DNA Edit: Drought After deluge - Tamil Nadu’s water woes need to be tackled on war footing

Such is the precarious water crisis in Tamil Nadu and capital Chennai that even the courts believe governmental action may not be enough. It believes the administration needs to take everyone on board — including agitators highlighting the state’s severe water shortage.

The Madras High Court has said that the Tamil Nadu government should work with organisations interested in the conservation of water bodies. More to the point, it has asked the police not to prevent protests highlighting the crisis.

The observation came, while the court issued directions to the Chennai Commissioner of Police to permit an NGO to hold a demonstration highlighting the present water shortage. Tamil Nadu is a classic case of how floods and drought can both wreak havoc upon it in equal measure.

In 2015, Chennai was hit by severe floods; this year it is drought. The current crisis has come about when Perur Lake — one of the major water sources for Chennai — dried up. Along with it, most, if not all water reservoirs have met a similar fate. Result: the state’s economy is hit, schools have been closed and people are being asked to work from homes because their companies have no water to provide to them. From slums to gated colonies, everyone is facing nature’s wrath.

Things are not smooth in the rest of the region as well. According to the Central Water Commission’s bulletin on weekly reservoir water levels, the southern region — comprising Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala — has about 11% of total live storage capacity, which is the lowest in the last few years. Both the central and state governments have to put their collective heads together to improve the situation. It is not enough to only do populist politics.