Water pollution has affected parts of India in a particularly harmful manner. The granary bowl of India, Punjab, once the pride of the country and the home of the Green Revolution, today stands vitiated by chemicals in its soil, its farmers impoverished and, from all accounts, being obliged to seek sustenance from the worst imaginable sources of income including the transportation - and lamentably even the consumption - of drugs from across the border. A state that was also the pride of India for its jawans, now amazes with its youth easily lamenting the long wait for immigration visas to Canada, New Zealand, the UK or the US.
Another emerging phenomenon is water wars. West Bengal's unwillingness to share water with culturally comparable Bangladesh, its neighbour across the Ganges/Padma, even while the Centre has been willing to share, reflects the emotions that fear of water scarcity can stir locally even if far flung Delhi can appear charitable. After all Delhi is not affected materially by magnanimous gestures.
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The latest eruption in Karnataka is somewhat different in that farmers (though not those from Kalaburagi) of the state are better off than those in Vidarbha. Kannadiga farmers would not have revolted unless they seriously feared bankruptcy if they shared water with Tamil Nadu. Thus, the genesis was more economic than ethnic in particular reflecting that Kannada-, Malayalam-, Tamil- and Telugu-speaking peoples have lived by and large harmoniously in the vast lands of Karnataka for centuries.
But it would be myopic to ignore the intensifying local perception that ongoing influx into Karnataka is the outcome of poor management of floods and drought in other states. Bengaluru - and other towns - have become a catchment for employment not just for information technology (IT) or other white-collar professions, but for barbers, carpenters, cooks, movers, security staff and other blue-collar professions from Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Rajasthan, West Bengal and elsewhere. The collapse of public service delivery of reasonable roads or collection of garbage that plagues Bengaluru, and pointed out in my December 23, 2015 Business Standard column, is regularly attributed to immigrant influx than to corruption.
These erroneous beliefs and convictions comprise the ingredients of turning an economic issue into an ethnic conflict. Characteristically, there is little anticipation, so unprepared has India been in the analysis or preparedness for emergencies of this type. To recall, India suffered the worst violent episode in human history during Partition. Though that reflected religious differences, religion does not have to be the only separator. It is not as though ethnic incidents are not already occurring in Bengaluru against Keralites in particular. At the moment, it does not have official sanction of course.
That instantaneous conversion from economic to ethnic was starkly witnessed in Yugoslavia not that long ago. Admittedly Yugoslavia had been pieced together by the Allied Powers - Soviet Union, the UK, the US - at the end of the Second World War, bringing together Serbs, Germans, Croats, Slavs, Romans, Greeks, from the Eastern Orthodox Church, Catholics, Muslims and so on. Marshal Josip Tito (recall the founders of the now just about defunct Non-Alignment Movement - Gamal Nasser, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sukarno, Tito) subsequently built a modern economy with robust economic growth and social integration with cross-ethnic marriages a common phenomenon.
Economic dissension began with the mainly germanic Slovenians complaining of having to subsidise the rest of Yugoslavia. It became a war of economic resources. The economy began sliding with hyper-inflation around the corner. Slovenia, the western-most province contiguous to Austria, declared independence. In the worst revelation of its ethnic preferences (until then hidden since its diabolical expressions during the Second World War), Germany immediately recognised Slovenia and brought it into the European Union in blatant contradiction of its much-expressed pan-European vision. Croatia, the next contiguous western province, followed suit and its nationhood was also recognised. Recall their fascist governments during the Third Reich.
Yugoslavia crumbled. Serbs who had been the dominant race viewed this as an affront. The next provinces to declare independence were dealt with harshly. Bosnia-Herzegovina - including its capital Sarajevo, an idyllic hideaway for a bygone Winter Olympics - was reduced to rubble. Cross-ethnic marriages, even existing ones, were terminated. Worse, concentration camps were built to starve and shoot men and boys to eradicate Islam or any ethic variegation. The province did get independence eventually. Other areas - little portions Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro - became rump states, while a few Serbs were taken to the International Court of Justice to be tried for genocide. But the original concept of Yugoslavia had died a horrible death. By contrast, the former Soviet Union did better in the process of its break-up though that equilibrium was not maintained reflecting continuing conflicting interests and covert and overt interference from the not-so-bygone First and Second Worlds.
Thus history has demonstrated time and again that wars over economic resources, if not reasonably, rationally and quickly contained, result in ethnic wars with disastrous outcomes. The Indian water wars need examination in this light since buried in them are unanticipated, indeed unimaginable, outcomes for the Indian nation. Those who oppose economic progress have to reconsider their position. The Narmada Dam and other dams must be built in a country such as India. The solution is not to stop construction but to ensure environmentally friendly and technically robust construction and completion of rehabilitation - and that these are not thwarted by corruption. Admittedly, international indices put India's corruption at such high levels that it would be foolhardy to convey that it will be an easy task.