Two states and a river
The Cauvery waters dispute is perhaps the country’s oldest, having its genesis in the last years of the 19th century. That it should continue to embitter inter-State relations is testimony both to its remarkable longevity as well as the fact that water is so fundamental a resource where any perception of unfairness will invite protest and worse.
The first agreement on sharing Cauvery waters was signed in 1892 between the Madras Presidency and the princely state of Mysore. It was the culmination of several decades of efforts to harness the river’s water for irrigation both in Madras and Mysore, an effort delayed by drought and subsequent famine in the 1870s.
Today, Karnataka says the agreement was signed between two unequal parties, the British Raj and its dependent State, and that is why today’s Tamil Nadu got such sweeping rights over the use of waters even though it is a lower riparian state.
Other things being equal, it is an accepted practice that the state upstream usually has first use of waters.
The 1892 agreement made it clear that Madras had to clear any Mysore proposal to create irrigation reservoirs on any of the main rivers. This was an unusual, if not exceptional, concession to a lower riparian state.
The first of the disputes broke out when in 1910 Mysore planned a dam at Kannambadi village to impound 41.5 thousand million cubic feet of water. Madras refused to give consent as it too had plans for a dam at Mettur (80 tmc ft). It was eventually resolved by the agreement of 1924, but Mysore had to pay a price. Among other things, it was not to increase the acreage under irrigation by more than 1,10,000 acres over the existing area. Madras was awarded 3,01,000 acres.
The agreement was set to expire in 50 years. The dispute remained in abeyance but there were many irritants after Independence.
In the late 1960s as the expiry deadline neared, the Government of India realised the need to clear up the matter and so it set up the Cauvery Fact Finding Committee, which came up with its final report in 1974, the year the agreement expired.
On this basis, a draft agreement was drawn up by the Ministry of Agriculture but it was never ratified.
Meanwhile, Karnataka (as Mysore is now known) pointed out that Tamil Nadu had increased its irrigated area from a pre-Mettur agreement of 14,40,000 acres to 25, 80,000 acres, compared to Karnataka’s 6,80,000 acres. These figures, it said, showed the skewed nature of the pact.
Two years later, in 1976, an acceptable draft was finally ready for signing, but at this point Tamil Nadu went under President’s rule and the issue was put on the back burner. When it was lifted and elections were held, the AIADMK led by M G Ramachandran came to power and queered the pitch completely by rejecting the draft.
It insisted that the 1924 agreement only provided for an extension, not a review. It demanded a return to status quo, something Karnataka, smarting under a perceived injustice, refused to do. The matter dragged on without a solution in sight as both parties were insistent on their stands and also because it had become a sensitive public issue in both states.
In 1990, the Supreme Court instructed the VP Singh government at the Centre to set up a tribunal and refer all matters to it. Soon after it was set up, Tamil Nadu went to the tribunal and demanded a mandatory injunction on Karnataka for water release and other relief. When this was rejected, it went to the Supreme Court, which asked the tribunal to reconsider.
Pushed thus, the tribunal gave Tamil Nadu an interim award of 205 tmc ft on June 25, 1991, to run annually until a final resolution.
Karnataka protested and issued an ordinance to annul the award. But the Supreme Court stepped in and struck down the ordinance and ordered the state to comply with the tribunal. It did so but with bad grace. For the first time, however, the river waters dispute sparked severe anti-Tamil violence in Bangalore and suburbs, forcing many to flee the State in fear.
In 1997, the government of India proposed the Cauvery River Authority with far-reaching powers to implement the interim order. But Karnataka protested strongly at the proposal to give it the power to take over the dams if the interim order was not implemented. Eventually, a modified version of the CRA was set up, with greatly reduced executive powers. It would be headed by the prime minister and have the chief ministers of four states involved, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry and Kerala, as members.
From the history of the dispute it seems the drought years are when the problem flares afresh. In 1995, a drought year, the issue led to serious tensions, and the same happened in 2002, when the monsoon failed in both states. Reservoir levels fell to record lows in both. Predictably, Tamil Nadu demanded that Karnataka release the quota under the interim award. The latter retorted that it didn’t have enough for its own needs so there was no question of any release of water. It led to a prolonged show of melodrama by both sides, with chief ministers walking out or not turning up, Karnataka defying the CRA’s orders and Tamil Nadu initially refusing to allow an inspection of its reservoirs by the same CRA.
On the public front the situation had become ugly on both sides, egged on by the grandstanding of political parties. This was no longer a simple dispute capable of calm resolution; it had become an emotional issue that led to serious discord in both states.
Tamil TV channels and films were blacked out in Karnataka, and buses and other vehicles were stopped at the border. Some belligerents in Tamil Nadu blew up a transformer supplying power to Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Since then, good sense has been in short supply and both sides have displayed a stridency that was absent in earlier years.
The final award of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal was announced on February 5, 2007.
It gives Tamil Nadu 419 tmc ft, Karnataka 270 tmc ft, Kerala 30 tmc ft, and Pondicherry 7 tmc ft.
Tamil Nadu was inclined to accept but Karnataka was unhappy even though it was expected to provide only 192 tmc ft.
On the face of it the dispute is a simple one, but both sides have taken adversarial positions, and one of them is suffering from a long-standing perception of injustice. It is perhaps the perfect recipe for failure because no solution can be considered satisfactory by Karnataka if it treats the State as just another party to a dispute.