|
|
 |
 |
| Sunday, 13 October 2002 |
 |
|
 |
Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
|
Water sharing and power sharing : Contours of the future Lankan State Observations by LAKSHMAN GUNASEKERA As they tensely observe the situation in the East after last week's latest provocations, Sri Lankans will do well to watch carefully the on-going battle over the waters of the mighty Cauvery River between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu states just across the Palk Strait. It is an excellent example of the problems that could arise with the re-drawing or drawing of boundaries to demarcate separate political communities, such as in a new devolution (or secession) exercise long overdue in our country.
Chennai is demanding that the state government in Bangalore release waters from the several dams on this big river system, located upstream in Karnataka, for irrigation usage by Tamil Nadu's rain-starved farmers. The sharing of Cauvery water for power and irrigation purposes is already intricately provided for in the Cauvery river authority agency while even the negotiation procedures, when necessary, are elaborately laid out. But while, even previously, there have been disputes that have required political negotiation, the deadlock today is the worst yet: even after the Indian Supreme Court has ordered the release of water at the headworks in Karnataka, the government in Bangalore has not acquiesced. This is because the Karnataka government is also under immense pressure from its own water-starved farmers. What Sri Lankans, especially those in the Eastern province, must note is the degree of societal unity within the region (state), both political as well as ethnic, when it comes to the very crucial issues. Both in Karnataka as well as in Tamil Nadu there is complete political unanimity and no communal divide when it comes to the water issue. We, Sri Lankans, are well aware that ethno-religious tensions between communities in India are as bad and prone to communal violence as in Sri Lanka. The communal relations within Tamil Nadu and Bangalore are nowhere as bad as in the northern and central Indian states, but they are still tense. It is immensely significant that even as Hindus and Muslims and, higher and lower castes in both states and, even Bangaloreans and immigrant Tamils in Bangalore, are ready to kill each other on communal grounds (not at the level of a civil war as here, though), when it comes to water, obviously, water is thicker than blood. And Tamil Nadu's main oppositional DMK party, which is supportive of the central BJP-led government in Delhi and the bitterest foe of Chief Minister Jayalalitha's AIA-DMK, has suspended its enmity and is supporting Chennai's stand on the Cauvery water issue. While it did not attend the meeting of all parties convened last week by Jayalalitha, the DMK did announce its support for the consensus position adopted. Sri Lankans must also note that despite decades of squabble over the Cauvery water and other cross-border ecological and other issues, no one in South India has expressed any regrets that the country had been divided up into states in the devolution of power that followed the end of the British Empire in India. No one has argued, as some people do here, that such trans-state or inter-state issues as ecology and economy (leave aside the security and military dimensions), are too sensitive to allow for the carving out of regional political communities as in self-governing provinces or states. Instead, in India, things have been worked out in elaborate detail and there is the understanding that governance means continued complex negotiations and painstaking political management. Hence the mechanisms for negotiation and management are all laid out (with fallback legal procedures) and are improved upon when required. The Cauvery dispute The Cauvery dispute is especially relevant to Sri Lanka in the context of the intensive devolution exercise that we must go through if peace is to be made permanent. And in Sri Lanka, the complexity of the issue of water sharing and its relevance to social conflict and power sharing can be seen in the case of our biggest power and irrigation scheme, the Mahaveli. If people worry about how to share water if provincial self-rule is further strengthened, they should recall the fact that the failure to share water has contributed to the original impetus for self-rule and even secession. The reality of ecology, more than anything else, should make Sri Lankans, as well as all those elsewhere, who idolise 'The State', realise the impermanent and relatively 'ephemeral' nature of polities. The deliberate refusal by previous governments, during the design of the Mahaveli project, to allow for the adequate extension of irrigation canals to feed water reservoirs of the Northern Province, contributed to the feeling of alienation of the Northern society. Life-giving water, from the much-venerated Mahaveli (King Parakramabahu's dictum and all that), was cut off by the Sinhala-led government in Colombo at the very borders of the Northern Province. Now, in their successful campaign for self-rule, if not secession, the people of the North must be thanking their lucky stars at their independence of southern river water. In the East, however, the situation is very different. Just as much as ethnic demography is complex and local communities are inter-dependent economically, so are they inter-dependent ecologically. Tamil peasant labour of one neighbourhood must work in the farms of Muslim rich peasants and vice versa. Equally significantly, in some intensive agriculture areas of the Eastern Province (the East was once ancient Dighavapi, famed for its rice production), the irrigation of large tracts of (Tamil-owned) cultivated land is dependent on water flowing down from reservoirs in Sinhala-populated areas. Here, the problem of water sharing of the giant Cauvery system (several times bigger than the Mahaveli scheme in scale) is experienced in microcosm. And here it is in the aftermath of a decades-long war, massacres, ethnic cleansing, civil rioting and sorts of mayhem. No wonder, in the first flush of their perceived success in the self-rule struggle, the Eastern Tamils would simplistically wish that they could regain lands currently occupied by both Muslim and Sinhala communities. Their motive is partly revenge following their experience firstly of State sponsored Sinhala land settlements and, secondly, of ethnic cleansing efforts encouraged by State counter-insurgency agencies that armed Muslim radical groups and used Muslim cadres as infiltrators and assassins against the Tamil Eelavar militants. But the underlying motive is economic prosperity and the basic resources required for it: land and water. If this self-centred, parochial mindset among Eastern Tamils did not render them somewhat independent of the political control of the Northern Tamil leadership (currently Kilinochchi-based), the traditional socio-cultural differentiation between 'Jaffna Tamils' and 'Batticaloe Tamils' does. Hence, the recent emergence of clear fissures between the Northern LTTE political high command and its Eastern sub-regional leadership. Eastern leader Karikalan, currently officially on the sidelines, is the boss of Batticaloa Tamils and in order that he remain boss and maintain his power-base vis-…-vis Kilinochchi, he must adhere to the aspirations of the Eastern Tamils, self-centred and parochial though they maybe. Fissiparous tendencies Given these fissiparous tendencies within the North-East political community itself, the leadership of that community, the LTTE, is not in a position to envisage any sub-division of the combined North-East region. Leave aside a Muslim entity, even the prospect of the carving out of some Sinhala divisional areas is un-acceptable in the areas where they may contain the upstream head works of irrigation and water supply systems that feed Tamil communities downstream. This delicate complex of military strategy, security, land and water control and economic inter-dependence is what makes the East the flashpoint in Sri Lanka's fragile peace. Last week's incident in Kanchikudah is but the latest of several such incidents of violence and social or military tension that have punctuated the regime of Cease-fire 2002. That the cease-fire, now in its eighth month, continues to hold despite these provocations, is testimony to its success and is a portent of the possibility of a permanent peace in the long term. It is testimony to the political commitment of both the Government as well as the LTTE leadership (at least in Kilinochchi, if not in the East), What is required now is not the simplistic repetition of 'peace' advocacy as some of our Colombo or Kandy-based civic lobbies and 'think tanks' seem to think. What the communities in the eye of the storm, as it were, - i.e. in the areas central to the conflict need is intensive thinking and conceptualising of the possibilities of power (and water) sharing both at national level as well as at regional and sub-regional level. The crisis within the SLMC is only partly to do with the Eastern Muslim aspirations while the weakening of the SLMC leadership structure after the death of founder-leader M.H.M. Ashraff is also a major contributory factor despite the efforts of his successor and one of the country's most able politicians, Rauf Hakeem, to manage the in-fighting. But Mr. Hakeem is no doubt aware of the limits of his influence on the East. So does the rest of the Colombo political leadership. But it is not enough to helplessly sit back and watch events unfold and desperately pour oil on troubled waters. Even if the national level political leadership cannot immediately focus on the Eastern sub-region's needs, it can allow things to develop in a more constructive way than at present by enabling dialogues and discussions to take place at other levels. This is where the role of non-governmental organisations may be critical in facilitating a regional or sub-regional discussion of issues among representatives of communities. It is upto Kilinochchi to also realise, along with Colombo, that there needs to be a sub-regional negotiation in the East that would enable the three communities there to discuss and explore the possibilities of some consensus on the future contours of their co-existence. All of this is pertinent to the overall contours of the future Sri Lankan State. No one, not even those Sinhala supremacists who may yearn for a return to war, must have any doubt about: the days of the current Sinhala-dominant, post-colonial State are numbered. What the future polity (or polities) will be depend on a conjuction of several factors, socio-political, ecological and, at the individual level, the capacity for a little altruistic heroism. But more on that next week. |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
