Bengaluru: Every time some authority asks Karnataka to release Cauvery river water to neighbouring Tamil Nadu, the state’s farmers and pro-Kannada organizations take to streets.

But this year, the noise seems to be too loud even by its own standards.

Mint looks at what is at stake for the state following the Monday’s order, which could explain why it is feels so strongly about the waters.

Acute water shortage

Karnataka is facing an acute shortage in its reservoirs, rivers and wherever else there should have been water post the advancement of south-west monsoon in August. This is the sixth consecutive year of subpar rainfall in Karnataka, coming on the back of a drought year.

Consequently, most of its dams are at 50% or below their normal storage levels.

The now contested Cauvery basin alone feeds six districts including Bengaluru and has a total demand of around 87.37 thousand million cubic feet (TMC), whereas as of now it has only 58.78 TMC this year.

Also Read: Karnataka braces for drought as dry spell continues

Rural distress

Consequent to back-to-back drought-like conditions among other reasons have pushed the state into a web of rural distress, especially for the massive number of people who are employed in the agriculture sector. Just in last year, the estimated damage in agriculture was ₹ 14,471 crore and ₹ 7,209 crore during khariff and rabi seasons, respectively, as per government estimates.

The latest budget expects this year’s production to come down to 11 million tonnes from last year’s 12.6 million tonnes.

All of this has already pushed farmers to an edge and about 1,300 killed themselves in 2015, as per government data. With monsoon being bad this year too, the government worries a shortage of water could further deepen the rural distress. It already expects a major rural labour crisis and has asked the Centre to provide ₹ 1,788 crore to deal with it.

Also Read: Karnataka seeks Rs1,788 crore from Centre to deal with rural labour crisis

In Mysore and Mandya, two districts which have the most cultivable land of 2.9 lakh acres in the Cauvery basin, the sowing numbers of the major crop, paddy, has come down from 1.07 lakh hectares in 2015 to just over 80,000 hectares.

Simmering anger against the legal team

Karnataka has a history of losing it out to Tamil Nadu most in courts when it comes to legal fighting. It has stocked considerable anger this time, partly because the protestors believe the state’s legal team did not do a fair job in the SC, and also because the lead advocate Fali S. Nariman’s, one of India’s senior most legal luminaries, purported connections with Tamil Nadu chief minister J.Jayalalithaa. Nariman had appeared for Jayalalithaa in a disproportionate assets case against her, following which she was granted bail in October 2014. Venting out their anger against repeated failures, the pro-Kannada groups have asked chief minister Siddaramaiah to revamp the legal team and oust Nariman.

Double-whammy for the state

Many see the SC direction to give water to Tamil Nadu from its southern basins actually as a double whammy for Karnataka, causing water related protests of both in the south and the north to intensify at the same time. This is because the SC order comes just when the state’s arid northern regions are agitating over the rejection of Maharashtra and Goa to share border river Mahadayi’s waters with Karnataka. Struggling to hold on to more water from Mahadayi, Karnataka recently moved a petition in an inter-state’s water tribunal. The petition was rejected in July, triggering agitations across the northern belt, who have joined hands with the Cauvery protestors now.

Also Read: Mahadayi water dispute: Siddaramaiah offers to host first round of talks

The timing and the politics

In a year’s time, Karnataka is going to polls. Rural farmers are a key constituency for all major parties who would want to be the king or kingmaker in Karnataka politics. This power dynamic and the timing of the protests has added more rigour than usual to the noise on the streets.

Political analysts say that the opposition parties Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Janata Dal (Secular) or JD(S) are using the protesting farmers as to attack and paint the Siddaramaiah-led ruling Congress government as anti-farmer. Especially so for the former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa, the newly-appointed state unit chief of BJP in its bid to recapture power in Karnataka.

However, Siddaramaiah has been quick to sense this trouble. The government ordered on Wednesday night to direct some additional water to Mandya—the heartland of Cauvery agitations, some 100km away from Bengaluru—over the next few days, possibly in an attempt to pacify the protestors.

He has also been quick to point out the state unit of BJP in Tamil Nadu going against Karnataka’s demands and the unwillingness from BJP leader and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene for an out-of-court settlement on inter-state river disputes. The baseline is, as Karnataka Pradesh Congress committee working president Dinesh Gundu Rao told Mint in an earlier interview, “Issues concerning water are very important as they will be an important issue in the next election."

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