Fraud on the farmer

Vajpayee began by patting himself on the back for this "historical development". If that were true, then surely all the required "cooperation and statesmanship" he appealed for had already been obtained; why appeal to the CMs to now display these sterling qualities? Simply because neither CM knows how to measure flows. Nor does the Prime Minister. All three are blissfully ignorant of the technicalities. And while Karunanidhi’s experts tell him that, since the "historic development" in August, Karnataka has withheld 8 tmc thatwas Tamil Nadu’s due, Patel’s experts say, sorry, we released by mistake 16 tmc more than was due. How can such technical issues be resolved by three transient politicians? And what has the monitoring committee of the political Authority been doing since August if they cannot even come up with an agreed formula for measuring flow? In what then does Vajpayee’s claim to history as the Great Reconciler lie?

Even on the wholly non-technical issue of whether the flow should be measured at the outlet point of Billigundlu in Karnataka or at the inlet point of Mettur in Tamil Nadu, neither Chief Minister agrees with the other — and Vajpayee is left gawking at both. What kind of implementation is this that the Authority knows neither how to measure what it is to monitor nor even where to measure it?

There is no statesmanship to this bogus accord; there is only politics at its grossest. Karunanidhi signed the document to secure reassurance that Vajpayee would not sack his government at Jayalalitha’s behest. Allthree of them — Vajpayee, Karunanidhi, Patel — knew exactly what they were doing: political pork-barrelling that changed nothing in regard to the ground realities of the continuing Cauvery dispute, but solved for the moment the different political problems of each.

If disagreement has not already blown up the face of the Authority, it is because the accord has entered into force in the interim between the summer kuruvai crop and the next thaladi (follow-up) or samba winter crop. The desperate need for water is in June-July and November-December. Which is why the crises of 1993 and 1995 were in July and December respectively. In a crisis, the CMs cannot just pack up and go home, leaving it to a distracted Prime Minister to come up with some face-saving formula. It was in recognition of this that the implementing authority was initially conceived as a technical body located in the area of the Cauvery basin and meeting on a virtually day-to-day basis, as required. Instead, what Vajpayee delivered in Augustwas a political body located in far-away Delhi and incapable of meeting more than once in a blue moon and that too for not much more than a photo opportunity. This sleight of hand is being passed off as "statesmanship".

The problem is not Vajpayee’s creation. He inherited the tangle. There is something heroic about his earnest endeavours to untangle it. That said, it needs to be examined whether the claims he is making for himself amount to hyperbole or hypocrisy. Vajpayee knows that the essence of the interim award of the Cauvery Tribunal lies not in the annual quantity of water that is guaranteed to Tamil Nadu but the week-by-week schedule of mandatory releases, especially during the critical farming months. The award specifies that any shortfall in one week has to be made up the following week.

The Vajpayee formula politicises a fundamentally techno-administrative matter. Remember, Vajpayee was not required to find a just and equitable solution to the dispute. That scrupulously judicious solution wasembodied in the Tribunal’s award given seven years ago. The solution was then certified as Consti-tutionally correct and legally proper by the Supreme Court. All that remained was for the Central government to implement a decision which they had no power to change. It is that implementation which has already run aground. Not even in the easiest part of the year, August-September, has the Vajpayee Authority satisfied either state that the accord is actually being implemented. What then is Vajpayee’s "achievement"?

Come December, the critical month for the watering of the winter crop, and Vajpayee is likely to have so many more problems on his lap that he might try to marginalise the Cauvery dispute as just one among many others. If the cyclonic north-west monsoon, which will arrive in Tamil Nadu in full fury this month, were to lash the Cauvery delta, Vajpayee might just succeed in escaping Jayalalitha’s censure. But if the November cyclone causes only damage, without swelling the rivulets of the delta, thenlike the soothsayer in T.S. Eliot’s Waste Land, I foresee "death by drowning" for the Vajpayee government. Karunanidhi is committed to an impotent, toothless, fraudulent Authority; Jayalalitha is not. Jayalalitha, however, is allegedly Vajpayee’s ally and the DMK his government’s loyal Opposition. Should the implementation of the Cauvery Tribunal award continue to be as inefficient, incompetent and insincere as it has thus far been, Vajpayee will either have to switch his affections to Karunanidhi or meet a stern reckoning at the hands of the AIADMK.

The answer to Vajpayee’s woes might, perhaps, lie in the BJP switching from the Saraswati Vandana to the Indra Vandana, god of thunder, lightning and rain. For that might just enable Vajpayee to survive the coming winter of the Cauvery’s discontent. And that is when the full extent of the Cauvery fraud will stand revealed. For the Tribunal’s final award is scheduled for April, before the sowing of the summer kuruvai crop. Vajpayee, Karunanidhi and Patel havealready agreed that at that point the Vajpayee Authority will cease to be. Karnataka will then return to its shenanigans over implementing the final award, as they did over the interim award. Karunanidhi will then once again don his most xenophobic Tamilian mask. And Vajpayee can comfort himself that long before the Supreme Court validates the final award and disposes of Karnataka’s devious delaying devices, he would have moved far, far from Race Course Road deep into the footnotes of history.