Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are once again at logger heads over the sharing of the Cauvery waters. Why have the successive agreements failed to resolve the century-long dispute?
THERE IS nothing unnatural about the Cauvery conflict. Any river that runs through different political boundaries is bound to have regions and people fighting over the resource. What is unnatural is the factors that have rendered the water-sharing agreements between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu—the two main stakeholders in the dispute—dysfunctional since they were first drafted in 1872.
This September, the conflict once again dominated the news after Karnataka refused to release water to Tamil Nadu, the downstream state. Karnataka says it cannot share water when the Cauvery reservoirs are barely able to satisfy the drinking water needs of the state. By refusing to share water, it flouted the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal (cwdt) award of 2007 that mandated a proportionate reduction in each state’s share in rain-deficit years.
This year the two states received deficit rainfall, especially around the source of the river. Tamil Nadu promptly took the matter to the Supreme Court. It maintains that its farmers growing the winter crop of paddy, or samba, are totally dependent on the Cauvery water.
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