Indian River Dispute Pits Regional Control Against National Desires My latest Letter From India column is about a bitter dispute between the southern Indian states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over the sharing of a river. It is a dispute that is more than a hundred years old, marked by long lulls and weeks of sudden tension. What I did not address in detail in the column is that the Kaveri River dispute is yet another reminder that the power of the Indian government as a mediator between squabbling states is being eroded. It is another symptom of the slow death of the very idea of "national" and the rise of the "regional." It is not just New Delhi's political influence that regional politicians are questioning, but also the authority of the Indian Supreme Court. Last Saturday night, in the Bangalore airport, I saw the chief minister of Karnataka, Jagadish Shettar, walking slowly in the company of scurrying cops to board a plane to New Delhi. The word on the street in Karnataka is that he has probably missed a golden chance to become an unparalleled hero in the state. After Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's instruction to him to release water to Tamil Nadu, and the Supreme Court's order seconding that, the Karnataka chief minister could have refused to do so. He then would have been arrested, which would have been an excellent lift for his political career. Instead, he released the water to Tamil Nadu. He has told the news media that it had not been his wish to do so, that he had yielded to the advice of friends and veteran politicians and that his actual intention had been to defy the prime minister and the Supreme Court and go to jail. But with the dispute continuing, he can still defy the Indian government and the Supreme Court, turn off the water and become a hero. That would be very interesting.