But power or water crisis had seldom figured in Kerala’s public posturing in the issue since 1979, when it first aired apprehensions that the old Mullaperiyar dam could burst, pointing to visible seepages. It held up the scary spectre of lakhs of people in adjacent Kerala districts going under the deluge if that happened, and got MG Ramachandran, matinee-idol-turned chief minister of Tamil Nadu, to lower the dam’s water level from 152 to 136 feet. But some 104 feet of the dam’s water is dead storage, and lowering the level was later found to have hit farming in about 8000 hectares in Tamil Nadu, leading to an expected political uproar.

Tamil Nadu had to go about strengthening the dam at its own cost — it has since spent about Rs 20 crore on it — and the Central Water Commission certified it safe, after directing the level be reduced to 136 feet till the work was over, before upping it to 152 feet. But Kerala wanted the water level back at 136 feet, its successive governments crying havoc each time this mark was breached. No such masonry dam, Kerala argued, can safely outlive a lifespan of 50 to 60 years maintaining full capacity, and Mullaperiyar is a catastrophe in waiting.

Janata Party’s Subramaniam Swamy took it up to the Supreme Court and so did the Tamil Nadu government, and a Kerala NGO. In February this year, the SC told Tamil Nadu to raise the level to 142 feet, largely anchoring its verdict on the CWC’s safety certificate. The court, in fact, said that even if Mullaperiyar burst, the Idukki dam 50 kilometres downstream was quite capable of taking the additional water, and also declined to look at a subsequent review petition from Kerala, even chiding Kerala for its ‘obstructionist’ stance.

... contd.