Stress must be on water conservation
S.G. VOMBATKERE
STRONGLY INDICATIVE of the public mood, a variety of organisations and groups with different ideologies and worldview have conducted daily peaceful demonstrations and agitations in Mysore ever since the Cauvery Tribunal's final award was announced. Though the daily demonstrations are perhaps confined only to Mysore, the general perception all over Karnataka is that the final award is unfair to Karnataka.
There seems to be unhappiness in Tamil Nadu as well. If the award is going to be reviewed because of initiatives taken by either party to the dispute, any change that the reviewing authority may allow in the quantity of water to be released will only serve to heighten the feeling of injustice on one or the other side.
Faulty policies
The governments of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka need to recognise that whether or not they obtain "relief" from a superior judicial authority, water will always be short. The cause for this deficit is not the failure of Mother Nature but increased demand primarily due to faulty agricultural policies followed both at the Central and State levels. The present situation is a clear indication of the dismal failure of supply-side economics.
The Cauvery river basin water deficit of about 500 tmcft between the 740 tmcft availability and the 1,260 tmcft demand will only increase since the demand increases as growing urban-industrial agglomerations need more water and up to 50 per cent water goes waste through leakage from water mains.
The tendency of a judicial authority or anybody else advocating that both States learn to make do with less water and offering a formula to share it in times of shortage is to expect the people, who are actually suffering because of water shortage, to quietly accept the decision doled out to them from high. This cannot work in the real world of water shortage.
Any solution to the problem has to be based on a different way of thinking about water and its use and misuse in the domestic, agricultural, industrial and commercial sectors. It has to be based on the principles of conservation, saving and wastage-reduction rather than on profligate and wasteful use as at present.
There is no pretence that the implementation will be easy or smooth, but in the present and foreseeable circumstances, governments really have no other rational choice. The urgency of the situation cannot be over-emphasised.
There are enough working examples that demonstrate water (and precious top soil) conservation that directly provides water and food security to rural agricultural communities. In urban industrial areas, rooftop rainwater harvesting can effect substantial water saving, while treated waste water should be used for all non-critical purposes. Governments need to scrap the supply side ideas of an "inexhaustible source," focus attention on demand side management, and guide the public to "see the light" of water conservation and saving instead of "feeling the heat" of water shortage.
Prime among the priorities in this "new way" is revision of the agriculture policy in consultation with farmers' lobbies all across the State and not restricted to universities and "experts." In general, governments need to consult the people on the ground rather than the business-as-usual method of following the advice rendered by bureaucrats and others who may be unaware of ground realities.
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