Introduction
Water is frequently touted as a wicked problem due to its ability to transcend anthropological as well as biophysical boundaries. Freshwater resources in the form of rivers and aquifers are thus notoriously challenging to effectively manage, especially in transboundary settings. The competition to utilize water as an essential resource frequently leads to tensions with competing water uses, and conflict over its quantity, quality, and allocation.
With nearly 263 transboundary freshwater basins and 300 transboundary aquifers worldwide, the 20th century witnessed merely seven violent incidents between nations over shared water resources. Nearly 300 treaties over water were signed and this shows that states prefer to cooperate over water resources rather than choose violence. If countries can find reason to cooperate and formalize their commitments to peaceful resolution of conflicts through River Basin Organizations (RBOs) and treaties, why then, are some conflicts over water within countries so drawn out?
In the case of the Cauvery River in Southern India, the conflict has prevailed with ebbs and flows for nearly a century! In this piece, I explore the history of this conflict and recommend a way forward.
The Cauvery Basin
The Cauvery River originates at Talakaveri on the Brahmagiri range in the Western Ghats in Karnataka at an elevation of about 1341 m and flows south-eastward for ~802 km through Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry before leading into the Bay of Bengal in the East. It is one of the major rivers of Peninsular India with a basin area of 87,900 sq. km; Tamil Nadu shares 48,730 sq.km of the basin while Karnataka has 36,240 sq. km.
The conflict over Cauvery stems primarily from different senses of entitlement to the water, exacerbated by differing perceptions of property rights over the river water. While 4 states make up the Cauvery basin, the historic conflict has been mainly between 2 states — Karnataka (KA) and Tamil Nadu (TN). KA defines its rights in terms of Harmon doctrine (that they can do as they please with the water when it is in their territory), while the downstream TN defines its rights in terms of the doctrine of historical right to use; the conflicting parties do not wish to consider the tenets of committing no significant harm to each other or the reasonable, sustainable, and equitable use of the river.
The Cauvery water sharing dispute began in 1892 between the then British-controlled Madras Presidency and the princely state of Mysore — the two regions could not agree over water sharing. In 1910, the two states started constructing check dams and reservoirs to store the river water for various water uses, principally, irrigation. Amid protests by Madras, Mysore constructed the Krishna Raja Sagar (KRS) and in 1924, Madras Presidency and Mysore state signed an agreement mediated & aided by the British. The agreement ruled that both states could exercise their right to use the surplus water from river Cauvery. The agreement also gave Madras the freedom to construct the Mettur dam and set out limitations on how much land could be irrigated.
Independence from colonial tyrants and usurpers
The issue of water sharing became convoluted after the reorganization of the states in 1956. The newly formed states comprised of earlier presidencies and princely states. Mysore became a part of Karnataka while Pondicherry, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh were carved out of the Madras Presidency. As per the agreement in 1924, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry would get 75% of the surplus water, while Karnataka would get 23% and the rest would go to Kerala . When the 1924 agreement expired in 1974, Karnataka started building dams on the Cauvery, and in the three decades starting in 1960, four dams were built — Hemavati, Harangi, Kabini, and Suvarnavathy.
Tamil Nadu opposed the construction of dams on the river by Karnataka since it depended heavily on the Cauvery water for irrigation of the huge agricultural tracts in the delta region. Karnataka’s position was that international precedents should be followed and the river should be shared equally (each receiving 47% of the water), and the remaining 6% will be split equally between Kerala and Pondicherry.
Long drawn-out labyrinthine legal proceedings
Tamil Nadu cited the water sharing quota as per the 1924 agreement (historic use precedent) and stated that the new dams would disturb their water security, leading to a precarious situation. In 1986, a farmer’s association in Tamil Nadu moved the Supreme Court (SC) demanding that a tribunal be formed to address the dispute. In 1990, the SC directed them to negotiate but the talks failed. The SC then directed the Central Government to form a tribunal which would decide on the distribution of water between the two states with the result that the Cauvery Water Tribunal (CWT) was set up on 2 June 1990 under Section 4 of the Indian Inter-State Water Disputes Act, 1956.
Based on calculations of the water inflow to Tamil Nadu between 1980 and 1990 the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal (CWT), in its interim order (IO) directed Karnataka to ensure that 205 TMCft (thousand million cubic feet) of water reaches Tamil Nadu per annum and to stop its plan to increase irrigated land area. This IO led to violent riots in both states with Karnataka “rejecting” the tribunal’s verdict and sought an annulment in the SC. The SC struck down the state’s ordinance attempting to nullify the verdict and went on to uphold the tribunal’s order .
In 1998, the Cauvery River Authority (CRA), comprising of the Prime Minister as the Chairperson and the Chief Ministers of the four states as its members was formed with a mandate of implementing the interim order of the CWDT. The members of the CRA [except the Prime Minister (PM)] were the disputants in the conflict and a heavy onus was placed on the PM to potentially command them to comply or exert the moral suasion that the situation would have called for. The CRA further deepened the administrative challenges when it failed to provide a clear and sustainable solution; and instead set up the Cauvery Monitoring Committee, merely delaying the inevitable crises.
While the CRA’s was perceived as the regulatory authority in the basin and to oversee the implementation of the IO, the role of the Monitoring Committee was to assist the CRA to enable it to take scientific decisions on the issues under consideration. On 5 February 2007, after a prolonged period of deliberation of nearly 17 years, the Cauvery Tribunal declared its final verdict: in a “normal” rainfall year, Karnataka was to release 192 TMCft in monthly installments for the downstream states, whereas in a “distress” year, the tribunal order only stated that the allocated shares shall be proportionately reduced. The verdict did not define the parameters for a distress year or for the reduction in quotas on the sharing of water during a distress year which fuelled the dispute. The increased demand for irrigation in the basin during the drier months is a key factor in the conflict.
There exists a plethora of incentives for the farmers through the increased minimum support prices (offered by the government) for water-consuming crops such as rice. In both states, more area is under irrigation for Paddy as opposed to Ragi (the less water intense alternative: finger millet) and other millets in the Cauvery basin. The disputes are therefore not merely based on physical scarcity of water, but are also driven by “a temporal coincidence of demand” (Ghosh & Bandyopadhyay, 2009, p. 1).
The existing legal and institutional frameworks are inadequate to address the critical challenge. The final verdict in 2007 of the Cauvery Water Tribunal (CWT), failed to provide a solution with a holistic and integrated approach that addressed the demand and allocation in the river basin, and this possibly led to an aggravation of the conflict. The verdict proposed a skewed institutional design of a “Cauvery Management Board”, which heavily favoured the water engineering domain, without taking into account the interdisciplinary knowledge of the socio-economic and political factors required for a sustainable resolution for the Cauvery basin.
Politics of water
Through the years, the political apparatus in both states have capitalized on the water sharing issue to mobilize and drive electoral movements, and have even incited violence . The states’ outlook toward water sharing has also been disparate due to the differences in the political party governing them. This indecisiveness and inaction in river governance strategy is evident through the lack of consideration of an equitable and sustainable water sharing agreement bearing in mind, the impacts of climate change. A quick resolution to this issue would mean foregoing vote-bank politics — I think of this unresolved conflict as the failure of the states to provide for the citizens’ basic needs.
Is it an allocation problem or a scarcity problem?
The management of river basins in India has been a long drawn out process — the resolution or legal recourse being delivered after decades or years by which time, the problem has complicated further. The simple and often arbitrary measures of allocating the river water reinforce the neo-Malthusian claim that “scarcity induces disputes”. It facilitates shifting of the focus from the inertia-ridden institutional issues, differing beliefs of property rights, political drivers of the conflict, and a myopic technical perspective rather than an inter-disciplinary approach . The SC, in its 2018 verdict ruled that Karnataka needs more water to quench the thirst of its state capital but did not recommend any water demand management mandates.
An unclear mandate for the CWMA
On 16 February 2018, the Supreme Court reduced the allocation of the Cauvery Waters for Tamil Nadu (TN) from 192 TMCft to 177.25 TMC annually. The frequent legal recourse sought by both states at different points in the history of the conflict points towards an inadequate redressal mechanism within the CRA. The 2018 verdict reinforced the precedent that the Cauvery river is a “national asset and no single state could claim ownership over it” even if water is a state subject in India (Supreme Court of India, 2018, p. 460).
While it served as a reminder to the agricultural practitioners to practice demand management of water through water-use-efficiency, and crop-diversification, it reinforced the preferential allotment of water to Karnataka for its burgeoning urban and industrial water use in Bangalore. The state capital of Tamil Nadu, Chennai also nearly ran out of water for human consumption in 2019. Pursuant to the SC’s direction and the Final Order of the CWT in 2007, the Cauvery Water Management Authority (CWMA) was set-up on 1 June 2018 by the central government.
Making a case for an effective RBO in the Cauvery
I draw upon the relative resilience (and success) of the Indus Waters Treaty, which India is a party to, to showcase that in tense situations involving water sharing, an amicable consensus can be arrived at where a legal framework exists. The geographical advantage offered by Indus’ tributaries (that they could be divided and shared) across Pakistan and India cannot be overlooked either but the political and military situation between these two actors is definitely more volatile than KA and TN. India is thus capable of peacefully resolving water conflicts.
In a large federal state like India, rife with political, social, and economic disparity, water can be the uniting factor. The Interstate River Water Disputes Act, 1956 provides an overarching legal instrument for redressal of water disputes but it also assumes that the central (federal) government is able to exert adequate political pressure to bring the actors to the negotiation table or that the overburdened judiciary can deliver a verdict quickly. The central government and judiciary have not been successful in acting promptly with precision, and the states often differ in political affiliations (amongst each other and with the central government) and this complicates the political motivations to resolve the conflict. Thus, there exists a deep mistrust of the actors involved, as well as the mediator.
Like its cousin in SE Asia, the Mekong river, the Cauvery region has also experienced rapid economic development in the face of political instability and ineffective conflict resolution (with emotions running high for riparian inhabitants whose livelihoods are heavily water-dependent). The environmental protection and sustainability of the river are under threat with climate change increasing the unpredictability of extreme weather events. An effective RBO like the Mekong River Commission (MRC), capable of inciting cooperation and addressing conflicts in the Cauvery basin is the need of the hour.
The stakeholders and participants in both states — Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, have fought over the Cauvery for nearly 130 years. The CWMA, while still nascent, has the potential to seize this opportunity to build a strong framework by paying close attention to:
· Setting clear notification, consultation, & negotiation procedures
· Obliging states to cooperate in good faith and exchange information
· Engaging inter-disciplinary experts to sustainably and holistically develop the basin
· Establishing a clear, time-bound dispute resolution mechanism for the basin.
The Cauvery RBO needs a clear mandate nestled in a strong legal instrument, specific to the basin to bring peace with it. The National Green Tribunal, set up under the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010 can be empowered to expeditiously handle water disputes pertaining to major water-sharing agreements such as the Cauvery. Further, the respective states’ political will and the collective desire of the riparians to achieve cooperation are also required for the functioning of the RBO. Alternatively, the federal government can invoke public interest under Entry 56 of the Union List of the Constitution to ‘regulate and develop’ the river by establishing a stronger river management organization.
The author is an experienced hydrogeochemist & environmental scientist. He has worked in academia, industry, and governmental departments across 3 continents.
