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Water wars

BY ITS own admission, the Centre recognises as a major hurdle the managing of a political consensus for its ambitious project to interlink rivers, even though the Government feels empowered, armed as it is with a Supreme Court order to complete the task in 10 years.

The Court has compressed a proposed 30-year project into 10 years by its ruling, which many experts feel is neither practical nor feasible.

In recent months, the Supreme Court has given the Vajpayee Government more than a helping hand to get around vexed inter-State water problems, be it the construction of the Sutlej-Yamuna Link canal, sharing of Cauvery waters between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, or raising the height of the Sardar Sarovar Project. Yet, no consensus could be reached between the States involved. Not just that, they have openly flouted the Court's directive and the Centre's cajoling.

In the case of the SYL, the Supreme Court had ordered Punjab to complete by January 15, 2003, the construction of the Centrally-funded canal linking the Sutlej with the Yamuna, which is to carry Haryana's share (3.5 million acre feet) of Sutlej waters. The Centre has spent about Rs. 450 crores on the canal. The construction was abandoned in 1990 at the height of militancy in Punjab when a Chief Engineer of the Central Water Commission and some labourers were gunned down.

Instead of abiding by the apex court's decision, the Punjab Chief Minister, Amarinder Singh, has linked political demands such as the transfer of Chandigarh and the distribution of border districts between Haryana and Punjab with the SYL. He even raked up the distribution of Ravi-Beas waters between Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Jammu and Kashmir at the time of reorganisation of Punjab in 1966 when an agreement was signed between the States. He stood up the Water Resources Minister, Arjun Charan Sethi, at least twice for scheduled one-to-one meetings. Finally, he has gone to Court in a tacit move to buy time.

In the Cauvery dispute also, the apex court intervened to direct Karnataka to release 1.25 thousand million cubic feet (tmcft) of water (later reduced to 0.8 tmcft by the Cauvery River Authority headed by the Prime Minister) into the Mettur reservoir in Tamil Nadu to help the latter save the standing crop. Yet, despite personal assurances by its Chief Minister, S.M. Krishna, Karnataka did not release the requisite water to Tamil Nadu. Even in a crisis situation like this, when both States have to share distress, they stuck to their traditional positions. Karnataka flouted the directive given by the CRA, the order of the Supreme Court and then its own assurance in the CRA. Now, one Chief Minister or the other keeps away from the CRA meetings convened by the Prime Minister, not only undermining a body set up under the directive of the Supreme Court but also the authority of the Prime Minister.

In the matter of the Sardar Sarovar Project also, the Supreme Court intervened to raise the height of the dam while directing States to do simultaneous rehabilitation and resettlement of project affected people. None of the States did that.

However, in a behind-the-scenes move on the eve of the Gujarat Assembly elections, at a meeting convened by Mr. Vajpayee, the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Digvijay Singh, and the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, came to a tacit understanding after which Mr. Singh decided to offer cash compensation to the thousands of oustees in his State which is the worst ever form of compensation. The Centre and the Court both are as yet quiet on this.

In such a scenario, the Centre is moving cautiously on a consensus for interlinking rivers. If sharing the waters of inter-State rivers has proved problematic so far, things are hardly likely to get better in this day of coalition politics and regional parochialism. Senior officials in the Water Resources Ministry feel that interlinking being a national-level endeavour is a category in itself, unlike inter-State sharing of waters. It will be tied to water pricing, tariff structure, diversification of cropping pattern, internal rates of return, cost-benefits and so on, till the whole thing becomes self-sustaining.

All current inter-State water agreements will hold and only after meeting the surplus State's demands will the waters be transferred. Moreover, the donor States are likely to be compensated with hydropower or even development funds, for the waters they spare.

But one thing is certain. People will have to pay up for the criss-cross of canals and dams that will be constructed under this project, through raised water tariffs and irrigation costs. People will also have to pay with large-scale displacement of habitations, and loss of forests and farmland.

The Government would do well to ensure that this does not become another grandiose Centralised plan that is thrust on the people and later resisted by them. People's participation is as important as political consensus.

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