The waters of the Mahanadi have become choppier still with the BJD government in Odisha rejecting the formula proposed by the Centre to settle the raging dispute over the river with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s government in Chhattisgarh. Specifically, the Naveen Patnaik administration has rejected the constitution of the negotiation committee by the Union water resources ministry. The stalemate will persist for some time yet. 

A river belongs to Nature, and ideally must lend no scope for another puerile bout of Centre-State kerfuffle. Yet at the core of the Mahanadi dispute is the construction of projects upstream of the river by Chhattisgarh, thus affecting the flow in neighbouring Odisha and at the grave cost of agriculture in a predominantly rural state. The water of the Mahanadi is vital for the farmlands in Odisha, as often as not confronted by drought. Mr Patnaik’s letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi makes it explicit that the negotiation committee will only delay acceptance ~ if at all ~ of Odisha’s demand for a tribunal to take a call on what it deems to be irregular constructions. The “negotiation committee” would seem to be a BJP embroidery woven by its government at the Centre to safeguard the interests of the party’s government in the state. On closer reflection, there is no scope for such a panel under the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, which does provide for a tribunal. 

Rather than impose the decision on the administration in Bhubaneswar as a fait accompli, its formation ought to have been based on a triangular consensus ~ of the Centre, Odisha, and Chhattisgarh. The Odisha chief minister’s refusal to abide by the Centre’s formula is, therefore, rooted in a legislative enactment. He is on firm ground too as the Centre has failed to direct the government in Raipur to stop the “unilateral construction of barrages and dams  upstream of the Mahanadi”.

The fine print of the controversy must be that Odisha has been accorded the short shrift. Regretfully, the flow of a river has acquired a political dimension with the Centre overly anxious to defer to the intersts of Chhattisgarh. The river and the constructions thereon are now at the centre of the discord between the BJP and the BJD. The past three months have witnessed  more and more of unilateral and arbitrary action instead of meaningful negotiations. The putative “negotiation committee” is tilted against Odisha. It will be headed by a member of the Central Water Commission, five members representing Centra agencies, and members from Jharkhand, Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh. Odisha’s chief engineer is said to have been nominated without taking the state into confidence. It is the Centre’s game, set to match the agenda of Chhattisgarh.