Want to be remembered as someone who ering. fought for water rights: Ex-PM Deve Gowda

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: Former Prime Minister and JD(S) patriarch H D Deve Gowda who was conferred a honorary doctorate by the Bangalore University on Tuesday said he wants to be remembered as a man who fought to the best of his ability to secure water rights for his people.

Deve Gowda, a Rajya Sabha member, said he has been in public life for 60 years, and it is not just electoral politics that has kept him going.

"Whatever little time I got to be in power as a minister or chief minister or prime minister I tried to work with big ideas and I did not waste a single minute," he said.

"When people think of me many years after I am gone, I want them to think of me as a man who fought to the best of his ability to secure water rights for his people," the 90-year-old former Karnataka Chief Minister said after receiving the doctoral degree at the 58th annual convocation of Bangalore University.

"What has always inspired me are big development ideas. Ideas that can make a huge difference to millions of ordinary people. When I entered politics I gave myself a purpose. I wanted to harness the waters of river Cauvery for the benefit of farmers in old Mysore. I tried to understand the dispute between Madras and Mysore in the past two centuries,' he said.

At the same time, he said, he became involved with the harnessing of the Krishna river water.

Gradually, understanding water rights and water treaties and fighting for Cauvery and Krishna water became a passion. "This passion has sustained me as a politician,'' he said.