Subscribe
Follow TNM's WhatsApp channel for news updates and story links.
Every year that the monsoon fails, tensions over the sharing of Cauvery river water resurface. This year is no exception. The Cauvery Water Management Authority (CWMA) has directed Karnataka to release 3,500 cusecs of water per day for the next 15 days—equivalent to 4.5 tmc.
However, the return of the El Niño phenomenon has led to a weak monsoon this year, resulting in a 65% rainfall deficit. Consequently, Karnataka has also faced a shortfall in the quantity of water it was required to release to Tamil Nadu during June and July under the Supreme Court's directions. In addition, the economic consequences of the ongoing war of United States and Israel on Iran have intensified shortages of fertilisers and driven up inflation, further aggravating the hardships faced by farmers in both states.
The Cauvery rarely becomes a subject of controversy during years of abundant rainfall. It is only when drought and scarcity emerge that disputes arise over how the burden of water shortages should be shared democratically.
In reality, the absence of a proper distress-sharing formula in the Cauvery dispute has made any lasting solution increasingly difficult. Historical inequities, mounting pressures on farmers' livelihoods, and competitive, opportunistic politics lacking statesmanship have only deepened the deadlock. Addressing river water-sharing disputes requires a scientific, democratic approach supported by political foresight and administrative statesmanship. Such a solution remains unlikely under the present political establishment.
What is less widely known among the younger generation is that during his tenure as a member of the Viceroy's Executive Council between 1942 and 1944, BR Ambedkar not only developed an exceptionally scientific and democratic framework for resolving complex interstate river water disputes but also initiated its implementation.
Ambedkar and the democratic redistribution of resources
At its core, river water sharing is a question of the democratic redistribution of limited natural resources. As water resources continue to decline while agriculture's dependence on them steadily increases, water allocation has become a matter of survival for farming communities. This, in turn, has provided fertile ground for opportunistic political mobilisation.
Such issues cannot be resolved through emotional appeals or temporary political compromises. They require both a strong democratic commitment to equitable resource redistribution and a scientific, long-term vision for water management and agriculture. Yet these are precisely the qualities most lacking in today's competitive and opportunistic political environment.
India has much to learn from the principles Ambedkar advanced regarding the democratic redistribution of scarce resources. These principles are relevant not only to river water sharing but also to the allocation of political, economic, and social resources.
However, opportunistic politics has also generated unwarranted suspicion toward institutions that could otherwise facilitate scientific and democratic resource allocation. For example, debates over fixing state-wise water shares often obscure the possibility of treating the entire river basin as a single hydrological unit and distributing water scientifically based on cropping patterns, farmers' needs, and other objective criteria rather than state boundaries.
In 2018, the Supreme Court delivered its final judgement on the Cauvery dispute, increasing Karnataka's share of the river's waters while directing the establishment of the CWMA and Cauvery Water Regulation Committee (CWRC).
These institutions were entrusted with overseeing all dams across the Cauvery basin and ensuring that water is allocated and utilised strictly in accordance with the final award of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal. Under this arrangement, no state can exercise absolute sovereignty over the river waters flowing through its territory.
Moreover, the CWMA is an implementing body tasked with enforcing the tribunal's final award. It is not a forum empowered to correct any perceived injustices embedded within that award. Consequently, under the existing framework, the Authority largely serves to preserve the status quo rather than provide a substantive solution.
It is against this backdrop that this year's monsoon failure has once again heightened tensions over Cauvery river water sharing between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
This raises a fundamental question: should an interstate river management authority not also be entrusted with a genuinely scientific role in resolving interstate water disputes?
Movements that struggle against present injustices often become preoccupied with immediate concerns while neglecting the search for permanent solutions. Such short-sightedness frequently shapes all forms of public agitation. The arguments and reasoning it generates can, at times, undermine democratic principles and produce adverse long-term consequences.
Ambedkar's framework for resolution
Viewed in this context, Ambedkar's perspective on the role of interstate river management boards offers a clear, people-centric, and national approach to interstate river water sharing.
As is well known, Ambedkar headed the Labour, Public Works, and Irrigation departments in the British Indian government between 1943 and 1945. He later chaired the Drafting Committee of the Constituent Assembly and served as India's first Law Minister until 1951. More significantly, at a time when the national movement was focused primarily on achieving political independence from British rule, Ambedkar was simultaneously fighting for freedom from caste and class oppression within Indian society, advocating a vision of genuine liberty founded on equality.
His contributions extended far beyond constitutional law. He worked to establish the principles of equitable participation and equal opportunity in major irrigation projects, financial planning, economic policy, education, and labour reforms.
For this reason, Ambedkar's thinking on river water sharing cannot be viewed merely as the opinion of an irrigation expert or a specialist in water management. His recommendations, planning principles, and policy framework on irrigation and river water allocation are reflected in his speeches, writings, and official guidance between 1943 and 1949.
These ideas are particularly evident in the planning of the Damodar Valley Project, the Son River Project, and the Mahanadi Project. They also found expression after Independence in the Inter-State Water Disputes Act, the River Boards Act, and Article 262 of the Constitution, all of which demonstrate Ambedkar's vision for the management and sharing of interstate river waters.
Across these writings and policy initiatives, Ambedkar's recommendations on river water sharing may be summarised as follows:
Water and rivers are precious resources that belong to everyone, and in an agriculture-dependent country, their full and efficient utilisation is essential.
Water use policy should primarily aim to improve the living standards of the most disadvantaged sections of society.
Planning for interstate rivers should adopt a multipurpose approach, integrating irrigation, hydroelectric power generation, and inland waterway development.
Interstate river water allocation should be planned by treating the entire river basin as a single, integrated hydrological unit.
This requires abandoning a purely local approach to interstate river water use and adopting a regional perspective that considers all the states through which the river flows as one unified planning region.
A regional river management corporation should be established to oversee the management and utilisation of the river's waters.
The Union government should provide the necessary technical expertise and institutional support for such bodies.
The benefits generated through this approach should ultimately reach the country's poorest citizens in the form of affordable water, food grains, electricity, and inland water transport.
These principles formed the foundation of Ambedkar's approach to river water utilisation and distribution. The Damodar Valley Corporation, the first institution established in India based on these principles, continues to play a significant role in reducing flood risks in Bihar and West Bengal while contributing to regional development. The Hirakud Dam across the Mahanadi similarly reflects this planning philosophy.
Treating an entire river basin as a single hydrological unit and the entire basin area as one integrated planning region enables the maximum possible utilisation of every drop of water. Such an approach also makes it possible to design cropping patterns and agricultural practices based on regional soil conditions, fertility, climate, and the optimal use of available water resources.
Even today, when agriculture faces far more complex challenges relating to resource use, sustainability, and resilience than it did in Ambedkar's time, this framework remains an exemplary model.
Can river authorities be part of the solution?
However, Ambedkar's policies on water management and river water sharing cannot be examined in isolation from his broader views on agriculture and the economy. In his economic writings, he argued that India's agricultural crisis could only be resolved through the nationalisation of agriculture. Without such reform, he maintained, a rural agrarian structure dominated by large landowners alongside small farmers would gradually push small cultivators—and ultimately the agricultural sector itself—toward economic collapse.
Although Ambedkar regarded economic revival as the primary objective of India's development, he insisted that it must be accompanied by an equitable distribution of wealth. He further argued that the state should assume the principal responsibility for achieving this goal by taking a leading role in the country's key economic sectors.
His proposals for interstate river corporations and river water-sharing mechanisms emerged from this broader framework of economic and social justice. In Ambedkar's conception of a river basin, distinctions between large landowners and small farmers would cease to exist. Likewise, there would be no division between Tamil and Kannada farmers. Since agriculture would be nationalised, fluctuations caused by drought or variations in river flows would not fundamentally determine the livelihood of individual farmers. Both hardship and prosperity would instead be shared collectively by the agricultural community and the nation as a whole.
The present reality, however, is markedly different. Rather than moving toward the nationalisation of agriculture, India is witnessing increasing corporatisation. Corporate agricultural interests are becoming concentrated in regions with greater access to river water, while large numbers of small landholders are being displaced from farming. In such circumstances, river management authorities are unlikely to deliver the kind of solution envisioned by Ambedkar.
Moreover, in contemporary India, river basins such as the Cauvery – where water resources are already utilised to their maximum extent – are increasingly shaped by the expansion of corporate agriculture and the corporate interests associated with large dam projects. This trend is likely to further restrict ordinary farmers' and citizens' access to Cauvery waters. It also risks intensifying existing inequalities in access to resources between regions, as well as among different social classes and caste groups within the same region.
Consequently, unless the democratisation, nationalisation, and socialisation of land ownership, wealth, and political opportunity advocated by Ambedkar are realised, even an interstate river management institution such as the Cauvery Water Management Authority is more likely to become part of the problem than part of the solution.
From this perspective, a durable resolution to interstate river water disputes such as the Cauvery conflict is inseparable from the broader process of grassroots democratisation in both the economy and the political system that Ambedkar envisioned.
Shivasundar is an activist and freelance journalist. Views expressed here are the author’s own.
