For Karnataka CM S.M. Krishna, the Supreme Court’s tongue-lashing today was no surprise. Now he will have to turn the Cauvery tap on at the risk of becoming unpopular with farmers and frittering away the political mileage he got from his extreme position. A visibly-sullen Krishna went into a huddle with his legal advisors and ministers at Karnataka Bhavan here after the court proceedings ended this afternoon. Till late evening he had still not ordered water release from the state’s reservoirs with the obvious threat of protests from people in the Cauvery basin playing on his mind.It took a 100-km trek from Bangalore to Mandya, the hot-bed of Cauvery politics, for him to persuade the agitating people to call off their stir. To his credit he succeeded in stealing a march over his political rivals in the process. That effort now appears nothing as compared to the magnitude of the task on hand. He now has to convince the state’s farmers, aided and abetted by politicians ever ready to fish in troubled waters, that they can no longer dictate the rules.In the age-old dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, there have been occasions when violence has given way to reason. Violence erupted in Karnataka after the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal gave its interim award in 1991. With the state looking the other way, mobs targeted Tamils in the state resulting in deaths.Krishna can ill-afford to have a repeat of 1991. The Congress high command has after all not taken kindly to defiance of the SC orders. Disobedience of a court order by a Cong-ruled state had put the party at the risk of sounding fake when it has been attacking the Sangh Parivar for similar defiance in cases like Ayodhya.Between today and Monday next all that he can hope for is that he be let off as lightly as possible for contempt of court.
