Cauvery and the tragedy of commons

I was listening to a lecture on strategic modeling when I thught tragedy of commons is a good way to look at the Cauvery dispute and there is a strategic modelings perspective to solving the dispute.

Tragedy of Commons happens when two or more parties over exploit a common resource to maximize their individual benefit. In the end this overexploitation reaches a level where the common resource is not useful or is inadequate for all the parties. In the case of Cauvery dispute, both Tamil Nadu (TN) and Karnataka have greatly expanded the land under irrigation. This became a growth loop - Expansion yields prosperity and prosperity facilitates more expansion. The flip side is they used a common resource - the cauvery water - to do that and we have come to a point, where the water left in the basin and the table is no longer enough to sustain the areas under irrigation. We can fight for years on who has more rights to use the water but the bottomline is there is not enough water.


This is not the first time, the world has come across this problem. All the issues related to pollution, global warming, or exploiation of natural resources can be captured in this same frame work and there are some good solutions out there.

The problem is that the growth loop gets stronger and stronger using up the common resource. The solution is to create a balancing loop that after a point will disincentivize the uncontrolled growth and limit it.


The Solutions are very controversial. We can try the US style 'pay-not- to-grow' programs. If the incentives are strong enough, farmers will opt out. But the problem with this aproach is, that it is counter to a capitalist economy. We can also try to remove the free farm electricity program or tax the agricultural income. These create the balancing loops that limit the benefits of expansion.

Another aproach is to limit productivity by outlawing certain fertilizers or outlawing triple cropping. The effect is the same - by reducing the benefits of expansion, we control unfettered growth and preserve the river and the water table for future use. This last aproach is sucessfully used to rejuvenate the fishing industry in Newfoundland.

Often in public policy, the problem is not in finding a solution, but in implementing it. It will be interesting to discuss if any of these solutions are implementable in India and if all the parties will have the political will to implement measures like this.