Fighting drought with fireTHE toll was not shocking by Indian standards: two dead, nearly 100 vehicles torched and some 400 “miscreants” arrested. Nor did the violence that erupted on September 12th in Bangalore, capital of the southern state of Karnataka, last long. Within 48 hours police, their numbers boosted to 15,000 by reinforcements sped from across the country, had lifted a curfew. The prospering city of 8.5m, which happens to be India’s high-tech Mecca, was soon back to its normal bustle.
But the issue that stoked the unrest is a perennial one: the division of the water of the Cauvery, an 800km- (500 mile-) long river that rises in Karnataka’s western highlands and supplies rich farmland in the south of the state, as well as thirsty Bangalore itself, before tumbling east into the even thirstier state of Tamil Nadu. The two states have long tussled over rights to the Cauvery. The spark for the riots was a ruling by India’s supreme court ordering Karnataka to open its reservoirs to relieve its downstream neighbour.
In a country as crowded, rural and dependent on fickle rains as India, troubles over water are to be...Continue reading
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