War zone Cauvery

Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are once again at logger heads over the sharing of the Cauvery waters. Why have the successive agreements failed to resolve the century-long dispute?

- Rajeshwari Ganesan & Shreeshan Venkatesh

THERE IS nothing unnatural about the Cauvery conflict. Any river that runs through different political boundaries is bound to have regions and people fighting over the resource. What is unnatural is the factors that have rendered the water-sharing agreements between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu—the two main stakeholders in the dispute—dysfunctional since they were first drafted in 1872.

This September, the conflict once again dominated the news after Karnataka refused to release water to Tamil Nadu, the downstream state. Karnataka says it cannot share water when the Cauvery reservoirs are barely able to satisfy the drinking water needs of the state. By refusing to share water, it flouted the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal (cwdt) award of 2007 that mandated a proportionate reduction in each state’s share in rain-deficit years.

This year the two states received deficit rainfall, especially around the source of the river. Tamil Nadu promptly took the matter to the Supreme Court. It maintains that its farmers growing the winter crop of paddy, or samba, are totally dependent on the Cauvery water.

The apex court has made stopgap allocations through three rulings in September. The first was on September 5, which ordered a daily release of 10,000 cubic feet per second (cusecs) to Tamil Nadu for 10 days. The order resulted in violent demonstrations in Karnataka. The clashes led to the death of two persons in Bengaluru. Curfew was imposed in several parts of the city. Both the states observed bandh