India is a land of many rivers; in the past several decades, it has become a land of many river conflicts. This monograph addresses one of the most intense and oldest disputes over water in India: that over the River Cauvery. The conflict over Cauvery has grown from a simple question of sharing water flows, to one of political identity for the States of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. While there have been media reports and scholarly publications on the Cauvery, those analyses have not shown a clear direction towards a resolution to the conflict. In this monograph, the authors address the economic, institutional and ecological undercurrents behind the Cauvery conflict. They suggest measures for reducing the water demands of the stakeholder States as well as creating institutional arrangements for conflict resolution.
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