Why the flames of the Cauvery refuse to die

I have embraced the holy Cauvery for many years when I ran an angling camp. Those were good days when the waters ran deep but now with the immense pressure of population on a river whose tributaries like the Arkravati and the Shimsha, to name a few, are polluted beyond belief, the river on its own certainly cannot meet the demands of drinking water, leave alone the sustained increase in pressure from cultivation of two states. The Cauvery fires burnt in 1992 and in those flames were lost my jeep and generator. They burnt again in 2016 and this time burnt any hope of an amicable solution for the future.

Allow a court to decide on a matter and it will always be a win-lose solution. One side goes home happy whilst the other languishes without hope in defeat. Water being a basic need, the people on the losing end, those living on the streets, seeing their drinking water lost to paddy fields, are unable to accept the direction of a court that they do not know of and do not fear. They react in the only manner they know; take to rioting and arson. Do I agree with that? People who will read this piece, who have running water in their homes, me included, are afraid of courts and certainly cannot answer that truthfully. Only those who have to walk 10 kilometres to get water every day, can. The only thing I can say is that in a democratic setup, the Supreme Court is not the forum to find an answer where the only solution is the amicable sharing of basic resources by the people. Long-term solutions need to be incorporated and mindsets changed through education. Relationships need to be built, sacrifice embraced. The answers have to come from the people’s representatives and what bothers me is that since 1992 till 2016 it has been two and a half decades in which the representatives of both states could have sat together and thrashed out an amicable and practical solution. 
Why did that not happen? Was it ego, lack of political will, a failure of bureaucracy that came in the way? Where is the logic in relying on the Court, on an order that is bound to create turmoil in the long run for both sides? 

Exclusionary laws have pushed bureaucrats away from people, officials no longer have the pulse of the masses, else we would most certainly have seen more people-to-people contact across both states. Whilst the policymakers will get a tanker a day when the waters of the Cauvery run dry, the poor will continue to suffer. Run dry the Cauvery will unless a single all-encompassing Conservation Law is implemented where all departments that affect the eco-biosphere are bought under one roof.
For now it’s a lose-lose situation for the people of the two states. Agreed that the Tamilians won this round in the Supreme Court but in the morrow, if nothing is done today, when the Cauvery will stop to flow perennially, then even pumps will not help the Tamils, leave alone the Supreme Court. 
How many of us will then pay with our lives just because those that had to take decisions today have shied away from their duty?

 The author, a former cricketer, is a columnist, novelist and conservationist