https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/mhadei-dispute-crisis-goa-scales-up-challenges-cm-sawant-puts-bjp-tight-spot-karnataka-2321481-2023-01-14
The Central Water Commission’s December end approval of Karnataka's Detailed Project Report (DPR) for the contentious Kalasa-Bandura water diversion project, has sent the BJP government in neighbouring Goa, scurrying for cover. The project’s plans to divert the Mhadei/Mandovi river system waters into the Malaprabha reservoir ---- is a huge emotive red flag in Goa. In the past fortnight, the Goa opposition has successfully managed to expose and gut the BJP government’s failure to protect the state, and stand up to its central leadership. In the initial shock, there were calls for all forty MLAs and the chief minister to resign to underscore Goa’s strong sentiments. BJP Union Minister of State and Goa MP, Sripad Naik, offered to resign, but has fallen silent. Since the Mahadayi Interstate Water Disputes Tribunal’s August 2018 award, granting Karnataka 13.42 thousand million cubic feet (380,012.127 million litres) for its projects, it has fast-tracked DPRs [including to divert 3.9 tmc (110,435.715 million litres) to the Malaprabha basin]. Now, as the BJP woos the poll-bound state, the election climate is proving beneficial for approvals. Mhadei as Goa Lifeline -- 'Apocalypse Now' Moment? While to the rest of India, it may be viewed as just another knotty inter-state water dispute --- in Goa, the Mhadei/Mandovi is considered a lifeline of the state. Every chief minister, including incumbent, Pramod Sawant, has sworn to protect every last drop of the mother river Mhadei. What is it about the river that gets citizens of this state uber riled up? That any thought of its fresh water being diverted, is viewed as an `Apocalypse Now' moment? Geography has much to do with it. The Mhadei/Mandovi river basin spans 1580 sq km, nearly half the small state's total 3702 sq km area, that is 43 % of the state's area. It runs 76 km in North Goa, 78% of the Mhadei's total 111 km. It passes through 194 (Goa has a total of 334 villages) of its most populous villages and towns, including capital Panjim. In six of the state's twelve sub districts --- the Mhadei/Mandovi is critical for the region's water supply, agriculture, fishing, irrigation, navigation and tourism. Religious, cultural and daily practices are woven around the river. Nirmala Sawant, President activist of Mhadei Bachao Andolan (MBA) in Goa, also a multi-term former Congress state President and former minister, reflects the public angst. "Goa has been treated with great injustice by the centre, simply because we are small, and have just 3 Parliamentary seats, compared to 28. But should it be a number's game? Goa has just two major rivers, Mandovi and Zuari. Karnataka has twenty rivers. The Mhadei/Mandovi basin covers 43% of Goa, while it covers just 0.19 % of Karnataka. Yes, it originates in Karnataka's Jamboti Ghats of the Sahyadri Western Ghats range, but that is just 35 km from Goa's border. To then divert the westward flow of the river and reverse its natural flow eastwards and away from Goa and into another river basin, is completely against the principles of natural justice", she told this writer. Most of Goa's rivers are salty sea water. In the Mhadei/Mandovi's case, salt water ingress from the Arabian Sea reaches 69% of its upstream length in Goa --- making the remaining upper, flowing, fresh water reaches of the river all the more critical. Within the state, there is an intrinsic awareness that alterations or diversions of the Mhadei's freshwater flows, will adversely impact the state. Especially the biodiversity hotspot areas of the thickly forested Western Ghats sub districts on the East. Here, the Mhadei runs through and sustains three wildlife sanctuaries and one national park --- the Bhagwan Mahavir WildLife Sanctuary and Mollem National Park, Bondla Wildlife Sanctuary, Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary, and Salim Ali Bird Sanctuary. For this reason, Goa has argued that the outcome of the Mhadei river diversion should concern not just Goa, but is of national, if not, global importance. Background to an Interstate Dispute -- the Goa Perspective Goa has steadfastly opposed any diversion of Mhadei's waters outside its basin, 78% of which is in Goa, 18% in Karnataka and 4% in Maharashtra . But over the past two decades, it has found itself bullied and backed into a corner. Proposals to harness the monsoonal flows of the rain-fed Mhadei, first came up in the seventies and eighties, when the upper riparian state of Karnataka sought to generate hydropower from the Mhadei waters.These got a pushback from the Union government when Goa was a union territory and later by Congress governments. In the nineties, Karnataka articulated proposals for a series of dams on Mhadei's feeder streams, which sent alarm bells ringing in the small state. Strategically, Karnataka managed to change the perception war and outplayed Goa, when it now presented its water demand, as a drinking water requirement. It asked for the immediate release of 7.56 tmc of its share of the Mhadei/Mandovi waters, for the water scarce regions of Hubli-Dharwad and en-route areas. Goa's argument before the Interstate Water Tribunal, was that yes, drinking water is a priority. And if Karnataka prioritised it's citizens' drinking water needs before that of irrigation and other uses from water supply schemes in its own state --- it would not have to reverse the Mhadei's flow and hack forests for the same. Furthermore, Goa argued that the drinking water component of the water demand was small and a ruse, and the real purpose was for irrigation and other purposes. It also pointed out that Goa was being penalised, when its neighbour had let many of its own river stretches get polluted <https://www.deccanherald.com/state/top-karnataka-stories/17-rivers-in-karnataka-highly-polluted-jal-shakti-ministry-966975.html> from dumping sewage <https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/ktaka-dumps-1746m-litres-sewage-into-rivers-each-day/articleshow/88287378.cms>. It was seeking to drain the Mhadei away from Goa and into the Malaprabha basin that was depleted from excessive <https://indiatogether.org/tailend-environment> use in water intensive cropping like sugarcane. "Vast swathes of forests are going to be affected by this diversion project. Will not forest destruction in this Western Ghats area affect rainfall patterns, with both states ultimately losing?" asks MBA's Nirmala Sawant. From an initial 364 ha of forests that the Kalasa-Bhandura project was slated to affect in its 2020 DPR, it has now redesigned and reduced it to 61 ha, to speed environment approvals, the MBA says. Karnataka's argument is that it was only demanding its rightful share of the Mhadei's fresh waters, much of which, it claimed, was being wasted and drained into the Arabian Sea in Goa. To that, Goa says: fresh waters, besides being stored in several reservoirs in the state for drinking water and irrigation schemes, sustains the forest sanctuaries, prevents saline ingress further upstream, that would alter the ecosystem. In April 2000 however, the BJP Vajpayee government approved the in-principle diversion of 7.56 TMC to Karnataka for meeting "drinking water" needs, amid heightened pressure from the bigger state. A BJP government in Goa, under the late Manohar Parrikar, managed to get this approval held off in September 2022. As Karnataka began unilateral work on the ground, Goa's stance shifted, and Parrikar sought adjudication of the issue as an inter-state water sharing dispute. He asked for an Interstate Water Sharing Tribunal, to determine flows, water requirements, inter state shares, and closer, alternate sources within existing schemes to meet Karnataka's water demands. The Tribunal constituted in 2010, estimated the Mhadei's flow to be 188.06 tmc per annum based on earlier CWC reports, that Goa contested. It did not apportion the waters, until further data is evaluated in 2048, when the award comes up for revision. It however, permitted use for development activities --- granting Karnataka 13.42 tmc, Goa 24 tmc, Maharashtra 1.33 tmc for their projects, conditional to fresh DPRs being drawn up and cleared by the centre's technical appraisal and the projects garnering other clearances, required by law. The award was a shocking defeat of Goa's case, but the Parrikar BJP government claimed a victory, to dodge political flak. It wasn't until the centre granted Karnataka environment clearances, that the successor Pramod Sawant government, took an all-party delegation to yet again appeal to the centre to hold off the clearance. Goa appealed against the award before the Supreme Court, as did Maharashtra and Karnataka. Fresh crisis for Goa The December 2022 approval of Karnataka’s DPR, swiftly sank all the party-orchestrated celebratory hype that the Goa BJP had ratcheted up over the part-commissioning of two major infrastructural projects --- the green field Mopa airport and a new bridge over the Zuari. Here was a fresh crisis moment in Goa's fight to retain the Mhadei, but party politics seems to have superseded state interest. To Sawant’s embarrassment, the opposition proved there was a DPR prepared and handed to the Goa government in 2020, which means the BJP in Goa was in the loop then, but had stayed silent. Chief Minister Sawant claimed the revised 2022 DPR, was yet to be officially given to Goa,but that’s not cutting much ice here.. What's going down now in the public view, is that activists, environmentalists, the MBA and civil society have to be vigilant about the state's long term interests, as party politics could well sink Goa's long term interests. Moreover, the MBA points out that a tributary of the Mhadei had already been surreptitiously diverted, with one river bed enroute to Goa going completely dry --- on the current government's watch. Political fall out for CM All of this has put Chief Minister Pramod Sawant on the spot. though. Facing rival contenders for the chair, there's credence a flare-up of this emotive issue could be directed into a leadership-change one. A swiftly convened umbrella organisation of activists and opposition political parties called Save Mhadei, Save Goa, have placed Sawant an impossible-to-fulfill ultimatum – prevail on the centre to revoke Karnataka's approved DPRs by January 16, Opinion Poll Day. >From initially downplaying the imminent threat and relying on civil society to assist, with a signature campaign ----- the Chief Minister's camp has had to display greater kinetic urgency. Its efforts to elicit a face-saving assurance from central ministers, has not succeeded, leaving it only with a legal recourse, for the moment, and a citizenry, who are not at all amused. -- Pamela D'Mello https://goajournal.in/ https://muckrack.com/pamela-dmello-1317087