Give Cauvery Tribunal award a chance to work

Much water has flowed down the Cauvery ever since the upper and lower riparian states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are locked in a bitter dispute over the coveted natural resource that determines how the rice granaries fare in South India. Amid the grandstanding by regional leaders, the quarrel has become one of claims versus counter-claims, with both states pressing their cases vehemently, yet utterly blind to each other’s distress while the UPA government persisted with its policy of procrastination in issues that throw up difficulties in terms of finding equitable solutions.

The impasse in the long-running dispute over sharing the waters of the life-giving Cauvery, which originates in the Western Ghats and courses through the Deccan Plateau covering southern Karnataka before flowing into Tamil Nadu and then into the Bay of Bengal, has compelled the Supreme Court to keep ordering the state leaders to act.

Its recent directive to the UPA government to notify the final award of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal exposes the malaise of inaction on the part of the political system.

The resolution of a dispute between two states, especially over a resource as vital as water, cannot be conducted through court directives. Nor can this be left to be sorted out through intense political campaign whenever a crisis arises. Aggrieved parties are more aware of the grave difficulties monsoon failures impose upon the peoples of an agriculture-based economy. It is only fair then that the distress is shared by the people who enjoy the nature’s bounty in good monsoon years.

But Cauvery water has been greatly politicised in both Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. A protracted legal battle has effectively ruled out an amicable solution. Water hostility, steadily rising between the two states, has led to a flare-up of so much emotions and regionalism that the neighbouring states often behave like enemy territories. An inadequate monsoon just triggers the eruption of the festering sore that the dispute has become. This has been the case since the early 1900s.

The fact that very little of the arbitration process has contributed to solving the problem points to the deep distrust between the two states. Between 1968 and 1990, the chief ministers of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka held 26 rounds of talks but failed to show the political will to find an amicable solution. The meetings were more an opportunity to expose how intransigent the other side is.

To break the deadlock, Tamil Nadu approached the Supreme Court in 1990 and on its order the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal was constituted on June 2, 1990. The tribunal issued an interim order on June 25, 1991, which was flouted by Karnataka. To make it fall in line, the Cauvery River Authority with the Prime Minister as its chairman was established on August 11, 1998. The tribunal gave its final award on February 5, 2007, which the UPA government is yet to gazette.

Twenty-three years after the Tribunal was formed and six years to the day since it delivered its verdict, what stands out is the lack of political will and resolve on the part of the Centre to settle the dispute. The Tribunal’s order still remains on paper. The court had to pull up the UPA government for abdicating its responsibility to abide by an earlier order to notify the final decision of the Tribunal. Mincing no words in its observations against the Centre for sitting on the award, the apex court said that the government is bound by the Act under which the Tribunal was set up in 1990 and directed it to notify the award as expeditiously as possible, but not later than February 20.

The government was clearly guilty of delaying the notification. Both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have filed petitions for clarification before the Tribunal as well as appeals in the apex court and this may be the reason why the Centre has so far not notified the award. However, after the hearing on January 4, 2013 - at which the court recorded that the states concerned had no objection to the notification without prejudice to their rights and contentions in the appeals - nothing but political motive can account for the vacillation since then.

What exactly worry the central government more than poor monsoon are the impending elections in Karnataka and its possible effect on next year’s parliamentary polls. The Congress, sitting in the Opposition, has high stakes in the poll outcome and its leaders in Karnataka want the Centre to wait for the court to dispose of the appeals before the award is formalised.

When political factors cast such an influence on its decision-making ability, dillydallying seems to suit the UPA the most. If this procrastination was motivated by a feeling that the problem would be forgotten gradually and that Karnataka and Tamil Nadu would stop playing politics on it, it was naivety at its worst. Politicians of various hues have always thrived in fuelling regional chauvinism, and political parties in these states were no different.

The Cauvery Tribunal’s final award came after 17 years of adjudication and decades of wrangling. But what remains elusive is an acceptable formula to share waters from the Cauvery. The flouting of the tribunal orders, the SC verdict of 2007, interim awards or the most recent order of the Cauvery River Authority is tantamount to breakdown of constitutional government and the federal structure of India.

It is high time that Tribunal’s final award is given a chance to work in the best interests of the poor farmers of the four riparian states that include Kerala and Puducherry. Only a meaningful agreement, with the give and take of a political consensus, on operationalising the final award during normal years and sharing distress pro rata in years of shortage is the way out. This is possible only if the Centre responds robustly to the problem in the larger interests of the country and politicians see the broader picture.