The Home Minister framed the southern States' development as resting on three pillars — a high literacy rate, trained manpower and technical expertise in the use of the deep seas — while arguing that their progress ultimately depends on water, which he called the soul of the region for agriculture, industry, public health and the environment. He contrasted this with the north, where he said five of eight river water sharing issues had persisted since the pre-British era and a final agreement reached five months earlier had made the region dispute-free from Kashmir to Uttar Pradesh. In the south, the recurring disputes involve peninsular rivers shared between States with no upstream Himalayan reserve to fall back on. The constitutional route for these is Article 262, under which Parliament enacted the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956 and can bar the courts; tribunals have been constituted under it and the awards of the Krishna-I, Godavari, Narmada, Cauvery and Mahadayi tribunals have been notified and are binding. The Cauvery dispute, the most prominent in the southern zone, was referred to a tribunal in 1990, produced a final award in 2007, was modified by the Supreme Court in 2018, and is now administered by the Cauvery Water Management Authority set up that year. At this meeting the Home Minister pressed for a route around the tribunal process — joint meetings involving the Ministry of Jal Shakti, the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Inter-State Council and the concerned States — and argued that interlinking rivers from the Brahmaputra to the Kaveri and Godavari could keep India free of water shortage for a century while creating inland waterways. The southern States accepted the suggestion of resolving the pending disputes through mutual dialogue.