Let146;s cover the last mile

When the house is on fire, the best thing is to call the fire brigade. It was sensible of the government to send the SYL issue to the Suprem...

When the house is on fire, the best thing is to call the fire brigade. It was sensible of the government to send the SYL issue to the Supreme Court. Increasingly we turn to the highest court on implementing the Cauvery accord, completing the Sardar Sarovar project and so on, as those who8217;d disrupt rather than constructively engage try to hijack the agenda. Civilised opinion, however, has to press on the creation of conditions in which extreme steps are avoided. This requires changes in mindsets.

The emphasis has to shift from the establishment8217;s concern with dams and their operation to 8220;covering the last mile8221;. In this drought season, when Dilipsinh Vaghela of Bakrana village says water released in the village taalavdi will be used for drinking water purposes, he probably does not know the role the Supreme Court has played or that the last mile is covered. To the best of my knowledge this expression was used for the first time when, in the drought of 1988, money was allocated to complete irrigation projects and the engineers were told, much to their chagrin, that they must show on a map the area to which they would provide water with the additional money given to them. We build beautiful dams, but are lousy conveyors of water. The last mile precept is generally avoided, since those who advise will do so from their desk, rather than from the field.

When I walked miles to resolve a Cauvery problem in the mid-8217;90s, it wasn8217;t to catch the media, but to find out what the farmer8217;s real worries were in the Thanjayavur delta and up north in the garden areas of Karnataka. I found that even though the authorities knew by mid-September the dams were not filling up with poor rainfall in the catchment, the hapless farmers were not told this even in December, by which time the paddy and cane planted on the basis of the earlier three good years of water releases was wilting.

To the best of my somewhat dated information the irrigation efficiencies in the conflict area we are talking of now are between 38 and 45 per cent, which means more than half the designed water doesn8217;t reach the field, even in the well working rotations of the Punjab-Haryana systems. In a study by Anil Shah8217;s Development Support Centre, we8217;re told: 8220;Contrary to the general impression, deprivation was found high even in the Warabandhi irrigation system prevalent in Haryana and Punjab. About 70 per cent of the area of sample farmers did not get water as per their entitlement 8212; variations ranged from 56 to 85 per cent across seasons and agro-climatic zones.8221; Releasing the results this April we argued for known solutions to be implemented. But solutions which rely on efficiency can8217;t be on paper.

What are the institutions we are building to avoid such flare-ups? Much as I admire the highest court8217;s thoughtful solutions in recent years, a commission of retired judicial luminaries is not the answer. It is of a self perpetuating nature and in many cases so-called 8220;fairness8221; is at the cost of workable efficient solutions. In the Cauvery case the commission had given a rule of water sharing for a particular year based on the 75 per cent year cut-off rule, but rivers run through real years and it had to be shown to them that in the year they were concerned with, the rule couldn8217;t be implemented even by a dictator. They later suggested the Narmada formula for adjustment for rainfall, but the damage was done, even though no one paid for it. The Cauvery authority was built on the Mekong structure as suggested in our report. At the highest level it has political persons. Some Mekong countries had gone to war and yet signed the agreement. At the next level we have senior bureaucrats. At the lowest are the action persons. The highest level decides thorny issues, the second sets action targets and the third implements. Sometimes it doesn8217;t work and you go back to the courts, but generally it works since bringing people face to face rules out histrionics and talking to the gallery. This is easier to enforce than one thinks. My experience is that farmers groups when accosted with counterfactuals are generally reasonable. It8217;s when you dam up rivers, don8217;t unclog the delivery lines, don8217;t tell people what to expect that the problem arises.

In fact the Punjab-Haryana region has to go further than efficient working of existing systems and, being the most developed area, it owes to the country the example of the most modern water delivery and applications strategies. Hydraulic supply systems with assured supplies, drips and sprinklers together with canals, a new revolution in crops and water-using technologies are possible. Another lesson those who study rivers are learning the world over is that the rights of people through history are important, as much as equal access to water. I don8217;t know all the answers, but I am confident the ball is rolling and we have the wisdom to look for the right directions. As Mao said, if you can8217;t face them, surround them.