It does seem that a direction from the Supreme Court on this matter has made the government act really fast. The legitimacy of the direction given by the Supreme Court is the starting point of the controversy. Was the Supreme Court justified in its judicial activism? That is the refrain of the query. Another query is whether the issue belongs to the domain of public interest litigation or right to life giving rise to judicial concern. Or was the Supreme Court motivated by a future resolution of the conflicts among states, the resulting disharmony and political acrimony? Or has the government been negligent in the performance of its duties to the people so as to warrant a direction by the court?

One view echoed in a book titled “Water: Perspective, Issues, Concerns,” published recently by a former Secretary of the Ministry of Water Resources, is that none of the above parameters is met nor the decision to implement this direction is technically and economically sound or practicable. The idea of inter-linking of rivers is not new and was reflected in Dr K.L. Rai’s proposal of a Ganga-Cauvery link and Captain D.J. Dastur’s Garland Canal. The present proposal envisages 30 links — 16 peninsular links and 14 Himalayan links which were identified by the National Water Development Agency in 1982 itself.

The opinion of experts on the feasibility of linking the rivers in India is sharply divided. Those against linking question the techno-economic feasibility and also apprehend that such a project would cause enormous environmental damage apart from the problems of displacement of the population. The legal objections include implications from the point of view of federal structure of the country as well as commitments to Bangladesh on Farakka.

Of course, the question also remains whether it is at all possible to complete inter-linking by 2012 as against the year 2035 suggested by the Centre in its affidavit for the peninsular rivers, and the year 2043 suggested for the Himalayan rivers. It is expected that the feasibility study itself will be completed by 2006. Though the Planning Commission had not made any proposal to link rivers in any of the Plans, this may be essential to meet the increasing needs of society for irrigation and drinking water.

The inter-state conflicts management in the area of rivers is as difficult as in respect of international conflicts. India’s experience on Indus waters, in spite of the treaty of 1961 with Pakistan and on Farakka with Bangladesh even though there is an agreement since 1996, are instances of conflict and cooperation. So are certain water disputes among the states within India. Both nationally and internationally, upper and lower riparian states assert more or less similar kinds of legal rights. Not only the International Law Association, which made a pioneering effort by codifying international water resources law and formulated the Helsinki Rules in 1966, has continued to revise the rules under pressure from the members backed by the governments, the United Nations has also framed what is called the UN Convention on the Non-navigable Uses of International Water-Courses in 1997 to help resolve international conflicts.

India has always expressed itself in favour of equitable use of water resources and has not adopted a doctrinaire approach reflected in the Harmon doctrine, which favours upper riparians vis-a-vis its neighbours. In fact, there is hardly any international lawyer who would now support doctrines favouring upper or lower riparians. The concept of equitable use of water also means restrictive sovereignty. This notion may permit priority among the existing uses but a use or category of uses, does not have any inherent priority over other uses, or category of uses.

Cooperative arrangements have worked well as is evident from agreements on water sharing among nations in spite of the need for constant dialogue from time to time. Where significant harm is likely to be caused to a neighbouring country, negotiations may be called for. However, if no international water-course is involved, the question of any such arrangement or discussion does not arise.

In the aforesaid context, India cannot allow its neighbours the right to veto its developmental activities though there may be scope for negotiations if, prima facie, a case is established indicating that such activity involving an international water-course is likely to significantly affect the interests of a neighbouring country. Sharing of costs and benefits can help resolve the conflicts.

At the domestic level also, there are several areas which would require a detailed examination — for example, the transfer of waters from basin to non-basin states and (not merely transfer from surplus to deficit states), sustainable use of the waters, steps to prevent pollution at every stage, and the rules which should apply to each of the situations so that the management or development of water resources is not stalled by any of the parties. A complete legal regime to handle the issues likely to arise would be needed.

The Constitution enables Parliament by law to bar the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. The Inter-State Water Disputes Act, 1956, was enacted in pursuance of which various tribunals have been set up from time to time, but the experience of tribunals has not been very happy because of non-implementation of its awards or delays in adjudication. Litigation has the tendency to prolong where any final or interim awards have been made by the tribunals allocating water among states, and reversal or modification thereof has been requested by the affected parties. Construction of canals for inter-linking of rivers also involves a survey of parks or sanctuaries through which they may have to pass. All these issues call for a strong legal regime.

If water is a national asset, there is no justification for an entry in the State List even though it is subject to entry in the Central List. A constitutional amendment will be needed so that legislation could be facilitated not only in the area of inter-linking of rivers at the national level but also for the transfer of waters from basin to non-basin states. Entries in the three lists in the Seventh Schedule are entitled to be given the widest amplitude under the Constitution. However, the entries should be so made that the possible areas of conflict are eliminated. The matter may also need to be discussed at the Inter-State council at the appropriate stage before finalising the scheme of constitutional amendment. It would be advisable for the Centre to go for it with a complete legal proposal.

The proposal to nationalise the rivers has been supported in principle by some states. The Union of India and the State of Tamil Nadu seem to have filed affidavits in support of inter-linking the rivers. No other state has filed an affidavit in pursuance of the notices issued by the Supreme Court. It would certainly facilitate the task of inter-linking if they make their position clear. However, it would appear that if 40 per cent of the world population, which has 264 largest river basins, can live together peacefully, there is no reason why India cannot inter-link its rivers for the benefit of its people and seek to evolve a regime which is acceptable to all the states. Enormous funds are required for the inter-linking project — an expenditure of Rs 5,60,000 crore which will either have to be raised through international agencies or a cess or some other mode of private funding.

The opportunity of harnessing the waters on an all-India basis cannot be allowed to be missed. The proposed project presents an opportunity not only to the business people but also the poor of this country.

What she said was true, for at the time of handing over the filled in pre-admission form, I had to excruciatingly explain to the school authorities concerned that the signature of the child's father could not be obtained since he and I were separated. I also told them that the father would not be able to come for the interview. I entreated them to note down this so-called anomaly in the form, hoping that the interviewer in question would not ask father-related questions from my son. They noted down the request and I thought to myself that the school was indeed sensitive to child psychology.

Finally the day of the interview came. That I was tense, I cannot deny. And it was little consolation to find all parents in pairs. But I didn't think about it too much. Hadn't they called me for the interview despite knowing my single parent status? I went in for the interview while my son was led for a separate evaluation.

The first question popped to me was: "Where's your husband?" I went on to explain. The series of questions that followed tried to probe more and more about my single status and its correlation with responsibility and happiness. The last question was: "Will you go for a divorce?" "Yes," I plainly said, "We have filed for it."

Was it the final nail in the coffin? It seemed so, for the evaluator then abruptly said with a smile: "Thank you, that's all. Hope you are able to bring up your son as your dream child." I too politely smiled back, thanked him and left. As I walked out, my mind was busy decoding his sugarcoated comment: I was not surprised to discover the rejection slip beneath.

My son was waiting outside. He looked cheerful. I put aside my feelings of misery and dejection as I breezily enquired: "How did it go?" He proceeded to tell me the painting he had drawn and the puzzle he had solved. "Was that all," I gingerly asked, aware of his aversion to too much maternal probing. "No, we were asked a few questions too," he dispassionately answered as we headed towards our car. "They asked me what does your papa do." I stopped in my tracks; this was a question I had not prepared him for. After a long pause, I managed to casually utter, "What did you say?" "That was easy," he confidently confided with the undiluted logic of a four-year-old, "I told them he gets up early in the morning, reads the newspapers for two hours, has his bath, and then does puja. After he has had his breakfast and is ready, he goes to the bank." I was stunned for a moment before going into peals of laughter and enveloping my son in a bear hug. My son, still too young to know the difference between his father and mine, had narrated the daily regimen of my father with whom we lived. Since my father, a retired army officer, often goes to the bank, most of the time just to get his passbook updated (an obsession with most retired defence personnel), my son had presumed that his grandfather worked there.

I merrily zoomed out of the school gate, leaving my despair behind. The innocent, intelligent and untutored answer given by my son had made my day.

“The kind of mischief we have seen in these (December 1) elections is quite stunning, especially in Chhattisgarh. We never expected the state government to be so recalcitrant and find so many ways of trying to cheat,” said Mr Lyngdoh at his spartan office in Nirvachan Sadan, which houses India’s autonomous Election Commission.

Mr Lyngdoh, a winner of the Magsaysay award for holding free and fair elections, agreed that cheating was the biggest bane of Indian elections.

The Chhattisgarh government at the time of the assembly elections was a “totally compromised administration” and he felt the directives came from the top.

He said he was not at all surprised by the outbreak of the recent bribery scandals in the state, remarking wryly: “One knows the level of politicians in India in any case. One doesn’t have to go to Chhattisgarh. One gets to see them in every part of India.”

Mr Lyngdoh, who retires in February, said no political party in the country was interested in carrying out electoral reforms that are needed to curb the growing criminalisation of politics, the blatant use of money power and the canker of defections.

Asked if the Election Commission can play any role in stemming the rot in the political system, Mr Lyngdoh said: “I doubt it. We are finding it more and more difficult just to run elections, because the kind of cheating that goes on today is stupendous. It is something that the constitution makers of the country had never imagined.

“You can deal with individual offenders, but a political party is not an individual offender, and you cannot prosecute it (political party) under the law. You can only deal with it through the (electoral) Code of Conduct.”

Mr Lyngdoh said “a lot of the poison” in the system is injected by “affiliates of political parties” which the Election Commission cannot directly deal with.

The CEC said he agreed that the level of rigging was much less this time than in previous elections, but said that was due to the use of electronic voting machines whose very use was opposed by political parties and leaders at one time, including late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

On the evolution of Indian democracy, Mr Lyngdoh replied: “The trend is not good. Things are declining. We need to get a better set of candidates, firmer control by the electorate on the people they send to represent them.”

Asked to compare the conduct of Indian elections with those in mature democracies, he shot back: “There’s no cheating there. Everything is orderly. You can’t compare. You don’t need a chief election commissioner in Britain or in Australian elections. You can put a stenographer there and everything would be all right.”

He also said the people of India should have the right of recall as is there in some democracies, “for five years is a long time when your representatives don’t bother to consult you on what you really want”.

He, however, hastened to add that this was his personal view and not the views of the Commission.

Sounding quite anguished about the political system in India and the operation of parliamentary democracy, Lyngdoh said he was not interested in leaving behind any legacies.

“I would just like to disappear,” he said on his post-retirement plans. On whether he nurtured any political ambitions, Mr Lyngdoh shot back: “I would rather commit suicide.”

Dismissing speculation fuelled by the BJP’s state election victories, he said India was not prepared for early national elections.

Elections cannot be held “just like that” without everyone being prepared and satisfied.

“Who said the Lok Sabha election is being advanced? At the moment it is mere speculation. They are due only in September. You cannot hold elections just like that. The conditions have to be right and everybody has to be prepared. Everybody has to be satisfied,” Mr Lyngdoh asserted emphatically.

Stating that it normally required nearly two months to revise the electoral rolls satisfactorily, he suggested that parliamentary elections should be held as scheduled in September.

“I am not talking about the next Lok Sabha polls. I am talking generally. I suppose the best time to have elections in the country is September. As it so happens, the next elections are due only in September.”

“If the electoral rolls were in a satisfactory state — and electoral rolls are fiddled by every political party in power — then you need a little bit more than 50 days. You make an announcement (about elections) and then after about three weeks you have a notification. From notification to counting, it takes more than a month. So a 50-day notice is absolutely the minimum required (before elections can be held).”

But Mr Lyngdoh noted he was retiring in February and “would not conduct any more elections,” adding: “I’m finished.” Referring to the tendency of political parties to get names of opposing voters struck off the list, Mr Lyngdoh said the first thing in conducting an election was to ensure that electoral rolls were not fiddled with.

“If they have (been fiddled with), we need to correct them, and correcting takes time.”

The top election official, who has often refused to play ball when ruling parties have favoured snap elections, regretted that the Election Commission had to be in a state of “perpetual power struggle with the political executive”. And the political executive had made things very difficult to conduct free and fair elections in India.

In his view, the 2002 Jammu and Kashmir poll were the best ever held in India.

The Kashmir election, held under international glare in September-October last year, was also the high point of his tenure, said Mr Lyngdoh.

“Undoubtedly, the conduct of the Kashmir elections was the high point of my tenure. They were possibly the best elections we have ever held in which we had complete control. We have never pumped in so much effort, so much of resources, so many good people,” he commented.

Mr Lyngdoh pointed out that the poll body had to deal with issues that had nothing to do with its functions, such as militants, policemen earmarked to rig the polls et al.

“We had to do our own intelligence work and we got no help on that. If we had not been able to control these people, there wasn’t the faintest suggestion of good elections,” said the official who was honoured with the Magsaysay award this year for his “convincing validation of free and fair elections as the foundation and best hope of secular democracy in strife-torn India”.

The elections took place in the insurgency-plagued state in the presence of tens of thousands of security personnel and foreign observers amid threats by militant groups to sabotage the democratic process.

Mr Lyngdoh felt if there was “any malfeasance that filtered through, it would have been very little and did not influence the course of the election.”

Commenting on frequent references to the Kashmir election by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee as a feather in the ruling coalition’s cap, Mr Lyngdoh preferred not to dispute the point.

“He (Vajpayee) obviously made a contribution. He kept on saying he wants good elections. We got whatever we wanted from the government, including financial resources, for using polling parties from outside the state.

The topmost on everyone’s mind is the question of the status of the CDS vis-a-vis the chiefs of the Navy, Army and the Indian Air Force. What statutory authority will the CDS have over them? Will he be a super chief, a generalissimo or “Senapati” as Air Commodore Jasjit Singh has acerbically commented time and again or primus inter pares, the first among equals, depending more on unwritten conventions and customs and force of personality to get things done. But then, there are no unwritten conventions and customs excepting the experience of the largely ineffective COSC. The logic of the CDS has largely been built upon the need for creation of synergy amongst the three services and for the government to have a “single point of advice”.

The next comes the role of the CDS in war and peace. In war, will the CDS be the Commander-in-Chief responsible for mobilisation, deployment, redeployment and employment of all the services? Or, will he be just a peacetime coordinator and one point adviser; in other words act as higher staff to the government? And how are these functions to be exercised, especially now with India having gone nuclear with a finger in the space pie.

The peacetime role of the CDS would involve strategic planning encompassing joint doctrine, threat analysis, defence forces strength, equipment profile and architecture and allocation of resources to individual services after cost-benefit analysis and inter-service prioritisation. The last one is tricky as it could involve major issues such as aircraft for the IAF versus aircraft carrier for the Navy or more tanks for the Army. Admittedly, all this will be done after detailed discussions. But, the process of discussion can be endless, as the CDS debate itself has shown. An arbitrator is needed to axe the discussions at some point and give a binding ruling. And lastly is the question of the location of the CDS, particularly in war. Is he to remain next to the Prime Minister now that India is nuclear and this challenge has to be factored in, or be in the joint operations room keeping a watch and directing the war?

The services are organised on a hierarchical pattern and are culturally comfortable with statutory authority. The CDS sans legal authority functioning in a corporate type environment might become another redundant structure of the defence edifice. The only logic for maintaining armed forces in peace is to be ever prepared for war. Therefore, the institution of CDS must relate to war.