Siddaramaiah will emerge as a hero in north Karnataka if he can get Mahadayi water for Badami

Chandra Gouda Patil is a very short man. He draws his stature instead from being at the helm of the agitation for Mahadayi water, that completed 1,006 days on 30 April. To say he is a disappointed man would be an understatement. “For the past three years, we have beseeched both the Central and state governments to help us get Mahadayi water. But to no avail”’ says Patil.

Patil is with a group of around 30 people in Navalgund, one of the epicentres of the protest for the Mahadayi, that has seen 80 bandhs so far. There have been numerous rasta and rail rokos and gheraos of the Hubbali collectorate as well. Things even took an ugly turn when 149 farmers were lathi-charged, arrested and thrown into Bellary Central Prison in 2016.

The twelfth of May, warn farmers in this part of the Mumbai-Karnataka region, will be payback time. Gursiddappa Kalungar is clear he is not voting for any of the parties this time. “I will punch on NOTA. I refuse to vote for either of the three parties,” says Kalungar, pointing out that elections are also an opportunity to register protest. But how does NOTA help your cause, I ask. “It will not, in the immediate future, but it will make them wonder why they did not get those votes,’’ says BH Nargund.

Mahboob, a Navalgund-based journalist with a Kannada news channel says he has covered the protest on each of the 1,006 days.

“But now there is a sense of déjà vu. No one in the rest of Karnataka — leave alone the country — is interested in what is happening in this part of the state. But as a resident of this area, I am worried for gen-next if there is going to be no water for irrigation or drinking,’’ says Mahboob.

The dispute involves the Mahadayi river, referred to as Mandovi in Goa. It originates in Belagavi in Karnataka, travels 30 kilometres in the state and another 50 kilometres in Goa. In 2002, Karnataka approached the water resources ministry to divert 7.56 TMC of water from the Mahadayi basin to Malaprabha river by building canals to link its tributaries Kalasa and Banduri.

The intention was to use that water to irrigate 5.26 lakh acres in the region besides providing drinking water to 160 villages, Hubbali and Dharwad cities and four more towns. That incidentally includes Badami, where Siddaramaiah is the Congress candidate this time around.

In deference to Karnataka’s stand that a lot of water flows into the Arabian Sea unutilised, permission was granted, but put on hold after Goa protested. Its argument was that the ecology of the Western Ghats was being harmed. In 2016, the Mahadayi Water Disputes Tribunal rejected Karnataka’s demand to divert water from Mahadayi basin.

That gave fresh impetus to the agitation in north Karnataka. But a sense of disappointment has crept in that it has achieved next to nothing.

“We elected Siddaramaiah as our leader. He has failed to get the Centre to mediate and ensure a solution,” says RC Jedi, a lawyer practising in Hubbali.

The other demand of the agitators was that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should get Goa, Maharashtra and Karnataka on to the dialogue table and hammer out a solution. The prime minister’s silence on the issue has worked against the BJP, which is seen as not having done enough for the region even though the Lingayat electorate here has traditionally supported it. Three of the four MPs from the affected region also belong to the BJP.

“The BJP is duty-bound to answer these questions. After all, there is also a BJP government in Goa and if the prime minister wanted, he could have convinced it to share water with us,’’ says Veeresh, a resident of Navalgund. Vikas Soppin, who is associated with the protest, also feels the agitators let differences crop up over strategy and let the fizz go out of the effort.

“More than 700 farmers from Nargund have gone to Delhi, pleading for mercy killing if Mahadayi water cannot be given. In Navalgund, the convenor filed his nomination as an Independent candidate only to withdraw it on the last day. In the bargain, he created a rift in the group between those who were in favour of him contesting and those who were not. All this has meant the protest has lost a bit of steam,” says Soppin.

To an outsider, it would seem ironic that on Cauvery, Karnataka farmers talk of a Karnataka First policy before releasing water downstream to Tamil Nadu. But on Mahadayi, it wants Goa to give water to Karnataka. The counter argument is that Mahadayi originates in Karnataka and therefore the state has as much right to its water as Goa does.

There is also a feeling that the Mahadayi agitation has not received adequate attention because it is too far away from the centre of power, Bengaluru — over 400 kilometres, to be precise. Moreover, most of the political leadership is concentrated in the south Karnataka region, making the northern part feel left out. Which is why the optimists see Siddaramaiah’s decision to contest from Badami as the glass half-full. He has the opportunity to emerge as north Karnataka’s hero if he can get Mahadayi water to Badami and its neighbourhood.