Votes and Water

The Cauvery waters imbroglio shows what a mess we can create when day-to-day issues such as the sharing of natural resources become bones of political contention and eventually have to be addressed by the judiciary. We have seen this happen often enough in the past — CNG was one, Ayodhya another.
Now, a potential political crisis in Karnataka — where chief minister S M Krishna defied the Supreme Court order on release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu — has been barely averted.Just before the court was to pronounce its order in the contempt case, Mr Krishna tendered an unconditional apology, saying his government had erred by not implementing the court''s order and Karnataka began releasing 10,000 cusecs of water daily. The Karnataka cabinet decision to tender an apology and release water came after the court, on October 25, held the chief minister guilty of contempt for deliberate non-compliance with its orders of September 3 and October 4. The court took a very serious view of the chief minister''s defiance and told his counsel that an elected government that was unable to implement a court order citing law and order problems had no reason to continue.
The judicial rebuke was obviously stinging enough to compel the state government to act, faced as it was with the prospect of a major political crisis that may well have compelled the chief minister to resign. Although it would be premature to assume that the crisis has passed, a jittery Karnataka administration may be tempted to take hope from the fact that the bench has now posted the matter of contempt petitions to November 1, and said, "We are only interested in seeing implementation of the court''s order. It gives us no pleasure to punish anybody". The state government, it is presumed, would be chastened enough to draw the right lessons from a crisis that had been of its own making.
As the court observed, "It is disgraceful that Karnataka, which is foremost in development, should have allowed the dispute with Tamil Nadu to take such a destabilising turn". In the long term, both the states should consider alternative crop patterns that are less water-intensive. In the short term, there is no option but for Karnataka to adhere to the directives of the Cauvery River Authority. The salutary lesson is that any recourse to competitive populism in defiance of statutory authority is bound to recoil on those who seek to sustain themselves in office by exploiting popular sentiment for political gain.