Cauvery dispute: Absence of Central govt. action prompted Supreme Court to assert authority, says author

Leela Fernandes’s ‘Governing Water in India: Inequality, Reform and the State’ chronicles inter-State river water-sharing disputes of Tamil Nadu with neighbouring Karnataka and Kerala

Dispute over the sharing of the Cauvery waters between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu has become one of the most infamous examples of the inability of the Indian state to effectively mediate conflicts over water resources, says Leela Fernandes, professor, University of Washington, who has authored the book Governing Water in India: Inequality, Reform and the State.

The book chronicles tendencies towards centralisation and the Supreme Court’s interventions in resolving inter-State river water-sharing disputes of Tamil Nadu with neighbouring Karnataka and Kerala.

The author argued that the absence of the Central government action on the Karnataka-Tamil Nadu water dispute prompted the Supreme Court to assert its own authority and compel the Centre to form the Cauvery Water Management Board. “Such interventions of the Supreme Court in the years after the tribunal award in themselves reflected a failure of the Central government’s regulatory state capacity,” argued Prof. Fernandes in her book published by the University of Washington Press recently.

In the context of dire water scarcity within both Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, the court attempted to manage an emergency situation that should have been the responsibility of the Centre. “The Cauvery dispute is illustrative of a case in which state-civil society relationships in both States have been polarised by the cumulative effects of decades of state institutional incapacity,” she noted.

“Tensions between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over the release of water are also shaped by the drinking water needs of Bengaluru during periods of water scarcity,” she said.

If the Cauvery river dispute was an example of institutional failure, the Telugu Ganga Project that produced an agreement between Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh is heralded as a model of inter-State cooperation. The project supplies water from the Krishna for catering the drinking water needs of Chennai.

In contrast to the Cauvery case, the author said, disputes between Tamil Nadu and Kerala on Mullaperiyar Dam on the Periyar river is a dispute over the management of the dam and not over water sharing. The dam is located in Kerala but fully operated by Tamil Nadu. Kerala had been raising issues related to the dam’s safety.