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Mahanadi, Krishna, Cauvery: How India’s water wars are spreading
Odisha called for a bandh in August to protest against Chhattisgarh’s projects on Mahanadi, a river shared by the two states, forcing Centre to intervene. Punjab, for its part, has refused to provide Sutlej water to Haryana despite an SC order, resulting in a public spat between the NDA-led governments of Parkash Singh Badal and Manohar Lal Khattar.
Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change told policy makers that by 2050, most countries will be fighting over water.
Barely a year later, India is already witnessing deaths, strikes and incidents of self-immolation over sharing of the natural resource between its constituent states. Karnataka has been on the boil ever since SC ordered that it release Cauvery water to neighbouring Tamil Nadu.
Odisha called for a bandh in August to protest against Chhattisgarh’s projects on Mahanadi, a river shared by the two states, forcing Centre to intervene. Punjab, for its part, has refused to provide Sutlej water to Haryana despite an SC order, resulting in a public spat between the NDA-led governments of Parkash Singh Badal and Manohar Lal Khattar.
The genesis of the rising water disputes, however, lies in the unclear and overlapping Indian water law that allows states to exercise absolute territorial power over water flowing through their territories and politics that incentivises water wastage.
In the Constitution, water is a state subject that allows excess use of water without consulting lower riparian states. In such a scenario, the Centre can only redress conflicts with limited powers of arbitration. At best, it can appoint an inter-state water tribunal whose order can be challenged in the Supreme Court – leading to a long-drawn judicial battle. The Cauvery dispute first landed in the apex court in the 1950s, and the Sutlej water-sharing dispute between Punjab and Haryana has been languishing there since 1975.
There is another dimension to this problem that gets overlooked. Many states promote water-intensive crops that gulp down the limited natural resource. For instance, the cultivation of pulses in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka has more than doubled in the last 20 years, and this is spurring farmer protests over sharing of Cauvery water.
“Our agriculture economy wastes more water than it conserves,” says Himanshu Thakkar, an independent water expert. “We have invested billions in dams and irrigation networks, but very little on water conservation.”
India has seen three droughts in the last 10 years (the most for a decade in the last 150 years), and the situation will only worsen due to climate change. Terming 54% of India as “water-stressed”, a 2015 World Resources Institute report said: “Almost 600 million people are at higher risk of surface-water supply disruptions.”
Vandana Shiva of Navdanya, a non-government advocacy group, has written on how water is being “abused” and “overused” in India. To illustrate her point, she cites how the amount of water used to produce a quintal of farm produce in India is the highest in the world.
There is a solution to this quandary, but it would require harsh and politically difficult decisionmaking. The erstwhile Planning Commission, in its 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17) report, recommended putting a price on every drop of water, scrapping power subsidy for pumping ground water, and providing incentives for water conservation and reuse. Sadly, it still remains a recommendation.
(With inputs from state bureaus)
