A new tinderbox has been lit in the most ancient interstate water dispute in India and this time, the cost to both state capitals is high. The Cauvery Water Management Authority on Tuesday evening, led by Chairman S.K. Haldar, ordered Karnataka to release 12,000 cusecs of the Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu for the next fortnight from the Biligundlu gauge from eight o'clock Wednesday morning. In volume terms, it amounts to about one thousand million cu.ft. per day a demand which was even metered down by the very officials of Karnataka before the order was signed.

It will be an awkward moment for Bengaluru. The negotiators from Karnataka informed the authority that water inflow into the four main reservoirs Krishna Raja Sagar, Kabini, Hemavathi and Harangi has been 47 per cent below the long-term average, the combined inflow of which now stands at just under 78 thousand million cubic feet, further declining every day. The counter-proposal by the state, that it should either wait to get further release order or reduce the quantum to 10,000 cusecs, did not get any support from the panel which accepted the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee's (CWRC) recommendation made hours earlier under Chair Vineet Gupta.

Tamil Nadu came to the table with its own grievance and it was rather pointed. The state had notified the authority earlier on July 28 to maintain the flow of 3,500 cusecs at Biligundlu for 15 days from July 29, but it refused to do so. Based on those figures, Chennai presented in front of the committee, the actual flow at the measuring point was between 158 and 550 cusecs, which is not even 1% of the required flow. Tamil Nadu also strongly objected to Karnataka's central defence saying that the reason for withholding the water was not convincing for Bengaluru to claim it was being withheld for a year's drinking supply. The state cited data from India Meteorological Department, saying that the rainfall deficit upstream of KRS was just 9 per cent while it was 19 per cent upstream of Kabini and 36 per cent downstream of Biligundlu, which is on the Tamil Nadu side. Further, Chennai argued that most of this flow has been unregulated spillage from Kabini reservoir and the reservoir of KRS has opened its gates to a small extent. The formal demand is for the backlog, plus the state's pro rata entitlement from the tribunal award, a total of 37 thousand million cubic feet by Aug. 31.

This is not an unprovoked dispute. It's nestled in a sharing formula that has long oscillated between cooperation and confrontation, depending upon the monsoon, and this year's monsoon has been crazy enough to open up all of the old wounds. The issue is also now on a parallel legal path. The Supreme Court, presided by Chief Justice Surya Kant with Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana, agreed to hear a plea from Tamil Nadu asking for Karnataka's compliance on Monday and the matter will be heard on Thursday, Aug. 13. That court date is now set to collide with the 15-day release window the authority has just granted, so judges and administrators are on the clock and will probably find themselves in a fork in the road well, days in the near future.

The political climate has already heated up in the Cauvery basin districts of Karnataka. Farmers obstructed roads and took to highways this week, saying the regulation committee's recommendation will be a threat to their livelihoods and that they are appealing directly to Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar to the consideration of any release. Water resources minister and state minister Shivakumar has tried to tread a fine line while declaring that Karnataka will continue to adhere to statutory orders and Supreme Court directions, despite keeping its own interests in mind, and added that the authority meetings continue till January. The balancing act will become more complex now the order is over three times the amount that the state was fighting against a fortnight ago.

The Cauvery arrangement is comparable to other transboundary and interstate schemes, such as the Indus case between two nations and the Colorado River in the United States, where the allocation formulas fail to work during below-average years, and tribunals and authorities resort to ad hoc arbitration almost every year. The financial implications for the two parties are significant. The four reservoirs now dwindling in the Cauvery basin serve paddy cultivation, sugarcane production, horticulture and support several thousand crore rupee farm economy in what are now paddy belts, sugarcane belts and horticultural belts in the Mandya, Mysuru and Tanjore delta, while the city of Bengaluru's drinking water security, which feeds a population of more than thirteen million and the technology sector which anchors a significant portion of the gross state product of Karnataka, is tied to the same four reservoirs now emptying quickly.

Meanwhile the clock has already begun ticking for now on 15 days and Karnataka's compliance history from the last time the Supreme Court issued such directives are being watched closely, and the next major test for how much authority does an administrative directive from the water authority have or needs to be backed by a judicial order to actually shift water downstream is Thursday's hearing.