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Row, Row, Row Your Boat

Tamil Nadu and Karnataka again rush headlong into their periodic festival of chauvinism <a href=pti_coverage.asp?gid=273>More Coverage </a>

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Row, Row, Row Your Boat
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As Tamil Nadu and Karnataka turned the heat on each other over the little water that Cauvery has to offer this season, the skies opened up in Bangalore, Chennai and, more importantly, in the Cauvery delta last week and cooled some tempers, forcing a beleaguered Karnataka chief minister S.M. Krishna to say: "Only nature can provide a solution to the row." It was nature, to begin with, that revived an issue dating back to 1807, eluding a consensual solution till now. This year Karnataka witnessed the worst rainfall in three decades, leaving the delta farmers in Tamil Nadu high and dry. The last time the issue became inflammable was in December 1991-January 1992 when Bangalore saw riots.

With the leadership in both states digging in their heels and putting politics ahead of propriety, there seems to be as little logic in the actions of the two chief ministers as there is water in the Cauvery basin. Jayalalitha's latest petition (October 8) requests the Supreme Court to "punish" Krishna, Karnataka irrigation minister H.K. Patil and its chief secretary A. Ravindra for contempt of court. On October 6 she had described Karnataka's conduct as "roguish" and an outraged Krishna responded by saying that Tamil Nadu was "perpetrating a fraud" and that he would go against the court's directive. Both have forsaken dialogue and taken to easier, emotive and politically convenient routes—"going to the people"—through a bandh (in Tamil Nadu) and a padayatra (in Karnataka). Karnataka has, in fact, not stopped at that. In protest, it has called off all Dussehra festivities and cable operators in the state have stopped telecasting Tamil channels. Their Tamil counterparts, in turn, have responded by stopping transmission of Kannada channels in the state.

Krishna has set out to fight probably the most decisive battle of his political career. Perhaps, in the bargain, he'll even forsake office, or undergo brief imprisonment as he flirts with contempt of court. On September 4, Krishna agreed to comply with the Supreme Court order to release 1.25 tmcft, but when on September 18 one of the three farmers who jumped into the waters drowned, Karnataka decided to stop the flow of water. "The government was compelled not to precipitate matters in order to prevent a repeat of violence and arson that was witnessed in Bangalore and other parts of Karnataka in 1991," the government pleaded in an affidavit to the Supreme Court, saying there was no "wilful disobedience" of its order.

Yielding to the Supreme Court order could mean the Congress losing power in the next assembly poll—the government has two more years to go. So, Krishna had to play it safe—prove his concern for farmers in the Cauvery basin and also prevent the Opposition from capitalising on the situation. Having initially agreed to comply with whatever the Supreme Court decided, Krishna regained some popular support with his decision not to release the water, come what may. To remain in the reckoning during the next election in the basin region, known for extremely emotional reactions, Krishna decided on the tried-and-tested Congress method—padayatra. His decision to walk a gruelling 129 km on an "awareness yatra for peace and goodwill" took the Opposition and his detractors within the party by surprise. The march was planned in such a manner that he would touch his assembly constituency, Maddur, on the day he took over as chief minister three years ago (October 11). But Krishna, at 71, decided to cut short the walkathon by two days. The delta region in Karnataka is a hotbed of Vokkaliga politics (Krishna belongs to the Vokkaliga caste) with several leaders clashing for control over the community.

Krishna kept interesting company during the march. On October 7, the yatra was blessed by Vokkaliga high priest Balagangadharanath Swamy and a number of other seers.Jnanpith laureate U.R. Ananthamurthy provided the literary touch. He said: "We must empower the chief minister as he is working for a peaceful settlement of the problem between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Otherwise, extremist elements in both these states will take over."

This stirred former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda's political compulsions. Gowda, also a Vokkaliga from the basin, announced his party's campaign (October 10-14) in all the assembly constituencies in the basin "to expose the blunders committed by the Congress government in its three-year rule". Ironically, Gowda as chief minister was locked in a similar battle with Jayalalitha between 1994 and 1996. His government had released 6 tmcft (as against the demand for 30 tmcft) following a Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal order.

Clearly, the players are too many: the Supreme Court, a prime minister, two chief ministers, a Cauvery River Authority (CRA)—whose primacy Jayalalitha refuses to recognise—the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal and the Cauvery Monitoring Committee. While the Supreme Court wants the prime minister to solve the problem, Atal Behari Vajpayee has preferred to pass the buck back to the court. Between all these players, the 'tmcft' figures fluctuate between confusing parameters, depending on who is speaking and when. After Karnataka couldn't comply with the release of 1.25 tmcft per day starting September 4, the CRA scaled down the amount to 0.8 tmcft on September 11 to which Tamil Nadu protested. But even that much water hasn't been forthcoming from Karnataka. The Krishna dispensation says that on account of poor rainfall in the catchment area this year, all the four reservoirs have around 73 tmcft of water, much less than their 114.57-tmcft storage capacity.

On October 4, a three-judge Supreme Court bench, hearing a contempt petition filed by Tamil Nadu, for non-compliance of the court's September 3 order, directed the release of water to Tamil Nadu's Mettur reservoir.

Karnataka believes it's for the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal (set up in 1990) and not the CRA or the Supreme Court, to arrive at a distress-sharing formula. "The CRA was set up in 1998 to implement the order on release of 205 tmcft and can't issue other orders," say sources in the Karnataka law department. But by the time that happens Tamil Nadu's kuruvai crop could be lost.

Jayalalitha hasn't done much other than "play the victim". Besides fending off criticism from dmk chief M. Karunanidhi, she's lucky to have the Tamil people distracted by the sideshow that the world of Tamil cinema has been orchestrating (see first box). The entire Opposition (barring the dmk) attended her all-party meet and went along with her state-sponsored October 9 bandh.

The two chief ministers have made their lack of political will and imagination clear and it's now left to a "trough in the seas", which can result in rain, to douse the flames. So, only nature can now stop the river of life from becoming a river of blood.

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