Thirst Politics

Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s knee-jerk reaction to the Bhakra Beas Management Board’s (BBMB) recent decision to release 8,500 cusecs of water to Haryana for drinking needs marks yet another low in the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) erratic tenure in the state. His claim that Punjab has no surplus water to share with anyone and that the BBMB cannot dictate terms is not only misleading but dangerously incendiary. Such utterances threaten to undo decades of fragile detente between Punjab and Haryana over the deeply contentious Sutlej-Yamuna waters.

The BBMB, a statutory body under the Punjab Reorganisation Act of 1966 and answerable to the central government, does not operate on political whim. It was constituted to ensure equitable allocation of water from the Bhakra, Pong and Ranjit Sagar dams to Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan. When the Board acts to supply drinking water to Haryana in peak summer, it does so under clear legal authority and humanitarian necessity.

The idea that Punjab can unilaterally veto such allocations defies constitutional logic. It ignores binding decisions like the 1976 executive order under Indira Gandhi’s regime that allocated 3.5 million acre-feet of Sutlej-Yamuna water to Haryana, despite the latter being carved out of Punjab. It also disregards the Supreme Court’s 2016 verdict that Punjab’s refusal to complete the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal was unconstitutional. The Mann government, rather than comply or negotiate, has chosen a more dramatic route by peddling populism and stoking regional resentment.

Water has long been the political fault line in the region. The incomplete SYL Canal remains a monument to the dysfunction of cooperative federalism with successive Punjab governments, regardless of party, resisting its completion. But while past leaders at least cloaked their resistance in legal argument, Bhagwant Mann has decided to make it a matter of personal defiance and parochial pride. Haryana has so far maintained restraint, but it is unlikely to remain passive if its people face shortages while its neighbour postures on the pulpit. Already, political parties on both sides are stirring old embers in a region no stranger to inter-state animosity.

Mann’s belligerence also reveals a broader pattern in AAP’s governance playbook. Whether in Delhi or Punjab, the party thrives on manufactured conflict, particularly with constitutional bodies and the Union government. What it consistently fails to offer is pragmatic policy or cooperative leadership. For a government that promised change, Mann’s Punjab looks like a rerun of the past, only noisier and more confrontational. Real change would mean negotiating SYL Canal completion terms, investing in water-saving irrigation and rationalising canal flows based on seasonal need. Instead, the Chief Minister has chosen populism over prudence.

By transforming a basic drinking water allocation into a flashpoint, Mann has proven himself less a guardian of Punjab’s interests and more a gambler with its future. Water is too precious to be politicised and too dangerous to be weaponized. India’s rivers do not obey state borders. Neither should the minds of those entrusted to govern them.