With the pace and output of the southwest monsoon this year casting a shadow over the catchment areas of the Cauvery river in Karnataka and Kerala, the elusive distress-sharing formula is back in focus. Recent submissions by Tamil Nadu and Karnataka as well as the deposition of the Cauvery Water Management Authority (CWMA) before the Supreme Court of India only reinforce the need for an early formulation that is acceptable to all.
The notion of a distress-sharing formula has been in the air ever since the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal (CWDT) gave its interim order in June 1991. A serious attempt to have one was made in 2002-03 when the southwest monsoon yielded scant rain (compared to long-term data) over a three-year block, between 2001-02 and 2003-04, with poor inflows to four reservoirs — Krishnaraja Sagar (KRS), Kabini, Hemavathy and Harangi, all in upper-riparian Karnataka. The state of Mettur dam in Tamil Nadu, the lower riparian State, needed no elaboration.
There is nothing much in the final order of the Tribunal in 2007 and the judgment of the Supreme Court in 2018, which the players concerned could look to for distress sharing. The judicial bodies had referred to the principle of pro-rata sharing in times of distress. The Tribunal had suggested that in the event of there being two consecutive bad years of rain, the monthly schedule of water release be relaxed and all the reservoirs in the entire basin operated in an integrated manner “to minimise any harsh effect”. But, in the discourse now, neither of the parties to the dispute nor the Authority has expressed anything against the concept of distress sharing. The divergence appears to be over what the elements of the proposed formula should be. Tamil Nadu takes into account the deficit in inflows to the four Karnataka reservoirs vis-à-vis the average flows in the last 30 years, and the rainfall pattern in three groups of the Cauvery catchment (the catchment of the KRS and Kabini, the catchment upstream of Biligundulu on the inter-State border, and the catchment downstream of Biligundulu).
