Description

In recent years, Indian interstate water disputes have grown both in number and contentiousness, exacerbating an already fragile federalism. The genesis of these disputes is traceable, in part, to India's colonial legal history. During the colonial era, interstate water disputes occurred between the Indian States and the British Presidencies. The disputes were both the cause of - and the consequence stemming from - application of English principles of prescription and prescriptive rights to an alien social and environmental context. Colonial law cast social relationships over water within a framework that institutionalized an imperial interest in water. Those same colonial legal principles and statutes continue to define social relationships over water throughout much of India today.The disputes over Tungabhadra waters and Kaveri waters between Mysore State and the Madras Presidency was one of the earliest interstate dispute to be resolved through an agreement on water sharing. The Agreement of 1892 became the legal basis for regulation of interstate water allocation and continues to govern and influence water-sharing principles between states in post-independence India.This article analyzes the Agreement of 1892 in order to better understand the role of colonial law in Indian interstate water conflicts. Colonial rule introduced a disjuncture between legal rights of States as set out in treaties, settlements, and other legal instruments and the reality in society as reflected by geographical and historical conditions. Colonial rule introduced conflicting trajectories of economic development, different political structures, and different mixes of traditional and modern technology, and situated those differences within a legal framework that gave the disjuncture its structure. Indeed, India's early experiments in colonial water regulation have had lasting structural implications for water use throughout the country.