Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) chief Karunanidhi took the initiative with the cooperation of the Democratic Progressive Alliance. One comment was that this could be the litmus test for the fledgling Manmohan Singh government which would have to "do a balancing act of pleasing the Congress-Janata Dal (S) coalition government in Karnataka and its major alliance partner at the Centre, the DMK in Tamil Nadu".
Last Saturday the DMK met and decided to have a delegation of Tamil Nadu MPs, including those from Jayalalitha's ruling AIADMK meet the prime minister and send a delegation of the Democratic Progressive Alliance (DPA) to meet the Karnataka chief minister to plead for release of some water to Tamil Nadu.
Simultaneously, Jayalalitha shot off a letter to Manmohan Singh urging him to call an urgent meeting of the Cauvery Waters Authority chaired by him. She wanted the meeting to compel Karnataka to comply with the interim award of the Cauvery Waters Tribunal and of the Supreme Court to release 205 TMC ft of water from its reservoirs to downriver Tamil Nadu.
Late last Monday the prime minister held a meeting with Water Resources Minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi and others to discuss the crisis. The next morning he met the TN MPs and assured a "fair solution acceptable to all". The MPs complained that Karnataka had never complied with the rulings of the Tribunal and had never released the quantum of water decided on by the tribunal.
Heavy losses
During the last three drought years, the situation had led to heavy losses by the farmers of Tamil Nadu. The prime minister heard them patiently and commented that "the rains have been kind this year and owing to early monsoon and heavier than expected rainfall, it is likely that we may not face a situation of distress. I am discussing the matter on priority with the governments concerned, including Karnataka".
On June 9, following the meeting with the MPs a Central Government officials team flew over Karnataka's reservoirs and the next day visited the bone dry Mettur reservoir in Tamil Nadu(TN). The team was greeted with a drizzle at Mettur. They held discussions with the TN officials. The TN officials said that the water requirement for the 'Kuruvai', 'Samba' and 'Thaladi' crops every year was 240 TMC ft of water. Besides the 205 TMC ft ordered to be released by the Tribunal in 1991, the state would still have to depend on rain for the remaining 55 TMC ft.
They said that the farmers in the Delta area knew nothing other than rice farming. The drought and refusal by Karnataka to supply water had caused heavy crop losses and famine. The central officials' team is expected to report back to the centre before the prime minister takes a decision.
On June 10 a Karnataka delegation met the prime minister in Delhi and argued that the question was of distress sharing and therefore there was no need to call a meeting of the CRA. The same day a DPA delegation from Tamil Nadu under DMK leader and former Irrigation Minister Durai Murugan, met the chief minister of Karnataka and his colleagues in Bangalore.
Distress-sharing
Apart from these official contacts, on Friday there was a non-official meeting between farmers' representatives from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka at Trichy. A press statement issued after the meeting said that "a mindset has been created to evolve a distress-sharing formula".
The meeting followed the visit by a farmers' delegation, the fourth of its kind, to Tamil Nadu. The press statement also expressed the hope that the Cauvery Tribunal would come up with its 'final' recommendations soon.
The hope is that even as these discussions at official and unofficial levels continue, the rains, as the prime minister commented, will offer a temporary solution. In the years before the three-year drought period, Karnataka was 'supplying' the overflows from their reservoirs due to heavy rains in the catchment areas. Hopefully this year again the crisis may disappear. But there can be no permanent, acceptable solution unless the much talked of scheme of interlinking of Indian rivers gets implemented. The hope is that the perennial floods in the north can be diverted to peninsular India.
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