Heading into a dry run: Mridula Ramesh, on water

By late August 2023, something was clearly very wrong in the Cauvery basin. The southwest monsoon had failed. Between June and August, Kodagu district, where the Cauvery originates, saw 50% less rain than normal. The districts of Wayanad (where Rahul Gandhi will contest the election from) and Mysuru, which provide the Kabini with its water, received 60% and 10% less rain than normal.
And so, reservoir levels in the Cauvery basin began flashing red. By September, the combined reservoir levels were within kissing distance of the lowest ever recorded. Karnataka’s leaders, cursing the skies and worried, released less water than they ought to have, into Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu protested, and the Cauvery Water Management Authority (CWMA), created precisely to sort out this kind of tussle, ordered Karnataka to release more.
Few would envy the predicament that Karnataka’s political leaders found themselves in. CWMA’s orders were guided by hydrological fact rather than political compulsion. The Supreme Court, which Tamil Nadu approached, was to hear the case soon. Not releasing any water would not reflect well on Karnataka (“Would you like to be pulled up by the Supreme Court?” deputy chief minister DK Shivakumar asked reporters).
Kannadiga farmers were staging massive protests. Rahul Gandhi was set to launch a major welfare scheme in Mysuru on August 30. The Congress-led state leadership would look bad if their national leader was booed on stage. So they compromised, releasing less water than ordered but more than they wanted to.
Tamil Nadu was unhappy but restrained in its protests (the Tamil Nadu and Karnataka state leaders are in alliance for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls). Instead, Tamil Nadu approached the mediators again. On September 12, the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee (CWRC) directed Karnataka to release even more water (the chairman of the committee clarified that this was a “direction” not a “recommendation”).
The distinction was lost on Karnataka’s government, which refused to comply. “We will appeal… CWRC is only a recommendatory body,” chief minister Siddaramaiah said.
Now for the most interesting part. Siddaramaiah said his state needed 106 thousand million cubic feet (TMC) for irrigation, drinking and industrial use. But, he added, “at present, we are left with only 53 TMC of water. We have no water to spare for Tamil Nadu”.
Tamil Nadu countered that even accounting for the poor rains, Karnataka was releasing too little water. CWMA met for an emergency session and ordered Karnataka to release water. The Supreme Court ratified this decision. Shyam Divan, the advocate representing Karnataka, said, “We are facing a drinking water crisis, especially in urban areas including in Bengaluru.” Hmmm.
If Karnataka knew there was a water crisis brewing in Bengaluru six months earlier, why did it not put water demand curbs in place then? Why did it not place restrictions on groundwater extraction then? Why not fix leaks and desilt smaller lakes on a war footing then? Instead, the Supreme Court’s decision was met with bandhs and protests in Karnataka. Tamil farmers staged an unusual protest, holding dead rats in their mouths – implying that Karnataka was condemning them to starvation.
After all, the amount of Cauvery water Tamil Nadu got in 2023 ranked amongst the five worst receipts in half a century. Coupled with the poor rainfall, Tamil Nadu’s delta paddy crop suffered poor yields.
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Now for a layer of detail: Rivers flow fast in their early stretches, wearing away the earth beneath them and carrying the silt downstream. Farmers treasure this fertile silt but, in dams, silt reduces how much water a reservoir can hold. According to the Central Water Commission’s updated Compendium on Sedimentation of Reservoirs in India 2020, reservoirs built on east-flowing rivers in the Deccan were particularly prone to siltation, and, by 2009, the four major Karnataka reservoirs in the Cauvery basin had lost 4-10% of their holding capacity because of it.
Across India, on average, siltation was reducing reservoir capacities by 1% annually. In some reservoirs, the rate of siltation was five times the rate that dam builders had planned for.
Losing upstream forests, incidentally, increases siltation. Oops.
Returning to Bengaluru’s crisis, the high siltation rates implied that there was probably a lot less water in the reservoirs than there appeared to be six months earlier. Experts and leaders probably knew that, and still did little.
This is true for reservoirs across India. Oops. Oops.
Moving on, India’s water supply is one of the most seasonal in the world – most of the country gets most of its annual rainfall over about 100 hours. Rainfall varies tremendously between years. Storing water helps cope with this variability, which is something ancient Indians did well. This is why Indian cities contained so many lakes, built to hold on to rain water and allow it to percolate underground.
But, as the Tamil proverb asks, “Kazhuthaikku theriyuma karpoora vaasanai?” Can donkeys appreciate the fragrance of camphor?
Every Indian city has built over and encroached upon its lakes with a vengeance, even as a warming Earth raises the chances of intense downpours. So now, in heavy spells, it floods rather than filling up the neighbourhood lake (think of Velachery in Chennai this past December) and recharging the groundwater that can help in the dry season.
World Bank data shows that India’s water storage capacities are minuscule, far lower than Brazil’s or even China’s on a per capita basis.
Losing this storage to urbanisation and siltation condemns Indian cities to a bipolar reality. In a hotter climate, they can expect to be tossed between floods and water scarcity. Bengaluru and Chennai’s experiences this past year illustrate this.
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Now to philosophy. Bengaluru protests as groundwater runs out. Chennai protests when homes flood. Farmers protest for subsidies to grow crops that make zero water sense in their regions.
India protests against dams. Haryana and Punjab protest when water flows to Delhi. Andhra Pradesh deploys its policemen to open the sluices when Telangana holds water back.
It is our water when we need it, but somebody else’s water when it needs to be managed.
If you doubt this, ask yourself: When was the last time we voted on managing water better? I explore this question in some depth in my 2021 book Watershed. I have asked this question to over 900 people through my institute. And the answer is: Nowhere close to often enough.
When we don’t vote on water management, it is foolish to expect our political leaders to prioritise it. And that’s a problem, folks.
Consider the proposed solutions to Bengaluru’s crisis. “Use more treated sewage.” Bengaluru has great regulations in place to treat and reuse sewage, but when people cheat and are punished, protests break out, causing penalties to be rolled back. “Increase supply.” Bengaluru and other cities lose anywhere between 20% and 50% of their water to leaks. When we protest against pricing water, where is a municipality to get cash to fix leaky pipes?
“Stop wasting water”. If you want your neighbour to stop using groundwater for a doggie paddling pool, you need more boots on the ground to enforce standards, which translates to more efficiently managed utilities, and money for salaries. Per World Resources Institute data, urban Indians pay too little for water compared to people living in cities in other developing countries.
When we pay so little for water, why will we respect it? And without this respect, how can we become water-resilient? God’s grace? I’m a believer, but faith is not an antidote to stupidity.
We weren’t always this way. The Arthashastra’s water-pricing system rewards water management. And while our dams (Nehru’s temples of modern India) silt up and break away, not far from where I live lies a glorious 6th-century granite check dam, cunningly designed to avoid siltation, which, a millennia after it was built, works with little tinkering.
I’ll end with another story: Once upon a time, the Vaigai, Madurai’s main river, was in spate. The king ordered each family to help build a bund to guard the city. But Vanthiammai, an old puttu (rice cake) seller, was too weak to obey. She offered puttu to anyone who would help her, but no one came forward. Finally, Lord Shiva, in the form of a young man, offered to help in return for puttu. But Shiva, trickster that he was, ate the puttu, then fell asleep on the job. The king caught him dozing and had him caned. Every citizen of Madurai felt the blow. Even today, this story is celebrated in Madurai, but the message — that everyone, even the gods, must help manage water — is lost on many.
As temperatures, tanker prices and tempers rise in Bengaluru (and Pune and parts of Gurugram), people and businesses are hurting. Those who can are moving away, leaving others bruised or shutting down. In the frenzied pitch of a crisis, we cling to partial-truth straws: poor rainfall, delayed desilting, depleting groundwater. We reach further, drawing more from faraway rivers. But we miss the big picture. The climate has changed.
Dry regions (and seasons) will get drier. Wet ones, wetter. Bengaluru district received 714 mm of rainfall last year. Low? Sure. But Bengaluru has received less than that during a third of the years in the past century. Welcome to our future.
Projections released this week by the India Meteorological Department indicate brutally long heat waves this summer, even as the water levels in reservoirs across peninsular India ebb further.
It is a reality that Bengaluru and India must prepare for. And salvation, always, begins from within — in this case, with respecting our water, managing it better and reflecting that respect in how we vote.
(Mridula Ramesh is a climate-tech investor and author of The Climate Solution and Watershed)