He showed the way

S. GUHAN, the distinguished civil servant and economist who devoted the later years of his life to understanding and settling the Cauvery dispute, is unfortunately not here to see a major milestone achieved in the resolution of the problem.

Guhan's exposure to agriculture in the delta region came when he was posted as a young district officer in Thanjavur. He was involved with the negotiations between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka as Finance and Planning Secretary to the Tamil Nadu government in the 1970s, and later as Adviser to Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi in 1989-1990.

In 1993, Guhan published "The Cauvery River Dispute: Towards Conciliation", a definitive guide to the dispute. This dispassionate and scholarly book, published by Frontline, traces the history of inter-State relations over the Cauvery on matters of irrigation and water-sharing, and the practice and principles of Indian and international law in resolving water disputes.

Guhan's lasting contribution to the resolution of the dispute, however, lay in his firm belief that even as governments fought their cases at official meetings and in courts and tribunals, a non-official, people-to-people track in dispute resolution had to be initiated in a spirit of reason and non-partisanship. In 1992, at a time when the Cauvery dispute had erupted in violence in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, he initiated a meeting in Bangalore aimed at healing the wounds and building goodwill. The meeting was attended by H.N. Nanje Gowda, a former Union Irrigation Minister from Karnataka; B.K. Chandrashekhar, who later became Minister for Primary and Secondary Education in Karnataka; N. Ram, then Editor, Frontline; S. Ranganathan and M.D. Nanjundaswamy, leaders of the Cauvery Delta Farmers Association (CDFA) and the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS) respectively; engineers; and others connected with the dispute.

Almost 10 years later, and several years after his death, the threads of his effort were picked up by a group of economists from the Madras Institute of Development Studies and farmers' representatives such as S. Ranganathan, and Puttanaiah of the KRRS. The Cauvery Family, a non-partisan forum of intellectuals, agriculturists and representatives of other groups connected with the Cauvery, was born. This forum has held several meetings in both States and has built a platform where ideas are freely exchanged and misconceptions cleared in a spirit of good neighbourliness.

The conciliatory framework that Guhan championed is perhaps more relevant now, at this stage of dispute resolution, than ever before.

Parvathi Menon