Bengaluru/Chennai: On 29 June, Karnataka’s Deputy Chief Minister and Water Resources minister D.K. Shivakumar had met Union Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat in Delhi to apprise him of the importance of the Mekedatu dam. This led to political leaders from Tamil Nadu, including CM M.K. Stalin, to hit out at the Modi government and Karnataka for allegedly circumventing the Supreme Court ‘rulings’ on the issue.
Barely two weeks later, though, Shivakumar and Stalin smiled for pictures when the latter reached Bengaluru for the meeting of opposition parties.
Mekedatu, which literally means goat’s crossing in English, is situated around 100 km from Bengaluru in Karnataka’s Ramanagara district. It is an extension of the Cauvery River water dispute that has gone on for generations on both sides of the border.
The Cauvery dispute itself dates back to over a century and has since manifested in various forms between the people of both states. An extremely emotive issue, it has been used extensively for political purposes.
Farmers from both states complain about the other side not backing down. In the past five years, from 2019 to 2022, Karnataka had a BJP government, while Tamil Nadu, between 2016 and 2021, had the AIADMK in power. Now, the DMK and the Congress are in power in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, respectively.
Governments in both states handling the Cauvery issue walk a tightrope.
“In Karnataka, the Congress and the BJP have been in power in alternative governments. The two national parties have political interest and chances of coming to power in Karnataka, whereas in Tamil Nadu, they have very little scope of coming to power or ruling the state,” political analyst Priyan Srinivasan told ThePrint.
In the three decades since 1974, Tamil Nadu has witnessed the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) taking turns to form the government, while the BJP and the Congress were doing the same in Karnataka. There were alliances between the national parties and Dravidian outfits, but none of them strong or bold enough to resolve the dispute.
Neither of the national parties wants to be at loggerheads with either state.
Both states have accused each other of circumventing the 2018 SC ruling — which said the Cauvery water allocation arrangement will exist for 15 years — for electoral reasons.
Political parties in Tamil Nadu have also accused the Modi government of siding with upper-riparian Karnataka for political gains.
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Karnataka & Tamil Nadu’s network of dams
The Cauvery river’s basin originates in Karnataka and flows through Tamil Nadu and Puducherry before entering the Bay of Bengal. The major dams in this basin are Harangi, KRS, Kabini and Hemavathi in Karnataka, and Mettur and Kallanai dam alias Grand Anicut in Tamil Nadu.
Irrespective of the water inflows into these dams, Tamil Nadu is more concerned about the realisation of its share of the water in Biligundlu. There are complex calculations and conditions which dictate how much water can be released each year, depending on monsoons and water levels.
According to Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre (KSNDMC), as on 2 July, all four major dams in Cauvery basin — Harangi, Hemavathi, KRS and Kabini — were yet to receive any significant inflow and water was at only around 26,608 cusecs. It stated that the inflow to KRS was at just 6,278 cusecs with the dam currently holding 16.69 TMC water, which is a mere 34 per cent of its capacity. Last year, KRS during the same time was near full.
Stalin, in a letter to Union minister Shekhawat, had said that from 1 June to 17 July, the higher riparian state (Karnataka) had only released 3.78 TMC of water as against the prescribed quantum of 26.32 TMC for the period. “This leaves a huge shortfall of 22.54 TMC. Even this meagre flow of 3.78 TMC realised at Biligundlu is from the flows from the uncontrolled intermediate catchment areas below the Krishna Raja Sagara and Kabini reservoirs up to Biligundlu.”
‘Sowing dissent’
On 16 July, Nagarajan Veerasekaran, a farmer from Lalgudi town in Trichy, wrote to the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) seeking guidance from the government. An owner of 2.5 acres of agricultural land, Veerasekaran, like many other farmers from the Cauvery delta region, has been facing a crisis with his kuruvai crop.
Kuruvai — short duration paddy crops — are dependent on the water from the Cauvery for their irrigation. Stalin had opened the Mettur dam on 12 June to release 12,000 cusecs of water required for the kuruvai crop.
But with the water levels in the Mettur dam dwindling and, according to the Tamil Nadu government, Karnataka not releasing their neighbour’s share of the water, the farmers in the state are in despair. In most of the Cauvery delta region, the standing crop has started withering due to lack of water.
Now, the opposition AIADMK and the BJP have questioned the ruling DMK government on the actions of its ally Congress, which is in power in Karnataka, on the Cauvery issue.
“If Stalin has any concerns, he should have raised the issue with Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah or Water Resources Minister D.K. Shivakumar while participating in the opposition party conclave,” AIADMK leader Edappadi K. Palaniswami said on 22 July.
Shivakumar hit back at the former Tamil Nadu CM, saying, “The meeting (was) to unseat the BJP government at the Centre and not to discuss the Cauvery dispute.”
That the Congress party is part of the ruling alliance in Tamil Nadu, or even that the two parties have decided to join forces to take on the BJP in 2024, is of no consequence to either state, neither of which is willing to soften its stand on the Cauvery water dispute.
A day after Tamil Nadu released water from Mettur to its farmers, nearly 200 farmers on the other side of the border protested outside the Cauvery Neeravari Nigama office in Karnataka’s Mandya.
Their demand was that the Karnataka government release water from the Krishna Raja Sagara (KRS) dam as rains were delayed.
“We protested twice in front of authorities, including once near Bengaluru-Mysuru highway, demanding that the government release water. If we cannot sow within the first few days of August, we will have no crop,” Kempu Gowda, a farmer from Mandya, told ThePrint.
With rains failing, the Tamil Nadu and Karnataka governments are trying to find ways to mitigate the water shortage. But most of the water from the proposed Mekedatu project is aimed at giving relief to a parched Bengaluru.
Pre-Independence dispute
The Cauvery water dispute dates back to the early 1890s, and the 1892 and 1924 agreements were used to share water between the then Princely state of Mysore and the Madras Presidency. During the Congress rule in both Mysore and Madras State despite Tamil Nadu’s opposition, two dams were constructed over 1959 and 1960s over the Cauvery.
In 1974, when the DMK was in power in Tamil Nadu, the Congress government in Karnataka wanted to stop water sharing with the other riparian state as the 50-year agreement that was made in 1924 came to an end. With the Centre’s intervention, multiple boards like Cauvery Fact Finding Committee (CFFC), Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal (CWDT), Cauvery River Authority (CRA), Cauvery Monitoring Committee were set up over the next 33 years. In 2007, the CWDT submitted its 1,000-page final report on the matter.
In 2018, the Supreme Court had said the Cauvery water allocation arrangement will exist for 15 years.
“Around 13 districts are dependent on Cauvery, and after drinking water use, only 6,000 to 7,000 TMC will be available for agriculture and close to 5 lakh acre kuruvai crop is dependent on this water. Around 1.5 lakhs acre is irrigated with bore pumps, but due to the water shortage, the rest of the crops have dried up,” said Tamil Nadu Iyarkai Vivasayigal Munnetra Sangam president M. Thangaraj, who demanded Rs 30,000 per acre as compensation for the affected farmers.
While water sharing continues to be an issue, the latest bone of contention is the Mekedatu dam.
Karnataka has maintained that the Mekedatu project is to generate 400 MW of power and additionally utilise 4.75 TMC of water for drinking and domestic needs in the state and particularly Bengaluru.
But the government and farmers in Tamil Nadu are opposing the Mekedatu project due to the fear that with the new dam in place, Karnataka will stop sharing water. A longstanding grouse is Karnataka gives only surplus water to Tamil Nadu.
On 15 July, the Karnataka government set up a 29-member team to carry out a joint survey of the region where the contentious Mekedatu project is likely to be built. The Karnataka government has conducted at least two such surveys by the forest department so far and the building of the dam is likely to lead to a loss of around 52 square km of forest. But successive governments have decided to go ahead with it and any initiative like a survey counts as ‘progress’ on the project from the point of view of Karnataka and a sign of ceding more ground from that of Tamil Nadu.
“We have done many surveys of our own in the past as well as things (plans) keep changing. We are doing this to check and assess the total area (of forest) that we will lose (as a result of the project),” a senior Karnataka government official told ThePrint.
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‘Our water, our right’
In November 2018, the Central Water Commission (CWC) had approved the feasibility report of the Mekedatu dam project.
Soon after the CWC’s nod to prepare a detailed project report (DPR), in a specially convened Tamil Nadu assembly session in December 2018, the then AIADMK government unanimously passed a resolution — one, urging the Modi government to revoke the permission granted for conducting DPR, and two, seeking the Centre to order Karnataka from taking up any construction activities.
The DPR is still pending for NOC from the CWC. In March 2022, the Congress, which completed a 165 km padyatra ‘Namma Neeru, Namma Hakku’ (Our water, our right), promised that once it comes to power, implementing the Mekedatu project would be its first decision.
The same month, the then BJP government in Karnataka had allocated Rs 1,000 crore for the Mekedatu project in the State Budget.
“All legal decisions in the Mekedatu dam issue are done, and a monitoring committee has been set up. The core problem of permission is no longer there between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. We (Karnataka) are going to utilise the excess river water that flows into the sea. Tamil Nadu has no legal or moral right to object to this,” Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (Karnataka state farmers association) state president Kodihalli Chandrashekar told ThePrint.
He added that farmer associations will lay the foundation stone for the Mekedatu project on their own as successive governments had failed to do so.
Meanwhile the lower riparian state, Tamil Nadu, has not taken Karnataka’s initiatives lightly.
“The Karnataka government has made a promise to their people on constructing a dam on the Cauvery which they know they can’t fulfil. It is against the SC order. Without the consent of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka can not build the Mekedatu. Tamil Nadu government will never agree to this and there is no amicable solution, they can’t build the dam is the only solution,” A. Saravanan, advocate and DMK spokesperson, told ThePrint.
Blaming the Siddaramaiah government, BJP Tamil Nadu state vice-president Narayanan Thirupathy said, “The BJP government in the Centre has been respectful of the Supreme Court order and has always maintained that without the consent of TN, the Mekedatu matter cannot be taken up in from Cauvery authority. But, the Congress is acting illegally and is denying water to Tamil Nadu and is trying to illegally construct the dam. This is against the nation’s interest.”
In Karnataka, political leaders cut party lines when it comes to ‘nela, jala, bashe’ (land, water and language). It is no different in Tamil Nadu.
In June, Shivakumar extended the olive branch saying that he did not want to go to ‘war’ with Tamil Nadu since people on both sides were each other’s brethren. But, the proposed Mekedatu dam threatens to break the bridge between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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