When waters get murky...

On 12th Feb ’07, Raymond Lafitte, a Swiss civil engineer appointed (in May 2005) as a neutral expert by the World Bank, gave his verdict settling the dispute between India and Pakistan over the Baglihar dam. On 5th Feb ’07, an Arbitration Tribunal comprising of Justice N.P. Singh and members N.S. Rao and Sudhir Narain gave its unanimous verdict on the dispute between two Indian States- Tamil Nadu and Karnataka- over the waters of river Cauvery, a long-standing dispute since 1807 I read in some report. I’m not too aware of the problems with any of these disputes but it seemed a strange coincidence that two States in the country and two countries in the Asian continent were embroiled in water related disputes. Fading into the background are Tamil Nadu’s other disputes over the waters of the Palar river with Andhra Pradesh and over the Periyar, the Sholayar and Aliyar rivers with Kerala. Punjab and Haryana (along with Rajasthan and Delhi too but I need to check) fought over the Sutlej-Yamuna canal link. While the verdict by Lafitte is being given a mixed welcome by both India and Pakistan, the verdict by the Tribunal looking into to Cauvery dispute seems to have created a rather strong sense of winning and losing. Tamil Nadu appears happy and Karnataka upset. Karnataka saw some violence (amidst the news of so much violence in all parts of the world one only grasps numbers that are high in terms of fatalities. Injuries and that to in seemingly low numbers by comparison leave you with hardly any memory of this aspect of the news unfortunately). Interestingly, one of the ways in which cable operators in Karnataka protested were to ban any movie in Tamil or having a Tamil star. Ties in with some earlier thoughts below on censorship by entities outside the ‘State’. If India & Pak remain happy with Lafitte’s verdict (apparently now even Sir Creek is being jointly surveyed by India & Pak for a mutually acceptable solution but more on that some other time), it should serve as a lesson for the States here in India to accept verdicts even when they might have some undesirable consequences for one of the parties. It’s always a problem keeping everyone happy when negotiating for someone has to give. All in all, a telling sign of the power of water. It may seem out of context but I was reminded of Tagore’s words from Gitanjali: …where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls…