New Delhi, July 25: For all the turbulence over water that Punjab has caused in the capital, the state’s face here has a blunt, matter-of-fact justification: “It is simply ours; we are not grabbing anybody else’s.”

Jivtesh Singh Maini is Punjab’s principal resident commissioner, chief minister Amarinder Singh’s man in New Delhi.

Since Amarinder’s government piloted the act that abrogated its inter-state water sharing treaties, water politics has developed two poles — Punjab versus the rest.

Punjab’s unilateral action has created several layers of conflict — between states, between political parties, within political parties and between states and courts:

• Haryana and Rajasthan are saying they are being denied their rightful shares

• Vasundhara Raje’s BJP government in Rajasthan and Om Prakash Chautala’s INLD government in Haryana are flogging the issue with loud protestations that make the Congress-led ministry at the Centre uncomfortable with a Congress government in Punjab

• A tribunal headed by Justice Eradi is due to come out with its final report in two months, but Punjab threatens to render that superfluous

• The Centre, caught between a belligerent Opposition and “rebellious” state units, is turning to the Supreme Court to bail it out.

The water-sharing dispute between Punjab on one side and Rajasthan and Haryana on the other is in a sense comparable with the freight equalisation policy that Bengal so vehemently protested against through the seventies and the eighties.

Broadly, the policy meant that resource-rich states like Bengal and Bihar had to pay the same prices for coal, iron or steel as states as far away as Karnataka or Kerala. Not only were they made to part with their resources but were made to pay for that.

By abrogating its water-sharing treaties, Punjab has refused to accept such a policy. “Amarinder Singh has done today what Punjab should have done 20 years ago. We are simply asserting our right,” says Maini.

The doctrine of riparian rights says the landowner adjacent to a stream has the right to its water. The Ravi, Beas and Sutlej flow through Punjab, not Haryana, not Rajasthan.

In full-page advertisements in mainline English dailies that the Punjab government brought out last week, it justified its stand, said the abrogation of the treaties will not mean that it is stopping the flow of water and that despite its need it has allowed Rajasthan and Haryana to use its waters “under sufferance”.

Water-sharing disputes invariably arise between riparian states and states that are not riparian or are downstream. In the US, the states of Alabama, Florida and Georgia had a formula for allocation of the waters of the Apalachicola-Chattakoochee-Flint river basin.

Two years ago, the states failed to arrive at a solution on allocations acceptable to each of them. Their agreement broke down and the matter was referred to the US Supreme Court.

In the US, water-sharing disputes inevitably land up in the Supreme Court, which then appoints a tribunal. The tribunal’s word is final.

The international experience with water-sharing disputes has led experts to suggest that the economics of market forces should be brought into play in dealing with them with restrictions. Allowing the market to completely determine the mechanics of water sharing will inevitably lead to a commodification of a natural resource.

In India, that is far from being accepted even if water has already become a commodity (bottled water, for instance, is a fast-moving consumer good).

A study titled Inter-state Water Disputes in India: Institutions and Policies says: “It is widely recognised that water has a number of features that create potential market failure... though increased reliance on market forces (e.g. one state selling water to another) can contribute significantly to resolving water issues, there is no escaping from the need for parties to agree upon a set of rules, an enforcement mechanism and a prior distribution of property rights.”

Alan Richards and Nirvikar Singh of the department of environment studies of the University of California write in the study: “Property rights have been claimed on the basis of historical use, as well as on the basis of the Harmon Doctrine that what falls on our roof is ours to use, without regard to any potential harm to downstream parties.”

Can Punjab actually offer to sell water to Haryana and make good its losses?