Unshared waters

The perennial river issue of the South is running a predictable course once again. The Prime Minister, according to Karnataka Chief Minister J.H. Patel who met I.K. Gujral in New Delhi recently, is going to call a conference of the chief ministers of the basin states soon to resolve the conflict. The optimism voiced about the outcome of the conference by Patel is unlikely to be widely shared. It is not an unprecedented initiative that is emanating from the Prime Minister. His predecessor, Deve Gowda, had complied in the same manner with a Supreme Court directive for Central efforts for a negotiated settlement. Similar exercises had been undertaken on several occasions in the past as well. All to no avail, however, with none of these raising the fundamental questions involved in the century-old controversy of vital interest to farmers of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka (not to speak of the sidelined concerns of Kerala sought to be stressed again by Chief Minister E.K. Nayanar with little chance of success). The practice has been for the major disputants to raise the matter only when it reaches one of its recurring states of crisis and then to refrain scrupulously from anything other than an ad hoc solution. It is no different this time.

The Prime Minister has promised “impartiality” on the Centre’s part in the matter, according to Patel. This, however, cannot mean condonation of the role played by successive rulers of Karnataka in aggravating the conflict, particularly by keeping an interim issue agonisingly alive. The current stalemate is the culmination of the phase that began with the interim order of the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal for release of 205 tmcft of water to Tamil Nadu as early as seven years ago. The then Karnataka Government under S. Bangarappa reacted with a rejection of the award and connivance at anti-Tamil riots. Peace has, mercifully, been preserved on subsequent occasions, but there has been no budging from the basic recalcitrance. The issue has been revived again with all its undesirable implications after Karnataka’s rejection of a Central draft scheme for a Cauvery River Authority to monitor implementation of the award of 1991. While the scheme, devised at the directive of the Supreme Court, has been stalled, matters have been complicated further by Karnataka’s closure of the Kabini reservoir for “maintenance and modernisation”.

Experts have talked of the promising prospects of cooperation between the two states in harnessing the Cauvery, involving no harder task than introduction of new crop patterns, but without eliciting political enthusiasm. Patel now decries the “water war” and deplores politicisation of the issue by both the states. To be watched, however, is the extent to which the pious sentiment is translated into practice. It is truly remarkable the readiness of national parties to turn entirely regional on such issues. The Chief Minister’s observation has come after his leading an all-party Karnataka delegation on the Cauvery to New Delhi. A move is, meanwhile, on in Tamil Nadu for a similar all-party show of solidarity on the state’s riparian rights. Why can’t there be an all-party undertaking at the all-India level to find a national solution to the issue on the unexceptionable ground that every Indian river is a national resource?