The biryani is served piping hot. But don’t be fooled by this hospitality served to you on a platter at the entrance to Mandya town and assume you are being welcomed into this part of south Karnataka. The delicacy is cooked in a large vessel in the middle of the road, as part of the protest against giving 15,000 cusecs of the river Cauvery’s water to Tamil Nadu every day, for the next ten days. 

Please note: drinking water is not served along with the biryani. 

Twenty-seven kilometres away in Srirangapatna, a dozen-odd farmers get into the Cauvery river, flags of their association in hand, to raise anti-Tamil Nadu and anti-Karnataka government slogans. Since the Supreme Court verdict on Monday ordering upper riparian state Karnataka to release water to Tamil Nadu, farmers in the Cauvery delta in Karnataka have demonstrated their lungpower, arguing the state’s dams have water just about sufficient for Karnataka’s drinking water needs.

In Mandya, the ground zero of these protests, I spoke to Sunitha, wife of a farm labourer. She said, “When farmers have no water for their land, my husband gets no work. How will he earn? Do I let my two little children die with no food and water?’”

For old-timers, the script is familiar. After all, the Cauvery dispute dates back to 1892 and every other year has seen Kannadigas and Tamils at each other’s throat. Every time, Karnataka faces a rainfall deficit and the Cauvery is not full to the brim, the river bed turns into a battlefield, using weapons of ugly threats and petty regionalism.

The Cauvery River Waters Tribunal stipulated in its award in 2007 that Karnataka should release 192 tmc feet of water to Tamil Nadu. But that is in a good year. In the lean months of August-September, the ceasefire is called off by self-styled spokespersons of the Kannadiga cause. ‘Won’t give a drop from my bucket’’ is the tone and tenor of the narrative.

With Tamil Nadu pressing the panic button to save its crop in seven districts through which the Cauvery flows and Karnataka pointing to its rainfall deficit figures, the Supreme Court had to urge Karnataka to help Tamil Nadu “exist as an entity’” in the spirit of “live and let live’”. But Mandya has been in shutdown mode since Tuesday and all of Karnataka will log out as well for a bandh on Friday.

“Bandhs are not going to decide the verdict in the Supreme Court,” says Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Rajya Sabha MP from Karnataka. “Yes, we are wronged and we should vent our anger. But it would have helped if the Karnataka government had engaged in a dialogue with the people. They should know that under the law of the land, river sharing is a matter of right.”

While Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa dashed off a letter to the Prime Minister seeking his intervention, Siddaramaiah argued how could Karnataka give water for irrigation to Tamil Nadu when it is giving only drinking water in its own region? Irrigation minister MB Patil upped the ante, as if to suggest that cities like Bengaluru, Mysuru, Mandya will go thirsty if even a drop of water passed the Kabini and Krishna Raja Sagara dam gates. 

The fact of the matter is that while Kodagu and Hassan, the two main catchment districts for Cauvery recorded 27 per cent and 23 per cent rainfall deficit, it is not as if Cauvery has gone bone dry. Tamil Nadu too acknowledges the problem, which is why in the Supreme court, it scaled down its demand from 50,000 cusecs to 20,000 cusecs. 

“But the manner in which Karnataka groups are protesting, it is as if they own the Cauvery and are doling out a favour to Tamil Nadu,” asked a bureaucrat in the Tamil Nadu government. 

While farmer groups in Karnataka asked chief minister Siddaramaiah to defy the court order on Tuesday morning, their counterparts in Tamil Nadu too spoke the same language. “We will cut off power supply to Karnataka from the Neyveli Lignite Corporation,” said the Tamil Nadu Farmers Association. Nothing but empty rhetoric to play to the constituency back home, while inflaming passions.

Over the years, Tamil Nadu has accused Karnataka of building projects on the Cauvery to alter the course of the river while Karnataka has retaliated by asking Tamil Nadu to ensure so much water does not flow into the sea.

Cauvery has also seen much political posturing. In 1993, Jayalalithaa as CM sat on an 80-hour long fast forcing New Delhi to intervene. Likewise, in 2002, then Karnataka chief minister SM Krishna went on a padyatra from Bengaluru to Mandya to get a grip on the situation. 

The blame is now being laid at the door of the legal team representing Karnataka. This despite the fact that the team was led by Fali S Nariman, one of the best legal brains in India, and more importantly, someone who has articulated Karnataka’s case in court for the last 32 years. But his supporters say it was next to impossible for Karnataka to say it won’t release any water and that but for Nariman’s stature, the bench may have asked it to spare more water downstream.

More than a legal debacle, the issue has been mishandled politically. Siddaramaiah was aware that reduced water levels will lead to a war of words and should have spoken to his Tamil Nadu counterpart to ensure both sides sort it out amicably. Getting talking should not have been difficult, given that Jayalalithaa was born in Mandya district and Siddaramaiah hails from the neighbouring Mysuru district (both part of the Cauvery delta).

But like the kneejerk reactions to the flooding of some parts of Bengaluru in July – after which Siddaramaiah ordered large-scale demolitions – the Cauvery crisis also has been handled in the same nonchalant manner.

This is the second major river water sharing issue that has gone against Karnataka. The Mahadayi Water Disputes Tribunal in July rejected Karnataka’s plea to divert 7.56 tmc of water from the Mahadayi basin, leaving farmers in north Karnataka very angry.

It is not as if BJP chief ministers have not released water after pressure from Tamil Nadu before. Siddaramaiah himself pointed out that Jagdish Shettar had done so, releasing 10,000 cusecs in 2012 for nine days.
But even though legally he did the right thing, Siddaramaiah has lost much political face in the last 48 hours. Given that his stock among farmers – with 1,560 reported suicides by farmers in 2015-16 – is already at a low ebb, the Cauvery issue may well push the Congress party in Karnataka into a watery political grave.