With a Supreme Court Order, The Fight For the Cauvery Has Resurfaced in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu

Less than two years away from the next state assembly election, Karnataka’s chief minister K Siddaramaiah is playing his cards with caution. Now, an issue that has plagued many political leaders in the past is haunting him again: a dispute between the state and its neighbour Tamil Nadu, over the sharing the Cauvery River’s water. To ensure his political survival, Siddaramaiah appears to be repeating what two his predecessors (SM Krishna, in 2002, and Jagadish Shettar, in 2012) did: flouting the process put in place by the highest court in the country.

On 25 August 2016, citing a bad monsoon, Siddaramaiah announced that Karnataka was not in a position to release Tamil Nadu’s share of the water. This declaration triggered a new battle between the two states. Tamil Nadu approached the Supreme Court. On 5 September, the court instructed Karnataka to release 15,000 cusecs—cubic feet of water per second—from the Cauvery River to Tamil Nadu every day, for ten days, in order to save the latter’s samba crop. The court’s decision caused Karnataka to erupt in protests.

Pro-Karnataka activists called for a state-wide bandh on 9 September. “The state government has resolved not to oppose the bandh,” Siddaramaiah said on 8 September. As public transport stayed off the roads, and private and educational institutions were shut down, the state came to a standstill. On 10 September, Karnataka approached the court, and requested it to reduce to the flow from 15,000 cusecs to 1,000 cusecs a day, for six days instead of ten. Earlier today, on 12 September, the Supreme Court modified its order, asking the state to release 12,000 until 20 September instead. 

But protests and legal tussles over the Cauvery are not new to Karnataka, or even to Tamil Nadu. The 498-kilometre-long river originates in Karnataka’s Coorg district, and flushes out to the Bay of Bengal after stretching through Tamil Nadu’s lowlands. The part of its basin that is in Tamil Nadu is over 44,000 square-kilometres, and 32,000 square-kilometres is in Karnataka. (Of the remaining, about 2,800 square kilometres are in Kerala, and another 160 in the Union Territory of Puducherry.) But an agreement to share the waters of the river—and that was acceptable to the two major stakeholders—has been in the works since 1892.

As an issue which has direct ramifications on large swathes of population in two states, and which sees the involvement of political parties, the fight for the Cauvery has become part and parcel of the social and political history of the two states.

With the Western Ghats of India running through its heart, Karnataka is home to the origin of several rivers, many of which run inter-state. For centuries, before lines were drawn to form states, people along the Cauvery’s route were naturally dependent on it without any need to claim it as their own. In 1892, after a careful—and reportedly considerate—discussion the Princely State of Mysore, which later became Mysore state and then part of Karnataka, and Madras Presidency, an administrative unit under the British rule that included present-day Tamil Nadu, signed an agreement. In it, Madras was given the right to share the Cauvery.

A hiccup came in 1924 in the form of a disagreement over the construction of a dam and a reservoir at Kannambadi, now known as the Krishna Raja Sagara dam. That year, Mysore and Madras signed another agreement which prescribed rules for further construction along the river, and set down limits on extension of irrigated areas. The agreement, which was signed for 50 years, lapsed in 1974.

Between the years of 1960 and 1980, Karnataka had begun building irrigation projects along the tributaries of the Cauvery. With the construction, the volume of water available to Tamil Nadu fell, and discontent brewed.

In 1990, in response to Tamil Nadu’s grievances, the Supreme Court ordered the formation of Cauvery River Dispute Tribunal. The court charged the tribunal with adjudicating the dispute between the states. Over the next few years, as the tribunal continued deliberations, it issued an interim order to ensure water-sharing, asking Karnataka to release 205 thousand million cubic feet (TMC) to Tamil Nadu. But Karnataka contested this decision. The states continued to spar, especially during rain deficient years. In 1993, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa went on sudden fast, demanding water for the state. She gave up the fast only after the centre promised that it would monitor the implementation of the tribunal’s interim order. In 1995, due to poor rainfall, Karnataka failed to follow the order.

After nearly two decades of deliberation, in 2007, the tribunal ruled that Tamil Nadu would be the major beneficiary of the Cauvery’s water. Of the 740 TMC available every year, Tamil Nadu would receive 419 TMC. The tribunal instructed Karnataka to release 192 TMC of water to Tamil Nadu every year, and prescribed monthly quotas for the release. Both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have staked claim to more water, and the Supreme Court will hear the matter on October 17.

The latest provocation was caused by Karnataka government’s failure to release the mandated amount of water to Tamil Nadu this year. A farmers’ group I reached out to in Tamil Nadu claimed that Karnataka had released only a quarter of the total share it should have given by the end of September.

The Supreme Court, too, did not side with Karnataka. “Keeping in view the gesture shown by the Karnataka and the plight that has been projected with agony by Tamil Nadu, we think it appropriate to direct that 15 cusecs of water per day be released at Biligundulu by Karnataka for 10 days,” the court said.

According to data published by the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre, the state was 18 percent short of normal rainfall between 1 June and 15 September. Even though the deficit doesn’t appear to be large, the main catchment area of the Cauvery, in the Coorg district, got 33 percent below normal rain, the reservoirs remained only half full. In Wayanad, Coorg’s adjacent distict in Kerala, saw very little rainfall, and the Cauvery’s main tributary brought very little water for the farmers downstream.

“We are facing a severe distress year, Siddaramiah reportedly said after an all-party meeting on 27 August. “There is no water” for drinking and for the standing crops, he said, before adding, “This is the ground reality,”

In a phone conversation on 9 September, S Janakarajan, an economist, and water management expert who works at the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS), said that the Cauvery dispute is different from other inter-state water disputes in the country. “Cauvery dispute is about resharing of available river water, whereas the other disputes are mostly about sharing of surplus water,” he explained.

In its 2007 order, the tribunal had specified that the water must be shared “proportionably” between both the states during distress years—when rainfall is short. “The idea is to share gain and losses equally,” said Janakarajan. Karnataka’s attitude, he said, was “condemnable and against the spirit of CWDT order.”

Janakaranjan said that whenever there was a good rainfall, Karnataka had released excess water to Tamil Nadu, destroying the delta crops downstream.

“It is an undeniable fact that both the states need Cauvery for survival,” he said. Care should be taken to not let the row affect inter-state relations, he added, because the issue strikes an “emotional note” with the people on both sides.

Referring to the recent agitation in Karnataka, he said, “Such acts rooted in violence and supported by political parities is shaking the fundamentals of Indian democracy, while setting a wrong precedent for other states.”

In Karnataka, the water from the Cauvery River water is drawn primarily for irrigation and drinking water purposes in six of the state’s 30 districts. The farmers of Mysore and Mandya districts stand to be the most affected due to any water shortage. There is cause of worry for the Bengaluru city-dwellers as well, since the bore-wells in the city dried up at an alarming rate, the Central Ground Water Board had declared the city as an over-exploited area. For the past few years, the river has been their primary source of water.

Chukki Nanjundaswami, the acting president of the Karnataka State Farmers Movement, an organisation that works in development in rural Karnataka, dismissed the identification of the Cauvery dispute as “political.” “It is an issue of fundamental needs of human beings,” she said over the phone. “We are not demanding water for irrigation, but for drinking.”

According to Nanjundaswami, if water is released at the given rate, the situation will turn extremely grim for Karnataka farmers in the coming summer. She pointed out that, as opposed to the practice of two crops a year, paddy farmers in the affected districts are compelled to settle for a single crop, and to leave the land fallow for the remainder of the year.

Nanjundaswami also drew my attention to an issue that, she said, was often neglected in the debate around the Cauvery: the need to find sustainable agricultural practices for the farmers of Cauvery delta region.

Most farmers in the delta region in Karnataka grow paddy and sugar cane, heavily water intensive crops. In Tamil Nadu, the scenario is no different: large swaths of paddy fields lay downstream, expecting enormous amount of water supply. In a report published on India Live Today, H Shivanna, the vice chancellor on the University of Agricultural Sciences in Bengaluru, said that several farmers in the region are abandoning sugarcane farming and are shifting to paddy, which needs relatively less water.

“Every year, the level of rain deficit is increasing. In changing times, the government must aid and advice farmers in opting for water efficient crops such as millets,” Nanjundaswamy said.

Echoing Janakranjan, Nanjundaswami said that the issue has always been one that elicits “emotional sentiment” from people of both states. She suggested farmers from both states should sit together and find solutions.

A Narayana, a professor of political philosophy and law and governance at the Azim Premji University in Bengaluru believes that the entire movement “lacks direction.” “Karnataka’s argument have never been bought at the political and legal circles in Delhi,” he said, adding that the people of the state have always felt that they were on the losing side of the debate.

Narayana said that while the bandh on 9 September was a result of the “genuine anger” of the Kannadigas, those protesting the tribunal and the Supreme Court decisions did not appear to be clear on the solutions they sought. “If the whole idea is to create pressure, it is not clear to whom it is directed at,” he said. “Is it on Supreme Court? Tamil Nadu? Or the central government.” He added: “Instead there is a need to present the problems in a realistic way, and find solutions.”

Instances of both states coming to a consensus or sitting down to talk have been rare, owing in part to heated public sentiment. On 9 September, the day of the bandh, while the farmers of Tamil Nadu’s Thanjavur region—who are reliant on Cauvery water for paddy cultivation—were heaving a sigh of relief, agitated farmers and political groups in Karnataka were burning the effigies of Siddaramiah and Jayalalithaa.

Mannargudi S Ranganathan, the general secretary of Cauvery Delta Farmers Association, an organisation of farmers on the Tamil Nadu side, blamed the lack of resolution on political manoeuvring from both states. “The whole issue is now engineered by political parties and they have the upper hand over farmers,” Ranganathan said.

Ranganathan said that the CDFA had participated in the Cauvery Family, a joint initiative begun in 2003 by stakeholders on both sides, and which was supported by MIDS. The aim of the initiative was to allow farmers from both states to interact with the other side and understand their issues. “From 2003 to 2010, we visited Karnataka several times while Karnataka team visited the farmers of Tamil Nadu to understand the ground realities,” Ranganathan said.

According to him, from 1983, the water level at Mettur Dam, the Cauvery’s entry point in Tamil Nadu, has consistently been low due to “lack of rules and regulation for water management in Karnataka.” As a result, since then, “paddy cultivation in Cauvery delta came down from 35-38 lakh tonnes to 24-18 lakh tonnes,” he claimed.

Ranganathan said that in Tamil Nadu, around 40 percent of the population in the delta region are landless labourers. As the productivity comes down, he said, it directly brought down the days of work from 150 days per year to about 80 or 90.

He dismissed the need for a crop shift. Ranganathan pointed out that the soil on the Tamil Nadu side was fit for only paddy cultivation, which it has been producing for thousands of years. He blamed Karnataka for cultivating large-scale water-intense crops such as sugar cane, despite their soil’s dry-land-farming qualities.

“They forget the ground realities. Even during summer months, large amount of water is drawn from Cauvery to be released to sugar cane farms,” he said. “As of now, our seeds have sprouted, but we need Cauvery to keep it alive.”