Fighting over water

The contentious elements in the inter-state disputes over the construction of the Sutlej-Yamuna link (SYL) canal in the north and sharing of Cauvery water in the south may be starkly dissimilar, but they have several things in common. For one thing, the ball in both the cases is in the Centre's court.

In the case of the SYL dispute, the Supreme Court has asked the Centre to complete the construction of the unfinished portion of the link canal if the Punjab government fails to do so.

In the Cauvery issue, on the other hand, all political parties of the aggrieved state, Tamil Nadu, are compelling the Centre to convene a meeting of the Cauvery river authority and force Karnataka to release water immediately.

The NDA government could afford inaction on both disputes because one was sub-judice and the other was being backed by parties that did not have political clout at the Centre at that time. This is not so any more.

For, the DMK now has enough political strength to be adamant in securing a pro-Tamil Nadu verdict from the Centre. And in the case of the SYL canal issue, inaction would amount to defiance of the apex court.

The Punjab government has chosen to make another bid to buy time by seeking to set up a fresh tribunal to review the Eradi Commission award, but it is unlikely to succeed.

What is irksome is that such disputes are allowed to linger for decades without a sincere effort to settle them. Evidently, the critical element in such disputes is the availability of water and the area it can irrigate after meeting other priorities like water for drinking and household use.

Once water allocations are made on these and other techno-economic considerations, the political parties need to respect them. In fact, the main problem in both the cases in point is that the upper riparians have extended irrigation to a much larger area than the available water can command and are, on that basis, claiming that they do not have water to spare.

Under the circumstances, what is needed is to curb the excessive use of water. This can be achieved through multi-pronged strategies aimed at replacing high water consuming crops like paddy and sugarcane with low water-requiring alternatives, and by raising water use charges to discourage wasteful consumption.

Besides, measures like desilting reservoirs and cleaning and lining canals can help prevent a good deal of water loss. Such an approach can make the available water go further and thus blunt to an extent the adverse impact of implementing the tribunals' awards on local communities.

On the legal front, the inter-state river water disputes law of 1956 has failed to serve its purpose and needs to be suitably amended or scrapped.

Indeed, it may be worthwhile looking at the law on river boards to empower these boards with full authority, cutting across states, to manage river waters.