There will be demands on Rajinikanth to take a clear stand on the issue and prove his Tamil credentials.
The Supreme Court’s final verdict directing Karnataka to release 177.25 tmc of water from Cauvery to Tamil Nadu has come as a blow to the latter and the political fall-out could be near fatal for the ruling AIADMK, which had been preparing to celebrate the one of year of its current chief minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami.
The fact that the allocation has gone down from 192 tmc, which was earlier awarded by the Cauvery River Waters Disputes Tribunal in 2007, has left the state government shell-shocked, replacing its celebratory mood with one of despondence.
The fact that the Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra has made it clear that its verdict was final and there was no scope for filing any review petition, leaves Tamil Nadu with very little option but to accept the award. The state can now only hope that Karnataka too complies with the order.
The only consolation for Tamil Nadu is the Supreme Court’s direction to the central government to set up a Cauvery Management Board, which the state had been demanding, but was opposed by both Karanataka and the central government. The Centre had already taken the stand during the arguments before the Supreme Court that such a board could be created only by an act of Parliament, and not by an executive order. But that seems to have been overruled by the court now.
On the ground, reports from the Cauvery delta region are already indicating that the farmers in Tamil Nadu are not happy with the verdict, pointing out that even the 2007 award was a climb-down from the interim award of 205 tmc.
What has also shocked Tamil Nadu is the Supreme Court saying that it had taken into cognisance availability of 20 tmc of groundwater in the Cauvery delta region in Tamil Nadu. This is the first time that the court or a tribunal had introduced the groundwater availability into its calculations for sharing of interstate river waters. It is not yet known what the Supreme Court based its computation of groundwater availability.
With the feeling of having been shortchanged already creeping in, the setback will be seen as yet another instance of the present AIADMK government’s failure to protect the interests of the state. The Palaniswami government, which is living on borrowed time, with only the glue of power holding it together since the death of Jayalalithaa, has already been accused of sell-out on the implementation of GST and National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET). Both had been opposed by Jayalalithaa when she was alive and the allegation was that the Palaniswami government succumbed to pressure from the Narendra Modi government at the Centre.
Hemmed in as it is by failures on several fronts, and charges of non-governance, the Cauvery setback would be difficult for the AIADMK to ride out. Both the opposition DMK and the breakaway AIADMK group headed by T.T.V. Dhinakaran are sure to pile up pressure on the ‘official’ AIADMK in the wake of yet another “betrayal of Tamil interests”.
But what would be more interesting to watch is the effect that the verdict can have on the political plans of Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan, especially as the Supreme Court order is seen as a moral victory for Karnataka.
The problem will be more for Rajinikanth, a star with Marathi origin but whose association with Bengaluru has been a couple of decades long. Rajini’s critics had been unfailingly bringing up his Karnataka connections to deride him as an outsider despite his own claims of being a pachchai Thamizhan (true blooded Tamil) because of his four decades in Chennai and Tamil films. There will be demands on him to take a clear stand on the issue and prove his Tamil credentials. In the past, Rajinikanth’s only reaction to the Cauvery issue has been that the people of the two states should settle the issue amicably.
But now, such evasive responses will not work, at a time when he has decided to enter politics because Cauvery is a highly emotive political issue in the state. His detractors, especially the Tamil nationalists groups and parties on the fringes, will not hesitate to ask him to choose between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Though such a demand might be seen as petty jingoism, it will definitely have a bearing on whether, and how, Rajinikanth responds.
On the other hand, this might, just might, give Kamal Hassan, a much-needed boost on the eve of his political yatra that he has planned to undertake from Rameswaram on 21 February.
Kamal Hassan has been quick to react expressing his shock and disappointment over the verdict. But unlike other opposition parties he refused to be drawn in blame game.
In a nuanced reaction, he has said that the verdict should be accepted and the state should now look to optimise the utilisation of its own resources. He also said that it was time that people stopped politicising such emotive and crucial issues.
Though his dalliance with chief ministers like Pinarayi Vijayan (Kerala), Arvind Kejriwal (Delhi) and Mamata Banerjee (West Bengal) were intended to create an impression that his worldview was not restricted to Tamil Nadu alone, all his statements , tweets and the open letters have concentrated more on Tamil Nadu and the Tamil self-respect.
Kalyan Arun is a political analyst and journalism educator in Chennai. He tweets at @kalyanarun