resume its hearings on the subject. The single ground should be the abject failure of the Union of India to honour its commitment to ensure the "effective implementation" of the Tribunal’s award.

The Union Government is hiding behind a single paragraph, torn out of context, of the Tribunal’s clarificatory Order of 1995. Karnataka had sought to expunge its obligation to make up in the subsequent week any shortfall in the previous week by arguing that the deficiency be limited to the particular month in which such a deficiency occurs. Rejecting this contention, the Tribunal held that until "the deficit is made good, the deficit would accumulate". Thus, "in a particular year, shortfall or excess would have to be adjusted in an appropriate manner before the close of the particular season".

The CMA have taken this clarification as a licence for flouting at will the Tribunal’s stipulations regarding the minimum required weekly flows. Thus, when in October-November the northeast monsoon is lashing the delta with cyclonic storms, the Tribunal had limited the requirement to just 46 tmc. However, in those two months of 1999 Karnataka flooded the delta with over 121 tmc, three times the required water and well over half the supply required to be spread over the remaining 44 weeks of the year.

In close on two years since the CMA was established, it has met only once, in November 1998. That meeting was a farce. On my asking what steps have been taken to "resolve the differences between the state governments of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu as reportedly expressed at the solitary meeting held hitherto of the Cauvery Monitoring Authority", the minister of state for water resources, Bijoya Chakravarty, chose in her written reply of 17 May to keep silent. Had she opened her mouth, she would have crucified herself. Getting her to open it in the Supreme Court is Kar-unanidhi’s bounden duty. I doubt he will do it. We shall have to await the coming of the Lady to deliver justice to the delta.