New tribunal unlikely to end all water wars

The Centre has decided to set up a single, permanent tribunal to adjudicate all inter-state river water disputes. The tribunals on Narmada, Cauvery, Ravi, Beas, Godavari, Krishna, Mahadayi and Vansadhara waters will be disbanded once the single tribunal is created after Parliament enacts a law in the next session. While it may appear this would speed up resolving states’ grievances, a single tribunal could also lead to enormous delays in resolving disputes even if it is supported by individual benches on different disputes. The Supreme Court has anyway made it clear it will assert its right to hear cases of differences between states over tribunal orders. It did so last week while hearing appeals in the three-decade-old Cauvery dispute among Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry.

The timeframe fixed for dispute resolution is said to be three years, that is extremely optimistic given how long states, whether upper or lower riparian, have trudged to the tribunals and the Supreme Court for a just share of the river waters. The problem is essentially political as we have come to know from several disputes that have played out over the years. In times of normal monsoons, when the rivers swell with water, there is never a problem of sharing, but the moment the flows come down, the states go up in arms. The legal and judicial processes are so convoluted that states simply go by interim awards given by the courts to put off having to pass final orders. For instance, Tamil Nadu nurses the grievance that the Cauvery Management Board is not being set up despite an order having been passed by the Supreme Court.

It is questionable if the inclusion of all existing disputes in the new scheme of a single authority is fair in law. This is a point that could form the basis of a dispute straightaway. The three-year timeframe may become meaningless if cases are heard from scratch. There may be much to commend an idea under which water and agriculture experts, water management engineers and technocrats, operating under a single retired Supreme Court judge, will decide how river waters are to be shared. Such an idea could ideally be used to arbitrate any fresh disputes arising out of sharing waters rather than drag cases out of eight rivers that have already caused heartaches in several states over the years. If the solution lies in accepting a technical award of experts by all states, dispute resolution should be simple enough. However, water is a sensitive subject that has been surrounded by fierce emotions and the politics of it ensures there is no silver bullet solution. The only certainty is that the water wars will rage on.