Water, it is said, could well be the main cause of a World War III flare up. Such is the intensity and bitterness with which the sharing and distribution of the natural resource is fought across internal and international boundaries.

John Wood, Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, has been studying the disputes over the Narmada Dam since 1989.

Under the Shastri Indo-Canadian fellowship, the author has travelled several times to India and studied the wide-ranging issues raised over water resource development.

This book, he dedicates “To the people of the Narmada River Valley and all the victims and beneficiaries of its development with the hope that they may find forgiveness, gratitude and understanding for each other.”

The Indian Constitution’s Seventh Schedule (11:17) provides that “Water that is to say water supplies, irrigation and canals, drainage and embankments, water storage and water power” falls under state jurisdiction. However the rider “subject to the provisions of entry 56 of List 1” is added to enable the central government to control regulation and development of inter-state rivers and valleys to the extent that “Parliament by law declares it to be in the public interest.” If Parliament so declares, Article 262 of the Constitution empowers the central government to provide for the adjudication of “any dispute or complaint with respect to the use, distribution or control of the waters of, or in, any inter-state river or river valley.”

A Water Disputes Tribunal is appointed by the CJI consisting of a sitting Supreme Court judge and two other judges chosen from the Supreme or High Court. This was to prevent extensive delays in litigation and it recognized the fact that allocation of the costs and benefits of developing a river’s water is ultimately a political decision!

There have been several disputes over water allocation in India, the most significant ones being, Damodar Valley Corporation, Krishna and Godaveri disputes, Cauvery River, Ravi-Beas River and of course the best known of them all, the Narmada Valley.

The dramatis personae in the Narmada Valley saga have been four contentious states, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Gujarat.

“The people of Madhya Pradesh could perhaps be forgiven for thinking that the Narmada was “their” river since nine-tenths of the flow and the catchment contribution lay within the state’s territory.”

Apart from the trap of territorial sovereignty that it led to, the dispute soon turned into an upstream-downstream conflict but it was nowhere parallel to the Cauvery bitterness where the downstream state became aggrieved because the upstream state was appropriating water in such a manner as to jeopardize its economy. Whereas Gujarat was aggrieved that its economy was being held back because it could not fully exploit the Narmada water, it could scarcely blame upstream Madhya Pradesh for increased appropriation. On a theoretical level, the Narmada dispute offered more bargaining room than the Cauvery dispute. Madhya Pradesh had bigger grievances than allocation and appropriation of water - it had to do with the height of the terminal dam, revised several times and the consequent fear of displacement of its vulnerable populace.

The rest is ongoing newspaper headlines and history in the making.

The book is essentially an academic work, well researched and exhaustive in regard to every legal nuance of the dispute. The emotional drama is told in b/w pictures. With activists, opportunists and even stars getting into the Narmada fray, this is one story that is not likely to have an epilogue in the very near future. q

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