Rising in the Western Ghats, the ~800 km long Cauvery River flows through Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Puducherry, and is one of southern India’s most important rivers. Spanning a total catchment area of 81,155 sq km, nearly 42% of the basin lies within Karnataka, where the river serves as a critical economic, drinking-water, and agricultural lifeline. This platform focuses on the Karnataka story of the Cauvery—examining how the river has been dammed (including projects such as Mekedatu), polluted, and intensely extracted, with almost every drop diverted for human use, eroding its very character as a living river.