Water war shuts down India’s tech hub

DELHI • Authorities imposed a curfew Tuesday in India’s tech hub of Bangalore to quell violence that erupted over a controversial watersharing agreement from a local river.

Work ground to a halt at many of the city’s technology firms, streets were deserted and stores shuttered. The state’s chief minister said he was worried about what the bloodshed was doing to image of the area, often called the “Silicon Valley of India.”

“People should not take law in their own hands,” said the state minister, Siddaramaiah, who goes by one name.

Chanting “we will give blood, but not Cauvery,” protesters took to the streets Monday, torching hundreds of buses and stores. Authorities responded by banning public gatherings and deploying riot police. One person was killed and two others were injured when police fired on protesters who were setting fire to police vehicles, said Madhukar Narote, an assistant subinspector for the state police.

At issue is the allocation of water from the Cauvery River, also known as the Kaveri, which originates in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, where Bangalore is located, and flows into neighbouring Tamil Nadu. A watersharing agreement between the two Indian states that has been a source of controversy for more than a century.

In 2007, a government panel established an official allocation system that Karnataka has long argued favours farmers in Tamil Nadu. The Supreme Court had directed the Karnataka government to release water to Tamil Nadu in the coming days, sparking the protests. Protesters are not only concerned about water for irrigation, but drinking water supplies as well.

Disputes over control of water supplies are not uncommon around the world. Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia have quarrelled for years over dams and other water-control measures along the Nile.

But they are much more common in India, where droughts and weak monsoons weigh heavily on the majority of the country that still lives off agriculture. Experts say that the lack of a centralized plan for allocating scarce water resources contributes to the problem.

“Are we going to treat this by addressing scarcity? Probably not,” said Nilanjan Ghosh, a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation here and an economist working on water issues.

Although violence has flared around the issue for years, drought-like conditions have lingered in Karnataka even as the country overall experienced a normal monsoon season.

The state’s reservoirs are about 30 per cent short of water, according to a recent analysis from the data portal IndiaSpend.