Water Disputes in the Cauvery and the Teesta Basins: Conflictual Federalism, Food Security, and Reductionist Hydrology

Abstract

AbstractThis paper postulates that the water conflicts in India are essentially results of three major policy-driven factors: (a) the federal structure of the nation, where water has been made part of the State List; (b) wrong delineation of the food security policy with food security being viewed through the lens of production and procurement of high water-consuming crops like rice and wheat; and (c) lack of an integrated ecosystems approach to understand the land–water–food nexus in the water policy of the nation. The same has been argued in this paper with expositions from two transboundary water conflicts, namely the interstate water conflicts over the Cauvery, and the water conflicts at various levels over the Teesta (Bangladesh–India, centre-state, economy-ecosystem). In the process, the paper argues for a paradigm change from the reductionist approach to a holistic approach to water governance embedded in the emerging thinking of Integrated Water Resource Governance at a basin scale.KeywordsInterstate watersConflictual federalismProperty rightsMinimum support pricesFood securityIntegrated basin governanceArithmetic hydrology