Development in
the Narmada Valley:
An Edifice to Injustice
By Angana Chatterji
Since early August 2002,
the waters of the Narmada have been rising violently. The construction
of large dams on the Narmada river has generated critical social and
political debates in contemporary India. The Narmada river in its passage
through the states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat, is the
site of 30 large, 135 medium and 3,000 small dams. Sardar Sarovar is
one of the gigantic dams expected to irrigate 5 million acres of land,
generate 1,450 megawatts of power, and supply water to 8,000 villages
and 135 towns through the Mahi pipeline in Gujarat.
At what cost? These are highly
refuted and controversial claims, and ones that could have been met
through alternative and sustainable development. The dams continue to
rise, flawed markers of an archaic modernism, a testimony to irresponsible
technology, social corruption and unsound judgement. The 133 mile long
reservoir of the Sardar Sarovar, a multipurpose hydroelectric project,
will flood 91,000 acres of land, 28,000 acres of which are forest lands,
and render destitute 43,000 families. About 50 per cent of those who
will be affected are adivasi (tribal) people. The Narmada watershed
is home to about 20 million peasants and adivasi people whose subsistence
is critically linked to their land, forests and water. Minimally, a
million people will be severely affected if the entire project is carried
out. Since the mid 1980s, the people of the Narmada Valley and
the Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the Narmada Movement) have protested
the dams, and mounted an empowered and prolific resistance to the unjust
development brokered by dam advocates.
Those in Maharashtra and
Madhya Pradesh will be the worst affected by the Sardar Sarovar. In
violation of rules, since May 2002, the height of the Sardar Sarovar
dam has been increased to 95 meters at the behest of the Narmada Control
Authority, while resettlement and rehabilitation has yet to be completed
at the authorized 90 meter level. The Supreme Court and the Central
government have remained predictably silent. The Narmada Bachao Andolan
satyagraha (non violent resistance) sites at Domkhedi in Maharashtra
and Jalsindhi in Madhya Pradesh are since under submergence. The water
level has crossed the 100 meter mark. The submergence in the Sardar
Sarovar is the most recent in a long list of casualties. Activists and
villagers await the rising water as the police, masquerading as saviors,
forcibly arrest them. Ironically, the state, in the role of purveyor
of death, plans to charge the 20 activists who were arrested for aiding
in suicide.
Arguably, droughts are a
damaging reality in India and the need for water is immense. India needs
a water program that will provide water to the fields, villages, towns
and industries throughout the year, without placing certain communities
at risk to benefit others. India needs cost effective and environmentally
responsible technologies for the networking of her water bodies. The
success of such endeavors will depend on local participation and the
nations capacity to ensure the rights of the poor.
The decision to raise the
height of the Sardar Sarovar dam has been manipulated to show progress
and completion in Gujarat, a state devastated by communal carnage. Former
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi hailed Sardar Sarovar as Indias
testimonial to progress, bringing much needed reprieve to wounded Gujarat.
It is perhaps a convenient strategy of deflecting attention from his
governments abysmal complicity in the murder and subjugation of
Muslim minorities earlier this year. It is meant to communicate that
all is well in the State, progress is on track and there are elections
to be won. What is the price of progress if fetched on the
backs of the poor, arrived at through cultural and ecological genocide?
The power elite in India are betraying all basic norms of democratic
governance, abandoning the rule of law and abrogating the constitutional
rights of disenfranchised people.
Any further increase in the
height of the Sardar Sarovar dam cannot be permitted. An independent
committee must be set up to review the status of displacement and rehabilitation
in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. The Central and state governments must
act to implement the 2001 recommendations of the Daud Committee, the
July 2002 report on public hearing in the Valley, and the Maharashtra
governments task force report on rehabilitation and rights.
What good is a nation if
it refuses to protect its citizens? State sanctioned development in
the Narmada Valley will leave the marginalised without the right to
life and livelihood, resettled, at best, on lands unfit for cultivation,
fleeing the present in squatter settlements and slums, scattered and
nameless, with no past to remember or future to grasp. That is living
death. The state, the institution most responsible for their well being,
is condemning them to it. Injustice has become the shameful and prevailing
legacy of India. Voices of resistance ring from the Narmada Valley,
resonant with commitment, barely audible in the present. At Domkhedi,
Medha Patkar, awe inspiring activist of the Narmada Movement, stands
in knee deep water. About 50 other people keep vigil with her. Almost
all the houses in Domkhedi are submerged. Dams are not the temples of
India, they are her burial grounds.
(Angana Chatterji is a professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology
at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.)