Water Water Everywhere

One fine morning last week, the Bangalore landscape was suddenly blighted by big hoardings of Jayalalitha all around, as well as the flags of her party. It all suddenly seemed to have sprung up overnight. Anyone that’s lived in Bangalore would know what I’m talking about – these big, ugly hoardings with mugshots of loads of villainous-sidekick type characters. They all have the same template and it looks something like this:

Chennai, on the other hand, tends to favour the cut-out over the hoarding – and these are huge cut-outs. To give you an idea, here’s how huge it really is:

But coming back to the Jayalalitha hoardings – it turns out she was in Bangalore to meet the Karnataka CM in a doomed attempt to try and resolve the Cauvery water dispute. The bad news about such hoardings is that you know that a massive retaliation of hoardings and flags by her political opponents would invariably follow. Such things do not just go by without any retaliation – and sure enough the next day many parts of Bangalore were adorned with the Karnataka flag in what was soon escalating into a bad arms race of who could place more flags all over the city. This is something that always seems to happen. For instance, if Rahul Gandhi is visiting Bangalore and the Congress has put up all sorts of hoardings and flags, you can bet your life's savings that the BJP would retaliate with flags and hoardings of their own. Even if no one is visiting, they’ll find some leader whose birthday has just gone by, or, in the worst case scenario, just put up hoardings trumpeting the achievements of the state CM (admittedly, a tough challenge). But the retaliation is always there. And it isn’t just limited to politics.

A few years ago, the Muslim community in the city decided to protest against the execution of Saddam Hussein a good three weeks after its occurrence (no explanation was given for the delayed reaction). In retaliation, the next weekend the Hindus had a protest of their own, to protest the Muslims protesting against the execution of Saddam Hussein. It’s the same with festivals – whenever you’d see Muslims and/or Christians celebrating some festival on the streets, you can rest assured that the Hindus would also have a celebration of their own the next day, or vice-versa. Whether there actually is something to celebrate is not the point – it’s all about the retaliation.

For those wondering about the outcome of the Cauvery dispute meeting, of course it ended disastrously with Jayalalitha walking out in a huff. The Cauvery water saga is an ongoing dispute that flares up annually and will never be resolved. The saga tends to follow a cyclical pattern:

1. The Supreme Court, or a special tribunal / committee arrives at a verdict. This generally pisses off one of the states, while the other state suddenly has full faith in the Indian judicial system.
2. Protests and incidences of violence break out in the pissed-off state. Buses with license plates of the other state are torched, and other stray incidences of violence may or may not happen. A token bus-torching, however, is mandatory. On a side note – have you ever wondered why, whenever people are protesting against something in India, a bus ALWAYS has to be torched? Tear-gas incidents, looting, hunger strikes may be optional, but the token bus-torching will inevitably occur.
3. Pissed-off state refuses to adhere to the verdict. The other state cries foul.
4. The matter goes back to the Supreme Court, or another special tribunal / committee is set up.

Disregarding the Supreme Court seems to be the latest rage among politicians, as is evident by the Shiv Sena’s stand on Bal Thackeray’s memorial. Realizing the futility of it all, the Supreme Court finally told the states “Since you guys give as much regard to my verdict as the US gives to the UN, why don’t the two of you just sit down and thrash it out amongst yourselves?”

Recent evidence of political behavior would suggest that this was a terrible idea, but I suppose the Supreme Court had little choice in the matter. The trouble is that democracy ensures that neither side would back down from their stance – the more you talk tough about the water dispute in your state, the more votes you’re likely to get. If you lose an election after making crores in a corruption scam, you still have the crores to fall back upon – losing an election because you gave up water to your bitter enemy amounts to political folly on an unprecedented scale.

So there was Jayalalitha, storming out of the meeting, accusing Karnataka of displaying the sort of swagger last associated with Amitabh Bachchan at the peak of his angry young man pomp, telling Tamil Nadu to go to hell and that they would “not release a single drop of water.” Karnataka, on its part, strongly denied the allegations, insisting that all they said was they would not release the water, but did not, at any point, use the words “single drop”.

If the states really wanted it, they could have utilized the opportunity to resolve the dispute. Since Supreme Court verdicts and face-to-face talks are a surefire way of NOT resolving the dispute, they could’ve tried some alternate methods – a beer-drinking contest, hand-to-hand combat, Russian roulette, a darts competition, a drag race, a coin toss, draw of straws, a corruption challenge or some such novel idea. But no, they decided to go back to the Supreme Court.

In fact, as I type this, the Supreme Court has again ordered Karnataka to release some water, protests have been scheduled in various parts of the state, buses are probably being scouted and Karnataka is considering not releasing the water and asking for a review instead.

The circle of life, as they say, goes on.