Indian State On Alert After Water Share Ruling

WATER WORLD

Activist of Kannada Rakshana Vedike, an organistaion representing the interests of the Indian state of Karnataka, shout slogans during a protest rally in front of the city railway station in Bangalore, 05 February 2007, following a verdict in a long standing water dispute. In a long awaited verdict the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal ruled that the Indian state of Karnataka will get 270 billion cubic feet of water and the state of Tamil Nadu will receive 419 billion. Photo courtesy AFP.

by Anil Penna
Bangalore (AFP) India, Feb 6, 2007
The southern Indian state of Karnataka was on high security alert Tuesday after a tribunal ruled against it in a century-old water dispute that triggered deadly riots in 1991, officials said. Schools, colleges and businesses were shut as politicians across the state protested Monday's verdict.

After 17 years of often bitter deliberations, the Cauvery Waters Disputes Tribunal found in favour of neighbouring Tamil Nadu and awarded it far more river water than Karnataka.

Riot police, who patrolled the streets of the state capital Bangalore overnight, were still out in force early Tuesday, an AFP reporter said.

Security had also been tightened along Karnataka's borders with Tamil Nadu, Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency reported.

"There is anger that we got less water," auto-rickshaw driver Mohammed Ansari told AFP. "Traffic is thinner than normal, most shops are closed," the 64-year-old added.

Many Indian and foreign technology firms, based in the IT hub of Bangalore, said they feared they would have to remain closed on Tuesday.

The Cauvery river rises in Karnataka and flows into the Bay of Bengal through Tamil Nadu.

Its waters -- fed by India's annual June to September monsoon rains -- irrigate crops and provide drinking supplies to Karnataka and Tamil Nadu states, as well as neighbouring Kerala and Pondicherry.

The tribunal, set up in 1990, awarded Tamil Nadu 419 billion cubic feet of the estimated total 740 billion cubic feet of Cauvery waters. Karnataka was given 270 billion cubic feet, with the rest shared by the other two states.

Karnataka chief minister H. D. Kumaraswamy called an all-party meeting for later Tuesday to review the ruling, with newspapers saying state officials were "shocked".

The minister told PTI that steps had been taken to maintain law and order in the wake of the award and appealed to farmers and other organisations to maintain peace.

The Tamil Nadu chief minister M. Karunnandihi welcomed the order, voicing hoped that Karnataka would implement it.

The modern dispute began in 1974 when an agreement inked in 1892 on the sharing of the waters lapsed.

That was the year when the British Madras presidency (now Tamil Nadu) forced the Maharaja-ruled Mysore (modern Karnataka) not to use the Cauvery waters without its permission.

The bickering has continued ever since, then with the two states repeatedly resorting to legal action to win a bigger share of the waters.

A 1991 interim court order telling Karnataka to release 205 billion cubic feet of water to Tamil Nadu sparked riots against minority Tamils in Bangalore, leaving about 20 people dead.

Karnataka cable operators across the state have previously blacked out Tamil-language satellite channels and banned Tamil films to show their resentment in the past.

The Hindu newspaper called the tribunal decision "eminently implementable", describing it as "a just and equitable settlement of ... an issue that has defied all attempts at negotiations and mediation".

The daily urged political leaders from both states to accept the deal and forget "chauvinism".

The agriculture sector -- heavily reliant on the monsoons -- employs two-thirds of India's work force and contributes up to a quarter of India's economic growth.

Source: Agence France-Presse

WATER WORLD

China Drought Leaves 300,000 Short Of Water

Beijing (AFP) Feb 6, 2007
A devastating drought and unusually high temperatures have left 300,000 people short of drinking water in northwest China, state media reported Tuesday. The drought has hit the densely populated Shaanxi province, where January rainfall was up to 90 percent below the average level from previous years, the Xinhua news agency said.

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