Cauvery river dispute verdict: A landmark judgment by SC

Treating water as a national asset is a welcome correction

The Supreme Court’s recent judgment on the Cauvery water dispute will go down in history for at least two reasons. One, it pronounces water of multi-state rivers as a national asset, thus, rectifying, for all practical purposes, the historic error of making water a state subject under the Constitution. And two, it defines the concept of equitable sharing of water in a holistic and unambiguous manner broadly in line with the United Nations convention on international watercourses (popularly called the Helsinki Convention) which came into force in 2014. India is not a signatory to it. The injudicious proviso in the