Cauvery Crisis: Price Of Neglect

The SC order on releasing Cauvery waters to TamilNadu has Karnataka on the boil, again.

- Aravind Gowda

For us, the Cauvery river is like a goddess…she is the lifeline of south Karnataka. We will not stand attacks on Kannadigas in Tamil Nadu in the name of our goddess,” thunders Ravi Gowda, an activist of the rabble-rousing Karnataka Rakshana Vedike as he justifies the torching of TN-registered vehicles in the state. That’s the kind of emotion the sharing of Cauvery waters evokes in Karnataka, a sentiment that the state’s political parties have been milking for ages. Unfortunately, this time the ruling Congress government failed to gauge how aggrieved the public was, resulting in large-scale arson and violence even in cosmopolitan Bengaluru.

Rather than settling the dispute amicably or through a Cauvery Management Board, it has become a game of one upmanship for Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. This year has been no different. For both states, 2016 has been a ‘distress’ year, as the Cauvery catchment area (Kodagu district in Karnataka) received 33 per cent below average rainfall. The combined water storage levels (for the KRS, Kabini, Harangi and Hemavathi dams) in the Cauvery basin by the end of August 2016 was 115 thousand million cubic feet (Tmc ft), as against a normal average of 216 Tmc ft. As per the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal award, Karnataka should release 192 Tmc ft of water in a normal rainfall year—10 Tmc ft in June, 34 Tmc ft in July, 50 Tmc ft in August, 40 Tmc ft in September and 22 Tmc ft in October. As Karnataka failed to release the required quantum of water in July and August, TN approached the Supreme Court seeking relief against the ‘injustice’.