SARDAR SAROVAR PROJECT
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An INTACH Series
CURRENT ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES ■ 1
THE ISSUE OF DEVELOPING
RIVER NARMADA
06064
PREFACE
As I build this dam
I bury my life
The dawn breaks
There is no flour in the grinding stone.
I collect yesterday’s husk for today's meal
The sun rises
And my spirit sinks
Hiding my baby under a basket
And hiding my tears
I go to build the dam
The dam is ready
It feeds their sugarcane fields
Making the crop lush and Juicy
But I walk miles through the forests
In search of a drop of drinking water
I water the vegetation with drops of my sweat
As dry leaves fall and fill my parched yard.
- Daya Pawar
(song sung by Dalit women in Maharashtra)
Rivers provide the most wonderful backdrop for the expression of
harmony between the environmental physical processes, the unbroken
panorama of life and the everchanging tapestry of cultures. The physical
processes of climate, water cycle, weathering of the substratum, land form
evolution and life together create a river. Life itself is a continuous stream
of change and the adaptation based upon an unchanging core identity and
the unvarying purpose of life. The wide spectrum of living forms and their
life cycles include the human species as one recent minute entity. Human
culture is the collective response to this rapidly changing tapestry, their
recognition and an expression of gratitude for the ability to survive and
much more less definable.
The very root of human culture has set down deep in the alluvial
flood plains of ancient rivers. As development and modernisation influenced
basic value systems and human attitudes humankind and rivers parted
ways. Rivers were buried under silt and rivers buried the centres of river
valley civilisations under mud.
Ours was a country which always had a spectrum of vibrant cultures.
This has been so because the. land was rich. We owe the richness of our
land to our rivers big and small, great and obscure. That is why in India
we venerated our rivers. Narmada is one of the most sacred of our rivers
flowing through the real heartland of the sub continent, far surpassing
Ganga or any other river in India in antiquity. According to our beliefs she
should never be fettered.
We have seen the slow death of other rivers in our land. The tired,
exhausted land can no longer support a youthful river. So the latter also
dies prematurely. We have seen the outright murder of our rivers for short
term profit. We have stone walled our rivers or put them in dungeons of
concrete. Naturally then, the land and the culture will die. There is no
choice. Of course one can dogmatically say that the culture is advancing
and is successful. One can find prosperity in the teeming, consuming and
squandering urban centres and in the parasitic pollutive short lived industrial
centres. But then the ultimate index of success is survival. And this demands
the essential conditions for life to continue for all and forever. That is
exactly what a living river symbolises.
Narmada - A Symbol
Rivers are symbols of the replenishing, self purifying, life
sustaining cycles of matter and energy on earth. Basically all rivers
are the same with very little differences. But because a river is fluid
in motion each one of them is ever changing. Rivers are the best
manifestations of the dynamism of land and they all merge with the
sea. They transform the very face of the land over which they flow.
Rivers are habitats for a wide spectrum of life and they also provide
water so essential for life. They are critical modulators that decide
other limiting factors in the environment. Although rivers are restricted
to the land they are crucial for the nutrient cycles of the oceans.
The birth, growth and death of civilizations are inextricably bound
to the rivers and the valleys carved out by them. More ancient the
land, one can be sure that the river will also be old. Older the river,
possibilities are that civilizations along its banks will also be old.
Older civilizations usually have greater harmony within and without,
in the individuals and collectively. Those civilizations that have lasted
longer evolving along with a live river we can be sure have mastered
the true art of survival. For the people of such cultures the river
becomes sacred, etched in their racial memory as the provider,
sustainer and as one who shows the way. Narmada was all these
not only to those who lived in that ancient central Indian rift valley
but for all who had access to the common Indian cultural matrix.
Until there came about a basic change in human attitudes
From harmony and viability of mutually dependent inter
relationships we have drifted away to concerns of short term
profitability and immediate utility. Hence rivers were killed or they
died as a consequence of our wrong doings upon them or around
them. Yet paradoxically all the stark changes the rivers reflected as
a consequence of our own wrong doings only spurred us on to
more wrong doings. Everywhere in the world rivers are in the same
plight. So now there is almost a feeling of unavoidability, irresistibility
or a fatalistic design beyond us to intervene in this rising tide of self
destruction.
We in India had been for a very long time worshippers of our
rivers. For us all our rivers are sacred. The names we adorned our
rivers with reflect our attempt to bring down to earth around us the
Gods we conceive of inhabiting the heavens. Time erodes and
weathers down cultures and mountains alike. They transform the
rivers also. The river Saraswathi is an example which can now be
located only in mythology and traced on earth only by specialists
like geomorphologists. Practically every river in India is dying in
front of our eyes. Erosion has silted up their beds. So during the
monsoons they cause disastrous floods. Dams have simultaneously
drowned their reaches and amputated parts of their bodies. The
denudation of the hills have desiccated their source and starved
them to death. Over exploitation of their waters have emptied them.
Uncontrolled pollution has converted them into sewage channels.
As the freshwater discharge become less sea water is moving
inland through them. Mechanical manipulations of their form in the
name of flood control, navigation etc. have mutilated their graceful
shape.
Narmada, our biggest west flowing river had escaped till
recently. Our east tilting sub-continent gets most of its rain from the
south. So the western portions in general have copious fresh water.
For a complex set of reasons Kutch and Saurashtra alone, located
at the extreme north west are becoming drier and drier. The forests
in the Vindhya, Satpura ranges are gradually receding. Yet, Narmada
continues to flow unfettered. All other peninsular Indian rivers and
even their tributaries have been dammed. Mahanadi, Godavari,
Krishna, Cauvery and many others already have their flow tapped.
Careless technological capability and lack of understanding of long
term biospheric processes coupled with distorted visions of
continually increasing linear growth and development have got us
to erect barriers across practically all our rivers. Invariably as in the
case of all other modern problem solving, here also we turn a blind
eye to the root cause of the problem which we know is within us,
in our attitudes. But we attempt to suppress the symptoms of our
disease and seek magical cures. Solutions for our explosive
population growth, distorted land ethics and boundlessly growing
needs for the fruits of the earth are sought in irrigation, biotechnology.
reliance on toxic chemicals and market manipulations.
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The attempt to dam Narmada is yet another symptom of the
same collective diseased human mind. It too has all the aspects of
other modern developmental schemes. The real long term costs
are masked or simply overlooked if not altogether suppressed. Empty
promises are copiously given which can never be fulfilled nor are
intended to be kept. The all pervading corruption, inefficiency and
unjust sharing of meagre benefits give it a banal familiarity. Only
the dimensions of this development are mind bogglingly huge. The
gullibility of the trusting, common people who are patiently waiting
for some relief from the increasing crushing poverty has now become
the weapon in the hands of the exploiters who masquerade as
agents of development. The inability of the common people to
understand issues going deeper beyond the deceptions and empty
promises, to organise themselves and defend their resources, with
the political machinery opting to be with the exploiters further fuels
the vicious cycle of destruction and exploitation. A country of almost
900 million people has become a mute witness or a mere indifferent
background for the destitution of a few million of them and the
destruction of an extensive rich part of it. This is the terrible tragedy
of what is happening in Narmada.
What is happening to Narmada is a clear indication of what
is happening to each one of us and to our future. Humankind has
come far enough to be able to take stock of what we have gained
and what we have lost in the blind pursuit of development and
progress. Each one of us must take the moral responsibility to
ponder and take a stance, a stance not merely for or against the
dam but for the whole future prospects of our species. We have the
ability to foreclose the choices of the posterity. Our hope and promise
to those yet to be born is inextricably linked up with this stance. We
can either be on the side of viability, sustainability and equitablility
across barriers of time and space or we can be selfishly exploitative,
destructive for a very short time. Narmada offers us an opportunity
for this self realisation.
River Narmada
Narmada river originates in the Amarkantak plateau located
in the Shahdol district of Madhya Pradesh. It flows 1300 km west
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through sal and teak forests, through gorges and broad valleys to
merge with the waters of the Arabian Sea in the Bharuch district of
Gujarat. It is one of the most sacred rivers in India. With many short
tributaries flowing into it from north and south, the Narmada basin
forms a very important topographic feature of peninsular India. At
a time when the Indus and Gangetic valleys were uninhabited
wilderness, Narmada valley was the home for a rich mosaic of
human cultures. Since those times lost in antiquity till today a very
large human population including a variety of tribal societies such
as Bhils, Gonds, Saigas, Kurkus, Bhilalas have continued to live
depending on Narmada. In short the Narmada basin forms an ideal
microcosm of our country with.its extraordinary rich natural heritage
supporting cultures ancient and more recent. People of India venerate
Narmada river as the epitome of freedom and sanctity. Even pumping
the waters of Narmada for any purpose is considered by many as
sacrilege.
The Narmada Valley Project
As part of the developmental policy our country adopted since
independence, to meet the requirements of the growing population
for water, power and marketable commodities there has been the
demand to utilise the waters of Narmada more and more, in particular
after the commencement of Five Year Plans. Since Narmada flows
through the States of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat
this led to disputes between the involved States. In 1969 to solve
this thorny problem, the Government of India constituted the Narmada
Water Dispute Tribunal (NWDT). Almost after 10 years of legal
wrangling the Tribunal came out with its final verdict. Massive
schemes to tap the water potential of Narmada were given shape
to by planners, technologists and engineers thereafter. The thrust
of all these developmental measures was mega river valley schemes
geared to meet power and water needs of the growing industries,
urban centres and the needs of the rich cash crop farmers. Not only
the technologists and planners but also the politicians were
exclusively for such costly, unjust, short term resource mining.
According to current plans, the Narmada basin will have
more than 3200 dams of which 30 will be major dams, 135
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medium and the rest small. In fact the whole construction
activity envisages a century long phase. Of this enormously
destructive ‘developmental blueprint' the most destructive dams will
be the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) under construction at Vadgam
in the Bharuch district of Gujarat and the Narmada Sagar Project
(NSP) envisaged at the Punasa in the Khandwa district of Madhya
Pradesh.
But today Narmada is no longer an issue revolving around a
dam or a number of dams. It has become the fountainhead of
questions and thoughts related to the whole of human responsibility
and human goals. Through Narmada, we are beginning to see the
course we have opted for the future of the whole of humanity. The
inter-relationships between economic development and the life
supporting environment is better understood now. The issue of the
sustainability of human survival dependent on natural resources
particularly water, soil and easily accessible and less pollutive forms
of energy, are being looked at critically. Social and political issues
such as survival rights of tribal societies, the immorality and
impossibility of relocating people who are unable to compete with
us in the current world, the need to and the means of truly
democratising all decision making, the issue of involving people in
the developmental processes are being brought up by the currently
raging controversy regarding Narmada. Over and above all these
tangible issues, there is the ethical, almost philosophical question
of our right to destroy a river which could have flown eternally
supporting a wide variety of cultural and natural landscapes for the
short term despoilation of urban consumerism.
Background to the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP)
According to the integrated Narmada Valley Development
Programme, the Narmada Sagar Project in Madhya Pradesh and
the downstream Sardar Sarovar Project in Gujarat must both be
completed together. Adequate water has to be stored in the Narmada
Sagar reservoir and let out to fill the Sardar Sarovar reservoir. The
Narmada Sagar when constructed will submerge 90,000 ha. of
land in Madhya Pradesh, while the Sardar Sarovar will submerge
directly 39,000 ha. of land spread over the States of Gujarat,
Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.
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Source : Narmada Project Authority
Table 1.
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This immense spread of land going to be drowned is
immeasurably valuable forest which our denuded and desertified
country can never afford to lose. Along with the forests earmarked
for destruction are the richest fertile valley lands which had been
under cultivation for millennia. The lands to be flooded are
unquestionably the only sustenance for a large population of tribal
and marginal farmers. Yet in our democratic, socialistic, independent
country where development is supposed to be for the welfare of the
ordinary citizens, the Narmada Water Dispute Tribunal has not
bothered to estimate the socio-economic, cultural and ecological
destruction due to the river valley development projects they have
proposed. In spite of the fact that some of the dams in the Narmada
basin were taken up for construction in the early 1960s, the various
negative aspects of this project such as dislocation of large tribal
populations, deforestation and even the total inability of the projects
to deliver the envisaged benefits came to light only towards the late
1980s. Developmental fiascos which should have enabled us to
rethink on our costly suicidal course have not even been topics of
public debate. Even within the restricted ambit of directly affected
people, such discussions have not evolved. Already the Narmada
Sagar Project is stalled enmeshed in social, economic and ecological
problems. But the Gujarat government in particular beginning from
the Chief Ministership of the late Chimanbhai Patel took the stance
that the Sardar Sarovar Project is the lifeline of Gujarat and bulldozing
all objections went ahead with the project. In spite of critical
feedbacks from institutions like the World Bank, irrespective of
insurmountable financial crisis, each day adding to the terrible trail
of human rights violations, the vested interests within the social and
political leadership of Gujarat is obstinately going ahead with the
construction of SSP.
Already 5 dams including Tawa, Sukta, Kolar, Bargi (Phase
I & II) are nearing completion or are already completed as part of
the Narmada Valley development. These dams are more than
enough to show us the irreparable environmental and social
disruptions and the massive economic loss inflicted upon the region.
For example Bargi dam alone has uprooted and created more than
a lakh refugees most of whom are tribal people who have not been
paid even a nominal monetary compensation until today. These
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hapless people who were part of the age old rich rural agrarian
secure social systems have been transformed overnight into mere
shadows of people counting their last days in the slums of Jabalpur
and Vadodara. It is only since public spirited people like Dr. B.D.
Sharma have brought out their horrendous plight that even within
our country we are hearing about this section of our society
earmarked for annihilation through our development projects. We
are shocked when confronted with this unpardonable injustice
perpetrated on our own people. On the other side the disparity
between the real achievements and the promised returns from these
huge investments in irrigation enhancement, drinking water supply
and electricity generation schemes are even more unbelievable.
For example Bargi was envisaged to irrigate 4.44 lakh ha. fields.
But actually water reached hardly 12,100 ha. and even the lands
that got the canal waters were totally destroyed through water
logging. The soil was unsuitable for canal irrigation and the canal
designs did not provide for draining the surplus waters. The Tawa
project which was completed in the mid 1970's in Madhya Pradesh
also created only waterlogged wasted lands.
The Tawa (Phase I, II & III) Project completed in 1981 was
designed to irrigate 55,000 hectares. But by 1978 beginning itself
problems of waterlogging became acute. It was advised that the
entire canal be lined with concrete to prevent further destruction of
fertile soils. Seepage loss from the canals had become 60% instead
of the expected 30%. Lining of the canals and construction of artificial
drains to connect with the natural drainage system to prevent
waterlogging became so expensive that it was beyond the capacity
of any farmer to repay. Command area development alone came
to be as much as Rs. 5,700/- per hectare. Finally in some villages,
roads were used as drains for the excess water from seepage and
waterlogging. Also good agricultural land had to be diverted for
construction of drains in order to prevent the rest of the land from
getting destroyed. Thousands of acres of invaluable farmland became
uncultivable wet deserts and the Tawa dam became a tragic case
study of the horrendous consequences of large scale irrigation in
fragile soils.
It is now feared that once the Sardar Sarovar Project is
completed, it will prevent the drainage of the Narmada Sagar
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Omkareshwar composite command groundwater reservoir in the
direction of the natural slope of the Narmada Valley ie. towards
Gujarat. Waterlogging will then affect more areas.
In areas where the fields are not waterlogged, the sudden
availability of cheap and abundant fresh water through canals
encourage the massive conversion of traditional farmlands which
have wheat, jowar and other coarse grains along with citrus, bananas
legumes etc. into very profitable water demanding cash crops like
sugarcane. The sudden prosperity of the large landowners in turn
initiates social and economic disequilibrium which has its negative
impact both politically and ecologically. Once the canals are
completed it need not be possible to actually regulate water use or
encourage the really necessary and suitable crops like food grains.
The immediate profitability thereafter decides the direction of the
evolution of the agrosystem to which the political leadership will
always be subservient. Along with the disappearance of the cheap
local coarse food grains there is the simultaneous, far costlier
damage to the fields due to waterlogging, salination, chemical toxicity
etc. through excessive irrigation.
Since 1961 through the planned economic development
implemented through Five Year Plans we have taken up the
construction of 246 major River Valley Projects mostly for irrigation.
Of this only 65 have been completed. Taking into consideration the
negative environmental and social impacts of these mega projects
and the fact that there is no possibility of recovering the thousands
of crores of rupees invested in them, many experts and even the
Parliamentary Public Accounts Committees have repeatedly asked
for a moratorium on mega dams. According to a report based on
data of 1990, canal irrigation from big dams costs above Rs. 30,000.
per hectare of command area. The soil and water conservation
measures and other essential land preparation costs are over and
above this estimate. We definitely cannot afford such an enormous
squander of scarce national resource. Between 1975 and 1982,
big dams alone have inflicted upon us the dead investment of
atleast 20,530 million rupees. (Vohra, 1987)
To appreciate the magnitude of this fiasco, it is necessary to
understand that the total potential that is claimed to have been
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created by the so-called major and medium sector (MMS) of irrigation
during the 40 year period from the beginning of the First Plan in
1951 to the end of the Seventh Plan in 1990 was no more than 20.2
million hectares (mh). Even in this it has been reported that there
has been an unexplained disappearance of 4.9 million hectares of
precious irrigation potential. What has been reported as lost
represents nearly 25 percent of the claimed total potential. The
seriousness of the setback also becomes clear when we consider
the replacement cost of the lost potential at today's prices. According
to the Ministry of Water Resources the cost of producing 1.76 mh
of irrigation potential by large projects during 1992-93 is Rs. 10,701
crores. Thus the cost of creating one hectare of potential during the
first three years of the Eighth Plan comes to Rs. 60,000/-. On this
basis the replacement cost of the lost potential would be considerably
in excess of Rs. 30,000 crores if first, the figure of 1.76 mh is
suitably corrected and secondly, if the escalation factor is also
taken into account (Vohra, 1995).
The most irresponsible behaviour of the Ministry of Water
Resources can be understood only if one sees how closely it has
always identified itself with the major and medium irrigation sector
and consistently painted it in the rosiest of hues. Yet the serious
deficiencies and major scandals regarding large river valley projects
have been brought to light again and again by responsible officials
and researchers. Its failure to make quick use of the potential created
by it and its neglect of the problems of waterlogging and salination
in Command Area have become well known. The premature siltation
in reservoirs, causing disastrous floods during monsoon when the
overflowing reservoirs have to be opened up to save the dam and
absolute drought during summer because the silted up reservoirs
cannot hold even a fraction of the expected storage also is a regular
phenomenon all over the country. Its inability to increase water
rates in order to meet an annual loss of around Rs. 2500 crores on
operation and maintenance charges alone also makes the whole
venture economically unviable. In addition to all this the productivity
of canal-fed areas is deplorably low and the damage the large scale
canal irrigation does to vast areas of prime quality agricultural land
in our country is incalculable. According to a report (Vidyanathan,
1989) an estimated 13 million hectares [8 million by waterlogging
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and 7 million by salinity (alkalinity)] of land is forever destroyed by
canal irrigation and the extent is growing. The large scale conversion
of agricultural land into monoculture tree crops or cash crops or
housing colonies or industrial estates is also happening in spite of
all the effort and funds pouring in for river valley projects for
agricultural development. This sort of disastrous shift in land
management also is taking place in the name of development. For
example in Kerala the area under paddy cultivation is sharply
declining even after the government has spent about Rs. 1500
crores on irrigation projects. The total revenue earned after this
heavy investment is only a paltry Rs. 2 crores per year. While it
requires around Rs. 40,000 crores for the completion of spill over
projects during the ninth and subsequent plans as far as the whole
country is concerned, it requires Rs. 1000 crores more to complete
the projects on hand in Kerala even according to present estimates.
The case of the notorious Kallada Project in Kerala brings out the
unviability of major dams clearly. This project in southern Kerala
which was started 34 years ago and whose cost estimate has
jumped from Rs. 13 crore to Rs. 458 crores (a 3347 percent
increase!) is “still a good source of making quick money for
engineers,contractors, politicians and a few lawyers’’ according to
none other than the former A.G. of Kerala (Joseph, 1995) It is
against this background of our experience from big dams that we
should attempt to view the SSP.
The Projected Objectives of SSP and the Fnared Impacts
SSP is the costliest and the most massive multi-purpose
project taken up in our country so far. Accordin':, to the claims of
the Sardar Sarovar Nigam Ltd., the apex body constituted to
oversee the implementation of the project, 1.8 million hectares
of land will be irrigated by this project along with the generation
of 1450 MW of electrical energy. More than the raw figures, the
promise of providing water to the 40 million people in the
Kutch and Saurashtra part of Gujarat and the Barmore and
Jallur districts of Rajasthan (which are described as perpetually
drought affected) remains the most attractive objective of SSP.
But there are many in the world, not only environmental activists
and human rights supporters but many highly competent economists,
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planners and technocrats who, along with the directly affected
oustees from the SSP, view this as the most horrendous social,
economic and ecological designed disaster being implemented in
the world today. The following few highlights though like the
proverbial tips of the iceberg themselves are shocking enough:
What would be the ecological cost of SSP?
The SSP can be seen to be the most destructive project we
have ever conceived when we take up the issue of the precious
land that will be submerged, destroyed in many ways for ever. As
mentioned earlier SSP and NSP will together submerge about
1,30,482 hectares of land of which 55,681 hectares is prime cultivable
land and 54,076 hectares is forest land. In addition to this a very
large area of forest and other land resources will be razed to the
ground by the thousands of labourers staying in the area during the
long years ahead for the construction of the dams. Over and above
all this, there is the incalculable qualitative changes in the
ecosystems due to the massive construction activites and long lasting
environmental impacts of the dam and the reservoir. The degradation
of surrounding forests and the destabilization of the remaining agro
ecosystem all around the reservoir are evident in all dams sites.
The drastic change in the local climate of the area due to
deforestation and the ecological adverse effects of the artificial
reservoir of water on surrounding land and vegetation will ultimately
harm the productivity of the land and trigger off a chain reaction of
ecological destabilization of the whole area. The meandering
reservoir will inundate all the low lying areas which will naturally
contain the richest of forests and the most productive of agricultural
land. The ecological damage due to the fragmentation of the forests
and the temperature and climate changes that the large body of
water creates will naturally affect the overall rainfall, climate and
productivity of the entire area. Moreover the loss of vegetation
cover in the catchment of the reservoir will result in massive siltation
and curtail the inflow of water into the reservoir. This will together
reduce the water retentive capacity of the reservoir.
The additional land required for resettling the thousands of
families and their livestock displaced by the project also has to be
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considered. In 1987 the Ministry of Environment and Forests (Govt.
of India) had approved the diversion of 13,385.451 ha. of forest
land for SSP. But actually the Department had tried to convince the
Central and State Governments of the inadvisability of converting
almost 55,000 ha. of forest into a reservoir.
The Department did not want any change in the legal status
of the land in question, but had directed the concerned States to
afforest double the area submerged in non-forest land as the project
violated the 1980 Forest Conservation Act. It also had ordered the
States to prepare catchment area treatment plans in detail and
insisted that forest lands should not be used for rehabilitation of
oustees and that tree felling would be permitted in the submergence
areas only up to 4 meters below the full reservoir level. The
Department also insisted that funds required for compensatory
afforestation would be in addition to the normal State budgets for
the Forest Departments and that such expenditure be at the cost of
the project. There were also strict guidelines given for wildlife
management, sand quarrying, surveying, demarcating etc.
All these conditions remain in paper without being considered
of any value by the project authorities.
Does this project actually bring under agricultural production
more land than the better quality land submerged or otherwise
taken out of socially productive use ?
The SSP and the NSP together will destroy more than
1,27,000 hectares of fertile agricultural lands and rich natural forests
through submersion. The more than 75,000 km long canals of
SSP, the most extensive network of irrigation canals in the world
envisaged so far, would alone require more than 80,000 hectares
of land. Over and above so much of productive land permanently
destroyed there will be the enormous extent of land needed for the
project colonies, powerhouses, powerlines, roads, quarries etc. This
enormous land modification is being carried out currently with
absolutely no environmental impact assessment, without paying any
heed to directives from the Supreme Court, directions from the
NWDT nor following the guidelines of the Ministries of Environment
and Social Welfare.
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The SSP cornered mass support in Gujarat by promising a
permanent solution to Gujarat’s drought problems. Are the areas
proposed to be irrigated through SSP really capable of
supporting intensive canal irrigated agriculture?
In addition to this', the irrigation efficiency of the SSP is likely
to be only 46% (ignoring evaporative losses) and not 60% as claimed
(Ram, 1993). This estimate is endorsed by the World Bank itself
according to whom most irrigation commands in India probably
have an irrigation efficiency of 20 to 35%".
The land which is being submerged is actually the most fertile
lands which had been under cultivation for centuries under fairly
stable and viable land use which never needed artificial irrigation.
On the other hand extensive stretches of the Command Area where
water is proposed to be taken through the costly canals are areas
with black cotton soils, highly susceptible to waterlogging or very
dry sandy soils susceptible to salination.
The SSP plans to irrigate 1.8 million ha. of land spread over
12 districts in Gujarat and an additional 75,000 ha in Rajasthan.
But the fact is that there is about 17 percent less water in the
river than planned for. The amount of water actually available
for use at the dam site at 75% dependability is only 22.69 MAF
(million acre feet) and not 27.22 MAF as assumed by the project
authorities. The decreased water yield makes the entire claims of
the project meaningless. The water from the Narmada according to
the NWDTA is to be distributed in the ratio 65:32 to Madhya Pradesh
and Gujarat while Rajasthan sharing the remaining 3%. Thus while
under the original estimate of river yield at 27.22 MAF Gujarat
would receive 9 MAF of water, under the revised actual yield of
22.69 MAF, its share would drop to 7.26 MAF. This reduced quantum
of water is specially significant for those at the tail end of the SSP
system ie. Kutch and Saurashtra since they are the most likely to
suffer if there is less water.
The availability of water in the SSP reservoir depends critically
on the graduated release of water from upstream projects in Madhya
Pradesh (Narmada Sagar, Maheshwar and Omkareshwar). None of
these projects have any chance of ever being completed. Thus
without water from these projects the irrigation and power benefits
of SSP would drop by 17% and the irrigated area drop by 30%These two pitfalls would mean a decrease in the area irrigable by
Over and above all this is the evaporative and seepage losses
of water even in lined canals. However the project authorities have
grossly underestimated these losses and have in paper raised the
total area irrigable. This they have done by minimising the amount
of water they would deliver per unit area. Thus the area to be
irrigated will drop by an additional 23.3%. Hence it is to be assumed
that the irrigation benefits of the SSP are likely to be only 44.53%
of what is claimed (Ram, 1993). All this will come to mean that the
drought hit areas of Kutch, Saurashtra, North Gujarat and part of
Southern Rajasthan will never benefit from SSP. In fact the project
will be able to irrigate only 1.6 percent of cultivable land in Kutch,
9.24% of cultivable land in Saurashtra and 20% of cultivable area
of north Gujarat.
The worst threat from the SSP is the danger of agricultural
land destruction by large scale canal irrigation. About half the
proposed Command Area of the SSP is prone to waterlogging and
salination. Preliminary studies (ORG, 1982) have shown that less
than half the Command Area can be called "suitable” for irrigation.
25.61 percent of the Command Area has severe limitations for
sustained irrigation and 26.5 percent is not suitable for sustained
irrigation at all. That means that 52% of the Command Area faces
high to very high probability of waterlogging and salination. 41 percent
of command area in Kutch and Saurashtra is not suitable for irrigation
at all, whereas the remaining 59% has severe limitations for irrigation.
Considering the skyrocketing cost of SSP construction, it is estimated
that the cost of irrigating one hectare of the Command Area will be
more than Rs. 1 lakh, making it the most unviable project.
The already well irrigated rich areas of Bharuch, Khera and
Baroda districts will be the first to receive irrigation water naturally
as in all such development projects, The economically strong and
politically powerful areas will be given more water since the canal
the SSP to as much as 58-69% of the original estimate.
15
14
system will not be ready initially beyond the Mahi. Once the farmers
get water in large quantities, they are forced to and also tend to
shift from multi cropping food farming to water intensive cash crops
like sugar cane as has happened over the entire Ukai dam command.
By the time the whole system of canals are built, the economic and
political clout that comes from growing cash crops makes it difficult
for the government to curb their overuse of water. Seven large
sugar factories have already come up in the initial reaches of the
SSP Command Area despite the fact that almost no sugarcane is
grown there at present! In the Ukai Project in Gujarat, sugarcane
now accounts for over 75% of the Command Area although the
planners had originally decreed that only 30% of the command
shall grow sugarcane. The official canal operation policy of the SSP
is bombastic in its claims of just water distribution through water co
operatives, scientific protection of the irrigated area from waterlogging
and salinity, but considering the gigantic dimensions of the project,
vast areas to be irrigated and the existing corrupt and inefficient
social, political and official systems, it would be impossible to fulfil
a fraction of these regulations and conditions.
Will the drinking water needs of millions of people ever by
fulfilled by SSP ?
Drinking water is planned to be supplied to 8215 villages and
135 urban centres in 12 districts of Gujarat, including all villages
and cities in Kutch and Saurashtra. This claim has been one of the
main moral and political justifications for the SSP beyond any
consideration of cost-benefit analysis. Although bombastic claims
about the supply of drinking water “permanently solving the water
supply problems of villages in Kutch and Saurashtra” are abundant,
none of this is supported by any comprehensive data, master plans
or cost-benefit or feasibility analysis. The number of potential
beneficiaries, villages and towns have increased tremendously
without concomitant increase in the quantum of water earmarked
for drinking water. At the time of NWDTA, no figures for drinking
water beneficiaries were mentioned. But since then, the number
has changed drastically from 28 million (1983) to 32.5 million (1989)
to 40 million (1992) and again to 25 million (1993) I Similarly the
number of villages that are supposed to benefit has increased from
16
zero in 1979 to 4719 in the early 1980 to 7234 in 1990 and finally
to 8215 in 1991.
The project promises drinking water for 948 villages in Kutch
and 4877 villages in Saurashtra. But surprisingly there are only 877
inhabited villages in Kutch and 4727 villages in Saurashtra!
Apparently in their generosity the project authorities were inflating
all the figures which could depict SSP as a most desirable
developmental measure. It is now obvious that the project itself will
never get completed nor will water flowing through the canals ever
reach the villages at the tail end of the distributaries. At the same
time work on the dam continues to take away all the money badly
needed for rural developmental schemes in Saurashtra and Kutch
including drinking water supply schemes which should have fructified
immediately.
According to the' two available reports on drinking water
(GWSSB , 1982, NCA, 1991), the total projected water requirements
in 2021 for domestic, industrial and thermal power projects is
estimated to be 1.37 MAF. SSP is to provide 0.75 MAF which works
out to a gross demand of 1.06 MAF after adding losses in the
system.
The NWDTA had allocated 1.06 MAF for non-agricultural uses
from Gujarat’s share of 9 MAF water from the Narmada. Of this
1.06 MAF, 0.853 MAF has been set aside for drinking water purposes
and the rest (0.207 MAF) for industrial use. According to one study
(GWSSB, 1982) drinking water requirements are 227 litres/capita/
day (LPCD) for cities with a population of more than 1 million, 140
LPCD for other urban areas and 70 LPCD for rural areas. In the
same document the drought hit rural areas of Kutch and Saurashtra
are assigned only 55 LPCD. It is mentioned that areas with high
cattle density will be provided with 30L7cattle/day but then this
need is ignored while calculating the amount of water required! It
is worth remembering how the sad picture of thirsty cattle was
used in all the media as advertisement for the project's benefits.
The cost of supplying drinking water to an extensive area has
not been included in any cost-benefit analysis of the SSP to date.
17
This additional cost will make the financial feasibility of the project
very questionable (Ram 1993). The estimated cost of supplying
drinking water is 728 crores (1981-82) which is well over 1500
crores in current terms (GWSSB, 1982). The NCA (1991) report
however asserts that the cost "would run to several thousand crores".
While the GWSSB study considered 4719 villages in its cost
estimates, the current number of villages is estimated to be 8215.
The projected cost of supplying water to villages is 3-4 times that
of supplying water to urban areas. Thus the cost of supplying drinking
water may become incalculably high with the current increasing
claims and targets.
The GWSSB report (1982) displays a strong urban bias in
the supply of drinking water. In an area where the population is
approximately 70% rural, 63% of project beneficiaries are urban
dwellers. Cities are to receive 80% of the total quantity of drinking
water. Four major cities, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Rajkot and
Jamnagar accounted for over 40% of the water to be supplied by
SSP and Ahmedabad and Vadodara alone accounted for 25%.
Thus it is clear that the large urban centres in Gujarat are to be the
true beneficiaries of SSP (Ram, 1993).
The geographical spread of the beneficiaries (the area of
Kutch and Saurashtra alone is 109, 630 sq.km.) requires very large
pumping capacities, thousands of kilometres of pipeline construction
and maintenance, filtering and treatment plants and setting up of
extensive bureaucratic and technical infrastructure, all of which is
prohibitively expensive. According to the Central Ministry of Water
Resources and also the World Bank water will reach Kutch only in
the year 2025 and Saurashtra in 2020! Another aspect is the need
for large pumping facilities, all requiring electrical energy, due to the
widely dispersed and diverse terrain. As such, the SSP has run into
serious financial crisis and hence it is highly probable that drinking
water from SSP may never reach these areas.
Will the SSP produce the expected quantity of electrical
energy ?
The planned installed capacity of SSP is 1450 MW, of which
1200 MW will be generated by turbines installed in the riverbed
18
powerhouse (RBPH) and 250 MW from the canal head powerhouse
(CHPH). But actually power will never be produced at 1450 MW.
The RBPH will produce electricity only when there is enough water
in the river. As the canals for the SSP are completed, water
abstraction for irrigation will decrease water diverted to the RBPH
turbines. Thus the firm power generated by RBPH will drop from
415 MW to zero MW and the power from CHPH will increase from
24 MW to 50 MW. Thus the final firm power from the entire SSP
is only 50 MW, while at its highest, the firm power from SSP is 439
MW. However, the graduated release of water from the Narmada
Sagar Project upstream is essential for even this power generation
to occur.
It is now clear that the SSP will actually consume more energy
in Gujarat than will ever be produced for Gujarat by the dam. Power
from the SSP is to be divided amongst Madhya Pradesh,
Maharashtra and Gujarat in the ratio of 51:33:16. Gujarat's share of
the highest firm power production is 70.4 MW (16% of 439 MW)
which will only be obtained in the few years the canals are not
supposed to be in operation. Once the canals start functioning, the
SSP will require vast quantities of energy for lifting water in the
canals, operating the extensive tubewells etc. Supplying drinking
water to 8215 villages and 135 towns is going to require large
expenditure of energy for pumping and maintaining flows in very
long pipelines. None of these power costs have been included in
any cost-benefit analysis of the SSP. (Ram, 1993)
Is it really ever possible to successfully relocate and rehabilitate
such a large human population belonging to fragile, distinct,
diverse cultures ?
The SSP reservoir will directly destroy under submersion
37,000 ha. of land. Canals, weirs, dykes, colonies for project staff,
land to be protected immediately around the vicinity of the reservoir
to prevent siltation, and for compensatory afforestation, forest land
which will have to be developed into a Wildlife Sanctuary after
evicting the local resident tribal societies will all together result in
the displacement of more than 10 lakh people. A very significant
proportion of the population which will be displaced are tribal
19
societies. These tribal groups with very distinct cultural identities
cannot easily adapt to any means of survival and in any place other
than what they had been traditionally accustomed to. Our past
experience and the current trends leave no doubt as to the fact that
there is neither the political will nor the land or money even to
merely physically resettle them. In today’s cruel competitive world
we all know that once such fragile human societies so deep rooted
in their surroundings are uprooted they perish in no time. We can
forcefully relocate communities but we can only rarely rehabilitate
even individuals and never for sure human communities of such
complex dimension.
What is going to be the actual final cost ?
The almost certainty of the fact that in spite of the enormous
investment even a small fraction of the professed objectives cannot
be achieved becomes obvious to anyone. It is clear that economically
SSP in going to be a gigantic losing investment. According to the
World Bank’s current estimates the construction costs of SSP alone
will come upto about Rs. 34,000 crores. Independent estimates put
the figures as high as Rs. 44,000 crores. The drinking water supply
scheme linked up with the augmented water availability are not
included in this figure. After the withdrawal of the monetary assistance
from the World Bank and the Japanese government, even if all the
money earmarked in the Gujarat's Five Year Plan for irrigation and
electricity generation are diverted for SSP it will not be adequate to
complete the project. As it is, SSP spending is 53-63% behind
schedule and it consumes 80% of Gujarat’s irrigation budget. Only
about 10-20% of the total project costs has been spent so far and
hence it is wrong to conclude that the project is now a fait accompli
and cannot be reviewed.
Beginning of Organised People’s Resistance
Gradually over the last few years, individuals, many small
local groups and organisations such as the Narmada Bachao
Andolan (NBA) supported by scientists, technologists, economists,
social scientists and some politicians, along with global environmental
organisations have studied critically all aspects of the SSP and
20
generated a considerable amount of information which is adequate
to make any one of us take a stance against the project. Going
beyond opposing this project, the path of enquiry of this movement
is now leading to critically opposing the consumer culture, lifestyles
and goals of modern civilization, the inequality and injustice which
have become so much a part of the current world order and suggests
as an alternative vision for the future a life of simplicity, frugality,
tolerance based on biospherical justice. But the most potent issue
which has drawn attention to the project and precipitated public
resistance to it is the inhuman way in which the project affected
people are being dealt with. The SSP is at present a boon for a
handful of contractors, officials, and politicians. In future if completed
it may be profitable for a few more people. But from the very first
day of implementation of the project all through there is a growing
multitude of very ordinary poor people whose lives have come
crashing down.
Unparalleled Genocide
More than the ecological impact or the economic loss, the
Narmada issue concerns us personally directly through its planned
pogrom of the people of Narmada valley. It is ironic that Narmada
valley which is possibly the oldest centre of agricultural civilization
and what we consider the Indian culture is targeted for erasing
through drowning. For the average urban Indian it is really difficult
to conceive of the impact of the dam on the lives of lakhs of tribal
people who live totally dependent on the river and the forests around.
They venerate the river and the forests and they depend on both
for survival. The husbandry of their natural resource base had been
so efficient that they have remained self sufficient for so long without
destroying their life support systems. But the concept of sustainability
dawned on us only after ourown excessive exploitation had damaged
its very base. Using the machinery and the power of the State,
driving them out of their homes might succeed and its impact is not
as outstandingly patent as the concrete edifice of a dam. In fact in
our country the millions of human lives which have been rendered
destitute because of the various development projects have never
been calculated as part of the cost of development. The growing
slums in the cities and shanties along the roads and the rail tracks,
21
the beggars and the scrap collectors who eke out an existence in
the urban refuse piles all constitute a section of the society
earmarked for annihilation to make the lives of a small number of
people easier.
33,014 families will definitely be flooded out of their homes. Even
though the dam height is now 80.3 metres the basic surveys of
submergible area oustees have not been completed. Hence the
figure is expected to be even more.
In fact it is not possible to accurately estimate the magnitude
of the social disintegration and the cultural collapse directly due to
SSP. In the modern developmental jargon we have coined a new
term for these people whose existence suddenly collapses due to
some decision taken in some far away Yojana Bhavan. They are
called the ‘project affected people' further abbreviated to PAP. Truly
indicative of what is coming is the case of 800 families who were
uprooted in 1960 for the Kewadia colony of the SSP staff. They
have not been given even monetary compensation upto now.
According to procedures framed ostensibly to save public (!) money,
rehabilitation assistance is available only to those directly affected
by reservoir submersion.
In 1979 for the first time in India, the NWDT formulated a
National Rehabilitation Policy for the PAPs. The policy promises as
much land as lost due to submergence in addition to a plot for their
house, short term monetary grant, monetary compensation for
unmovable assets, grants for rehabilitation, infrastructural facilities
for the community, irrigation etc. Although all these conditionalities
had been laid down more than a decade ago, until now not even
a single family who have been dislocated has received them. This
gross injustice has been reported by several organisations like the
World Bank and even pro-dam organisations such as the “Arch
Vahini” demanding just rehabilitation.
Yet lakhs of families fall within the deadly reach of this mega
developmental project. The canals of this project alone are going
to cause the uprooting of 1,70,000 families. The Wildlife
Sanctuary which is going to be established as a window
dressing of environmental concerns will force the evacuation
of 108 villages. In the name of protecting the reservoir and for
compensatory afforestation, countless thousands will be forced
out of their hearths. Since below the dam there will no longer
be the river, the survival resources of many more will disappear.
There are no figures for the multitudes who currently eke out
an existence by fishing, or by grazing cattle in the forests or
collecting non-timber forest produce. The list is pretty long.
The lives of at least 10 lakh people will be drastically affected.
Yet according to governmental norms none of them have the
right for resettlement and rehabilitation (R & R).
Even if we are to leave aside such vague numbers and come
down to the formal PAPs definitive figures are surprisingly absent.
Each year since the first estimates of NWDT their numbers are
increasing. Tentative current official estimates,are that in Maharashtra
3500 families, in Gujarat 4500 families and in Madhya Pradesh
22
In the project affected areas of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra
and Gujarat, all that the government has done so far in the name
of resettlement and rehabilitation is essentially forcefully evicting
people, promising them neither monetary compensation nor
equivalent land. In Gujarat, for 924 families, relocated in 1981
belonging to 5 villages, all that the government did was to pay
compensation according to the Land Acquisition Act of 1894. These
tribal families relocated in very poor quality lands far from their
native places now live in utter misery. Even though these people
were not materially affluent or prosperous, they had dependable
social security in their tribal social order and clan relationships. And
of course they had the sustainable healthy survival knowledge to
meet all their material requirements from the forests and the river.
When such internally and externally integrated communities are
broken up and scattered in many places their collective cultural
fabric gets totally shredded. The functional order of individual villages
when broken up renders each family really destitute. In the new
ecologically impoverished surroundings, their survival knowledge,
art and craft, beliefs and traditions have utterly no relevance. -In
short, they have been condemned to slow dissolution and death.
But compared with what is happening currently, those were kinder
days. Now as the waters rise, as the construction activity gathers
23
momentum, hundreds of families are driven off their homes and
lands using the police. Either by design or due to the chaos, cattle
and other material assets are usurped from these innocent
disorganised people and they are dumped with nothing to fall back
upon in some remote degraded land.
When the pastoral people are not given land for grazing their
cattle, when the forest tribes are not given forests to depend upon,
when people who have lived since time immemorable secure in the
close bond of kinships and mutual dependence are scattered over
the winds, it is the modern development’s genocide. This puts to
shame marauding, plundering armies of the so-called less civilized
times. Hundreds of families from Vadgam, Khatlebi, Makadkheda
villages of Gujarat, the Manibeli village of Maharashtra and Chilkar,
Amlali, Khatarkheda, Debani, Chachgua villages of Madhya Pradesh
who were promised land and housing in rehabilitation centres, finding
that they have been exiled to wasted lands have abandoned the socalled resettlement areas and come back to the Narmada Valley.
Even the World Bank’s Morse Commission report (an institution not
famous for its stance in support of the poor people anywhere in the
world) has described democratic India’s governmental R & R in
explicit critical terms. This report categorically states that there is
no chance of real resettlement or rehabilitation for all the PAPs.
At the same time Gujarat government unheeding every plea
from the affected, recommendations from NGOs and eminent people,
Govt of India’s directives and even court orders continued with the
construction of the dam and closed the sluices which, coupled with
the copious monsoon rains, resulted in unexpectedly quick and
early impoundment of waters in the reservoir. Houses and fields of
between 1200-2000 families were inundated during the monsoon of
1994 and there was not even a symbolic move to rehabilitate them
anywhere. In pouring rain, as the waters were rising and swallowing
all that they had in their lives, people who had no recourse but to
cling on to whatever they have were driven away by brutal police
force. In a few locations there were a few tin sheds on slopes
above the rising water. What shelter they can afford to people who
have nothing else excepting what they are carrying in their hands
to rebuild their lives is a question which everyone of us, beneficiaries
24
and supporters of this development must ask ourselves. During the
monsoon of 1994, the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) activists
whc were working in the project affected areas and the people who
refused to be driven away from their homes were repeatedly subject
to police brutality and arrest. In the suddenly rising waters many
villages along the banks of Narmada which were not facing the
threat of submersion were completely cut off and the people
marooned. With no governmental machinery to help them in any
manner, humanitarian assistance to these man-made flood affected
people also became the responsibility of NBA.
This prompted the NBA activists and the flood dislocated
villagers to hold a public dharna in Church Gate in Bombay during
July 1994. Their plea was for just compensation to those whose
properties have been damaged by the waters and they were pleading
for a factual, honest reappraisal of the whole project. Although
Maharashtra Chief Minister Sharad Pawar invited Medha Patkar,
leading the dharna, along with activists and affected people for
discussion, he refused compensation outright. His condition was
that if NBA abandoned its opposition to the dam, the government
will consider rehabilitation. He also agreed to make available boats
to the isolated villages. The government also agreed to constitute
an independent fact finding team to visit and take stock of the
rehabilitation centres. In spite of all these peripheral concessions
and half hearted promises, the fact remains that the State, the
Judiciary, political parties and the intelligentsia in this huge country
have not taken upon themselves any responsibility nor shown any
concern for this enormous crime against nature and humans.
Recent reports on the progress made by the three States
on the issue of resettlement (NBA Press Release Oct. 1995) are
shocking. The work on the spill way portion of the dam was stopped
in Jan. 1995 due to lack of progress in resettlement. It is seen that
there is no worthwhile progress since January,1995 as the following
figures of progress in R&R in Gujarat (where by far maximum
rehabilitation has to be done) shows:25
Table 2.
Resettlement (land allotment) in Gujarat
Date
Gujarat
PAP's
Maharashtra
PAP’s
Madhya Pradesh
PAP's
Total
Dec.’94
4344
656
2535
7535
Aug.'95
4360
656
2548
7564
Between
Dec.’94 Aug.'95
16
0
13
29
(All figures from official documents)
Thus in the eight months since the work on the dam was
stopped, Gujarat has been able to resettle just 29 families. More
number of families have abandoned resettlement sites in the period
than that. These figures should be seen in the light of the fact that
Gujarat has yet to resettle atleast 12,110 families, even as out of
the over 41,200 reservoir affected families, an overwhelming 80%
families remain, yet to be resettled. Thus there is absolutely no
ground for resuming the construction on the SSP dam.
dispossessed was of appalling standards. Even after three years
they are still housed in tin sheds with no approach road and water
supply and even the Rs. 10,000/- for making house foundation have
not been given (VAK, 1994).
The chief obstacle to the process of resettlement (rehabilitation
being a far cry) is the non-availability of land in Gujarat where
maximum resettlement is planned. In a recent meeting the R&R
sub-group of the Narmada Control Authority - the inter-state
monitoring and control agency - decided that in future, Gujarat
authorities should provide land in contiguous chunks of 200 ha. or
more, so that more than 100 families can be resettled in one place.
This reflects one of the basic principles of community resettlement.
According to this decision almost all the present R& R sites in
Gujarat would be invalid. Obviously concerned governments do not
have the political will or sensitivity for proper rehabilitation.
Resignation of an important supporting NGO of Gujarat - Arch Vahinifrom the SSP Rehabilitation Agency supports this contention
(Himanshu Thakkar,1995).
The History of Suffering and the History of Resistance of
the people of Narmada Valley
Actually the story is much worse. If we look at the figures
of resettlement over the last 14 months we see that Gujarat
Government has been able to resettle only 94 families from the
three States. With greater number of area and people coming
under submergence with each additional increase in height of the
dam, the project authorities seem to be failing miserably in resettling
them. This only proves that sufficient land for resettlement of
thousands of families is just not available when 80% of reservoir
affected families are yet to be resettled. On Dec. 14th 1994, a
report by a 6 member all party team of MLAs from Madhya Pradesh,
™ SAroaLSa/°V*r Displaced Inquiry Committee stated that only
2 A of 33,014 families in the submergible area have been resettled.
The rehabilitation sites were water-logged, amenityless, barren,
waste and fallow land. More than 75% of the land allocated to the
Like all other developmental projects in the country, in the
case of Sardar Sarovar Project also, the people who are directly
affected by the project came to know about its impact much after
the work had begun to dam the river. The illiterate, marginalized,
disorganised farmers and tribals living in secluded villages scattered
across the hills and forests came to know of what was coming only
when the felling of forests and forced eviction started on the adamant
insistence of the then Gujarat Chief Minister, Chimanbhai Patel for
the speedy implementation of the project. When the massive felling
and uprooting caught the media attention, many national and
international organisations for the protection of nature, for the
protection of tribal societies and for human rights started raising
their voice against it. All over the world particularly in the less
developed nations, most of such massive development projects for
the exploitation of nature and traditional societies are funded by the
World Bank. World Bank was funding the Sardar Sarovar Project
26
27
also. Hence naturally the World Bank became the target of the anti
dam movement.
Here rather than the complex and poorly understood impact
of the gigantic project on the ecology of the area, its destructive
impact on the fragile tribal societies and the poor people of the
valley was highlighted. As the human rights violations mounted in
the valley, the issue became better known outside. The immorality
of uprooting and destroying traditional communities who have lived
in harmony with their milieu in an egalitarian healthy social order,
for the sake of ephemeral goals of the modern man and for what
is considered as progress came to be realized by more and more
people. We the people outside the valley who find our satisfaction
in crass materialism, priding ourselves in providing tin sheds as
rehabilitation for “those tribals’ whom we consider as having nothing
essentially reflect our inner poverty. The security given to countless
people by the living river Narmada and the happiness their self
reliant lifestyles had always provided them can never be equated
with the surroundings we recreate in the rehabilitation centres.
Uprooted from their motherland the tribal communities perish. But
this holds true for us too in a more broad ecological sense. Possibly
as mega development sweeps more and more of us also off to
destitution in its accelerating momentum, there is a growing
realization all over the world of what is really happening everywhere,
including in Narmada.
Perhaps it is this collective growing consciousness that
prompted even the World Bank to send to India in 1991 a two
member team to assess the rehabilitation aspect of the Sardar
Sarovar Project. Bradford Morse and Thomas Berger after visiting
most of the places affected by the SSP submitted their report which
came to be well known as the ‘Morse Report’. This report in no
uncertain terms, with factual accuracy severely criticises the
unpardonable failures of the State and Central governments in the
rehabilitation measures adopted for the project affected people of
the SSP. The Morse Report was the strongest weapon the activists
who opposed the dam could get. The renewed vigorous campaign
by the activists across the world and the Morse Report together
forced the World Bank to stop further funding for SSP. But the
28
I Gujarat government with its then Chief Minister Chimanbhai Patel,
as well as the Govt, of India simply refused any reassessment. The
State machinery brought all forces at its disposal to crush resistance
against the dam. As the country was sucked in deeper and deeper
into financial crisis, with the emphasis on projects like the SSP,
which were nothing but enormous drains of scarce public money,
not only all other developmental work slowed down, but the daily
lives of people also became a continuous misery.
Promises and offers to the people both affected by dislocation
and expecting benefits from the project have been continuing for
decades. But those detrimentally affected started losing all that they
have in the world as the waters started rising. The realization that
promises on the part of the government will not be kept, while
overnight their lives were turning upside down, forced the people to
organise themselves in the Narmada Valley. During the 1993
monsoon season confrontations between the PAPs and the
governmental machinery started. Those who have been promised
the life giving waters in distant Saurashtra and Kutch continue to
wait neither believing nor disbelieving the promises they have got
while the urban and industrial lobbies, land speculators and the rich
farmers closer to the dam and sure of early benefits mount their
pressure and lobbying for accelerating the construction of the dam.
The complex web of the construction lobby with its jonduits of bribe
and corruption with ramifications in both the administration and
political machinery remains the most vociferous proponents of mega
developmental projects everywhere in India.
The rest of the population are either indifferent supporters or
silent sufferers. No political party or national level political leaders
has so far dared to commit themselves on the side of the suffering
ordinary people. During June-July 1993 when Manibeli village in
Maharashtra became the first village to be totally submerged under
the SSP reservoir, the villagers along with NBA activists led by
Medha Patkar were forced to take the stance that rather than face
eviction they will drown themselves in the rising waters. They were
forced to take such a stance due to the indifference of our society
to the basic right for survival of its own weaker sections, in this
instance living in the valley of Narmada. Even such an ultimate
expression of non-violent commitment for the cause of survival was
29
■ met with unprecedented brutal police oppression. The broad public
support to NBA’s ‘Jalsamarpan’ agitation evoked a stalling response
from the Central Government which constituted an Independent
Review Committee under the chairmanship of the Planning
Commission Advisor Sri. Jayant Patil. The Committee had its public
hearing and invited opinion from any willing expert. Gujarat violently
opposed the Central Government's gesture and refused to co
operate. The report of this committee which was to have been
released in November 1993 got delayed indefinitely.
In spite of the fact that the Supreme Court had given a directive
against forced eviction of the PAPs and in spite of the fact that the
Central Ministries of Environment & Forests, Social Welfare and the
Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Commission had demanded
a total review of the project and the Narmada Water Dispute Tribunal,
Narmada Control Authority and the World Bank also recommended
total reviews, the Gujarat government disregarding all these
directives, recommendations and opinions continued the construction
of the dam submerging more and more forests and villages. The
unprecedented heavy monsoon during 1994 caused severe floods
in Narmada resulting in water level of the reservoir rising to
unexpected heights. This caused even more misery as many villages
which even according to the SSP authorities would not be affected
were submerged. As the suffering of the ordinary people increases,
their hope for justice from the State recedes. As the actual experience
of the so called rehabilitated trickle back to those who are yet to be
displaced, the resolve on the part of the latter not to accept
governmental rehabilitation increases. These people have no history
of organised resistance to the all powerful opponents like the State.
The spectrum of human societies directly affected by the dam are
non-homogeneous, afflicted by internal contradictions and conflicts.
Yet the support of the people for the NBA and the stance that "even
if one is to lose one’s life one shall not abandon one’s land" has
been unanimous and strong.
The life and death struggle in the Narmada
continues
Valley
The non-violent struggle in the Narmada Valley which started
as an agitation against the injustice of permanent submergence of
30
traditional lands and invaluable life support natural systems and
forceful eviction of thousands of villagers and indigenous peoples
has grown into a focal point of all struggles for the basic survival
rights inside the country.
Bhopal Dharna and Fast - 1994
Thousand of peasants and tribals under the leadership of
NBA converged in Bhopal for an indefinite dharna from the 18th
October, 1994 with the demand to stop the work on the dam and
also to provide minimum compensation and subsistence allowance
for the families who lost their houses and land during the 1994
monsoon. The submergence due to the dam in the monsoon was
devastating giving lie to all the estimates of the dam builders, and
the backwaters reached up to the plains of Nimad in Madhya
Pradesh. Any further construction of the dam would have brought
more disaster and destitution. The Government of Madhya Pradesh
was forced to take a firm stand in favour of stopping the work of the
dam at 80.3 metres. But the Government of Maharashtra continued
with cynical callousness towards its own people and supported the
Gujarat government's demand to raise the height of the dam to 110
metres till the monsoon of 1995. The work on the dam was
however halted due to several reasons including the strengthening
struggle in the valley, the lack of progress in the resettlement and
strangely also, because of a quirk of fate the entire stilling basin
and the bund protecting the underground riverbed powerhouse were
completely washed away during the heavy 1994 monsoon.
Independent experts have raised questions about the flaws in the
design, the structure, hasty construction and the geology of the
dam which have brought about this havoc within two years of
construction. The Academy for Mountain Environs in a geo-scientific
survey in April, 1995, had found that the area around SSP has a
fractured zone similar to that associated with the Latur earthquake
and the SSP cannot be considered safe.
The dharna in Bhopal was launched to stop the continued
construction of the dam up to a height of 80.3 metres. The Madhya
Pradesh Chief Minister was committed to stop the work of the dam,
although only after 80.3 metres and "raising it further after taking
stock of the resettlement" as he agreed during his several meetings
with NBA and in the meeting of Sardar Sarovar Construction
Advisory Committee on Oct.28th, 1994. This was despite the fact
that even those families, submerged during the monsoon of 1994
could not be resettled when the height of the lowest level block
wes 69 metres. In view of this cynical callousness on the part of the
government, the Andolan declared that four of the Satyagrahis’
including Medha Patkar would undertake an indefinite fast from
November, 21,1994 in Bhopal with the demand to stop the work on
the dam and to make the review report public.
The Review Report
i Ramchandra Singh Deo has recommended immediate stoppage of
; the work on the dam.
Manibeli Meeting
On the 30th April and 1st May '95, an important meeting of
NBA and supporters of the struggle was held in Manibeli. They
discussed the current situation and further course of action, especially
in the monsoon. The people of the valley who were facing
submergence for the third time were determined to fight for their
land and way of life to the last.
World Bank “Project Completion Report”
The fast went on for weeks with no response from the
authorities. However subsequently the Review Report was made
public. This long awaited report of the Independent Review
Committee (mentioned earlier) indicated that many studies, action
plans regarding the proposed benefits, hydrology, environmental
and rehabilitation aspects, are still incomplete. The report raised
questions regarding the government estimates of the water
availability in Narmada. The report criticised the proposal to grow
sugarcane in the SSP Command Area and made it clear that the
irrigation coverage proposed for Kutch and Saurashtra are limited.
The report strongly recommended a detailed planning for providing
drinking water and asked the Govt, to publish a full list of all the
villages and urban centres to be provided with the drinking water
benefits. On the issue of rehabilitation, the review observed that
efforts must be made to count all the various human, social costs
of the project so that the data base needed for planning is
comprehensive. But inspite of all these conditions, nothing has been
done.
The World Bank has recently come out with a Project
Completion Report (PCR) of SSP as the project had been closed
as far as the Bank was concerned. The 400 page unprecedentally
long PCR upheld all the aspects that plague the unjust project
virtually endorsing the Andolan’s stand in many aspects.
The monsoon of 1995 was mercifully weak and the people of
the valley stood firm in front of the rising waters, just as several
families returned to the valley from the rehabilitation sites and joined
the life and death struggle.
Narmada Nyaya Jagar Yatra
The most outstanding report about the tragic plight of those
rehabilitated PAP s have come from the earlier mentioned seven
member Sardar Sarovar Displaced Inquiry Committee of the Madhya
Pradesh Assembly. The Committee set up on 3rd December, 1994
chaired by the former Madhya Pradesh irrigation Minister,
Nearly 350 activists of NBA and other supporting organisations
led by Medha Patkar arrived in Delhi on 18th October, 1995
culminating their week long Nyaya Jagar Yatra. The activists had
started their journey from the Narmada Valley protesting against
the decision of the Gujarat Government to recommence the
construction of the SSP. The yatra also aimed at focussing public
attention on the plight of the people uprooted by SSP. The activists
stormed into the Shram Shakti Bhavan which houses the offices of
the Water Resources Ministry to present their demands. The plans
to raise the height of the dam from 80.3 to 85 metres which would
result in vast scale destruction and displacement, the move by
concerned State governments to give cash compensation to the
32
33
Singh Deo Committee Report
failure of our political process. Ironically but sadly in spite of the fact
that we have a free press, a socially committed intelligentsia, an
adequate number of unrestrained technical expertise and a basically
independent judiciary, we owe it to the World Bank’s so called
Morse Commission to bring out the shocking failure and disregard
for people on the part of the State. The environmental movement
in this country has had an adequately effective span of time to
develop the vision, the expertise and the machinery for an alternative
communications network. They should also have developed the
ability for mass mobilisation. But the absence of these highlights a
serious failure on the part of the people’s machinery.
oustees who had abandoned the uninhabitable land given to them
and the status of the displaced people who have returned to the
valley were some of the major issues raised by the activists to the
officials.
Final hearing in the Supreme Court on the comprehensive
case
The NBA had filed a comprehensive case to the Supreme
Court in July, 1995 raising several questions regarding displacement,
environmental and seismic impacts and economic feasibility of SSP.
The final hearing in the Supreme Court startd on the 28th Nov.
1995. The court had earlier allotted 5 days for hearing the case, the
first two for NBA, third and fourth for Union of India and the concerned
states and final day for clarifications. But as all arguments had not
been heard in six days, the court adjourned till Jan 24th, '96. Although
the Govt, of India and Govt, of Gujarat made a fervent plea for
allowing the construction to take the height to 90 mts, this was flatly
refused by the court. However, the court said that they had not
stopped the R&R activites which the government could continue.
They also called upon the NBA to co-operate in this process. The
court is likely to give some interim orders after it finishes hearing
NBA’s rejoinder on Jan 24. The broader issues raised by NBA
including the oustees challenging the public purpose of the project
remain to be heard, which the court will hear after Jan 24th
(NBA Personal Communication, 12th Dec. ’95).
In the years to come, more and more supportive evidence
will accumulate for the people’s case against SSP. Similar stories
will be reconstructed about the past mega developmental projects
in this country. We are also rapidly becoming the most populous
and the most impoverished country in the world. As we become
more and more unable to take care of ourselves the people may
decide to dissociate themselves from the race after the mirage we
currently call progress as promised to us. Then perhaps we can
return to an ideology of survival, social justice, equal collective
responsibility and holistic harmony.
The real nature and cost of the so called development has
been largely neglected by national media for long. There has been
a high power costly advertisement campaign aimed at confusing
the general public outside the area. Yet as the people's resistance
in the valley continues it has caught the attention of many thinking
people in this country and abroad. Our country has been basically
a tolerant open society where the problems of our poor were sought
to be considered national problems to be solved and not to be
masked or erased through annihilation. Yet the anti-people policy
behind mega developmental concepts such as SSP which affects
directly, adversely such an extensive area and the lives of so many
people have not been questioned so far. This indicates a major
35
34
I
References
GWSSB (1982) Study on water demand for non-agricultural use from
Narmada Project - Gujarat Water Supply and Sewage Board, Gandhinagar.
Joseph, K.P. (1995) Irrigation Department - a byword for scandals - Indian
Express (Cochin) 1st Sept. 1995
Morse, B. and T.R. Berger (1992) Sardar Sarovar. The Report of the
Independant Review, Resource Futures International Inc., Ottawa
NBA (1992-1995) Narmada Samachar, Press releases, Urgent action
bulletins etc.
NCA (1991) Drinking water from Sardar Sarovar Project, Narmada Control
Authority, Indore.
NCA (1992) Benefits to Saurashtra and Kutch areas in Gujarat, Narmada
Control Authority, Indore.
ORG (1982) Regionalisation of Narmada Command, Operations Research
Group, Gandhinagar.
Ram, Rahul R. (1993) Muddy Waters. A critical assessment of the benefits
of the Sardar Sarovar Project, Kapavriksh, New Delhi. Aug. 1993.
Thakkar, Himanshu (1995) Damned Despair. Down to Earth, Dec. 15th,
1995.
Vidyanathan, A. (1989) Critical issues facing Indian Irrigation. Ooty
Workshop 1989.
V.A.K. (1994) Facts against Myths. Vikas Adhyayan Kendra.
Vohra (1987) The Management of Natural Resourses, INTACH,
Environmental Series No. 4
Vohra (1995) Irrigation Potential. Silence over huge loss. Indian Express
(Cochin) 8th Sept. 1995.
The Loss As Seen By One Who Pays
With the poignancy of a winter sunset the 20th century is
drawing to a close. For millennia the long slow changes have been
moulding continents and cultures. But now at this critical juncture
in the history of life all previous order seems to be in the throes of
some basic change. Change with a bang or a whimper it is difficult
to distinguish. In one sense we are all being uprooted and
dispossessed from our biological antecedents. This view can be
considered as originating from the nebulous realm of fanciful fiction.
Or it can be considered a projected scientific hypothesis. But really
murderous misappropriations and deprivations are happening all
around us in the name of conflicting ideologies, in the competition
between races, religions and lifestyles; It may all be justified as for
the improvement of a few, for whom it is tangible development. But
all this is at the cost of faceless multitudes who are less assertive
of their privileges and rights. Narmada yet again brings into sharp
focus the whole injustice inherent in the thinking of modern man
and epitomised in the concept of Big Dams.
As the flood waters pile up behind the rapidly rising Sardar
Sarovar dam, it is becoming obvious that it is a race to riches for
a few. These few have now the identity, not only of all the haves
but also the support of the State, the might of the powerful nation
and the tacit approval of all the victors of the world. Promises of
prosperity for downstream urbanites, industrialists and rich farmers
in the command areas where water will reach soon are made
again and again. And of course the contractors and politicians who
are the intermediaries of this development also stand to benefit
immensely. But for a large faceless mass, it is a rapid slide to
oblivion. In abstract printed figures on the statistics of ‘Project
Affected Peoples', in the governmental rehabilitation project
documents and in land acquisition, compensation proceedings, they
are made to appear well taken care of. The entire operation seems
to be presented as clean, clinical and unanimously acceptable. But
the real situation is beyond description nor can it be really conveyed.
It can only be suffered first hand. Or if one has the sensitivity to
realize the same insult and injury being meted out to oneself more
subtly by some other developmental process, it is easier to share
the feeling.
36
37
The feelings of those so called tribals and poor farmers in the
sumergible area or of those displaced from outside the submergible
area for various dam associated developments cannot be put down
in words. It is overnight pauperization. It is total cultural disintegration.
It is the negation of the very right and freedom of the ordinary
people to live.
Even in the midst of utmost deprivation and poverty people
have kept alive a hopeful vision of life. Kept alive in the soul of the
people which helps them survive and retain the most cherished
values and dreams. This has made human species so different
from all other life forms. But when that vision fades a living being
suddenly becomes will-less and soulless. The body may putrify fast
or may wither and turn into dust more slowly. That is exactly what
is happening to Bava Mahalia and his kinfolk in the Narmada valley.
This appeal or reaching out is from the depth of a living human
being who sees the fading of that vision in oneself.
Transcript of Letter Dictated in Bhilali by Bava Mahalia of
Jalsindhi Village, Alirajpur Tehsil, District Jhabua, addressed
to the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh
Shri Digvijay Singhji,
We, the people of Jalsindhi village, Tehsil Alirajpur, district of
Jhabua, are writing this letter to you, the Chief Minister of Madhya
Pradesh.
We are people of the river bank; we live on the banks of the
great Narmada. This year, our village Jalsindhi will be the first
village in Madhya Pradesh to be submerged by the Sardar Sarovar
dam. Along with us, four or five other villages - Sakarja, Kakarsila,
Akadia and others - will also be drowned. We were supposed to be
flooded during the monsoon this year, but now that the Gujarat
government is already closing the sluices, we will probably be
submerged in the summer itself. For such a long while you have
been hearing that, in Manibeli in Maharashtra and in Vadgam in
Gujarat, people have been ready to drown themselves. We the first
to face submergence due to Sardar Sarovar in Madhya Pradesh,
will also give up our lives, but we will not move from our villages.
When the water comes into our village, when our homes and fields
are flooded, we will also drown - this is our firm resolve.
We are writing this letter to let you know why the adivasi
peasants of Jalsindhi, who are coming under submergence are
preparing to drown themselves.
You, and all those who live in cities, think that we who live
in the hills are poor and backward, like apes. ‘Go to the plains of
Gujarat. Your condition will improve. You will develop’ - this is what
you advise us. But we have been fighting for eight years - we have
borne lathi blows, been to jail several times, in Anjanvara village
the police even came and fired on us and destroyed our homes. But
our people have, with the slogan we will die but not move, stayed
firmly in their places. Why ? The government has been offering
money as well as beating us up to oust us. Then why are we
refusing to move and resisting the might of the State ? If it is true
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39
that our situation will improve in Gujarat, then why aren t all of us
even now ready to go there?
To you officials and people of the town, our land looks hilly
and inhospitable, but we are very satisfied with living in this area
on the bank of the Narmada with our lands and forests. We have
lived here for generations. On this land did our ancestors clear the'
forest, worship gods, improve the soil, domesticate animals and
settle villages. It is that very land that we till now.
You think we are poor. We are not poor. We have constructed
our own houses where we live. We are farmers. Our agriculture
prospers here. We earn by tilling the earth. Even with only the
rains, we live by what we grow. Mother corn feeds us. We have
some titled land and some nevad (forest fields). On that we grow
bajra, jowar, maize, baadi, batti, saanvi, kudri, chana, moth, urdi,
sesame and groundnut. We have many different kinds of crops. We
keep varying them and eating.
What grows in Gujarat? Wheat and winter jowar, tuvar and
some cotton. Less to eat, more to sell. We cultivate in order to eat;
we sell only the excess for buying clothes etc. Whether the price
in the market be high or low, we get food to eat.
We grow so many different kinds of food, but all from our
own effort. We have no use for money. We use our own seeds,
manure from our own livestock - from that we get good crops.
Where will we get so much money ? Who will know us there ?
Which money lender will give us money ? If we don't get a good
crop and don’t have any money, then we will have to mortgage our
land.
Here we bring water to our fields by making channels from
streams and nullahs and carrying it for kilometres. In other fields we
cultivate only in the monsoons. If the soil stays moist then, in
winter, .we sow chana and wheat. If we have electricity, then we
could also pump up water from the Narmada and get a winter crop.
But even though forty-fifty years have passed since independence,
there is no electricity in the villages along the river, nor is there river
irrigation.
40
This is regarding our cultivation. But we are people of the
hills and of the river. All through the year - in winter and in summerwe have flowing water and good fodder in the forest. We don’t live
as much by farming as we do by our livestock. We keep hens,
goats, cows and buffaloes. Some have 2-4 buffaloes, some have 810. Almost everyone has ten-twenty-forty goats. And there's no
counting the hens. Not only do we keep our own livestock, we tend
the cattle of our relatives as well as of distant people. From Gujarat
people come to our hills to graze their cattle. Our fodder and water
is so plentiful. By selling our livestock and their milk and ghee, each
household earns three-four thousand rupees a year; some earn up
to 8-10 thousand. If we face a sudden crisis and need money
urgently, we go to the market and sell a goat and promptly get 56 hundred rupees. What we get by selling tuvar, groundnut and
sesame, we get more than that from our livestock. Many people
from Jhabua district have to go to Surat and Navsari as labourers
to feed themselves in the summer. We people of the river bank
never go to work as wage labourers.
The State is taking us to Gujarat and giving us land, but it is
not giving us grazing land. It is very hard to get fodder there - there
are no leaves or grass. People keep only a pair of bullocks. They
feed them on the margins of the fields or give them jowar stalks.
If our bullock dies now, our cows will give us calves. But how can
we keep cows there ? We would have to buy a new bullock. If we
don't have money, we'd have to hire bullocks from the patidars and
give them a share of our crop. We’d become labourers on our own
land.
We have lived in the forest for generations. The forest is our
moneylender and banker. In hard times we go to the forest. We
build our houses from its wood - from teak and bamboo. From
ningodi and hiyali splints we weave screens. From the forests we
make baskets and cots, ploughs and hoes, and many other useful
things. In the hills and the forest we get fodder which sustains our
livestock. We get various kinds of grasses; and when the grasses
become dry in summer, we still get leaves.
We also eat leaves from the forest, hegva, muhka.'amli,
goindi, bhanjan - all these leaves we eat. If there is a famine we
41
survive by eating roots and tubers. When we fall sick, our medicine
men bring us back to health by giving us leaves, roots, bark from
the forest. We collect and sell gum, tendu leaves, bahera, chironji
and mahua. This forest is like our mother; we have grown up in its
lap. We know how to live by suckling at its breast. We know the
name of each and every tree, shrub and herb; we know its uses.
If we were made to live in a land without forests, then all this
learning that we have cherished over the generations will be useless
and slowly we will forget it all.
After the forest, how can we live in the plains or in cities ?
We have not seen electricity. But we have made our own light by
bringing wood from the forest. Our women cook roti and rabdi on
a wood fire. In Gujarat they cook with dung cakes or with jowar
stalks in chulhas. It is hard to find fuel to cook with there. Here we
have so much that we call the forest our quilt. Its wood gives us fuel
to cook with, light to see by and we sleep in its warmth on winter
nights. If the forest nurtures us, we too protectit. During the monsoon,
when the grass crops is knee-high, we worship neelpi. Till then we
don't cut grass with our sickles, nor do we make sheaves of grass.
We don't cut the young leaves of teak either.
Such is our life in the lap of the forest and in the belly of the
river Narmada. We worship our gods by singing the gayana - the
song of the river. We sing the gayana during the navai and divasa
festivals, describing how the world was made, how humans were
born, from where the great river came. The Narmada gives joy to
those who live in her belly. She has many kinds of fish in her belly
- khari, moyni, lagan, tukun, tumen, and tepro are just a few of
them. We eat fish often. Fish is our standby when we have
unexpected guests. The river brings us silt from upstream which Is
deposited on the banks so that we can grow maize and jowar in the
winter, as well as many kinds of melons. Our children play on the
river’s banks, swim and bathe there. Our cattle drink there all through
the year for the big river never dries up. In the belly of the river, we
live contented lives. We have lived here for generation after
generation; do we have a right to the mighty river Narmada and to
our forests or don't we ? Do you government people recognize that
right or not?
You city people live in separate houses. You ignore each
other's joys and sadness. We live with our clan, our relatives, our
kin. All of us pool together our labour and construct a house in a
single day, weed our fields, and perform any small or big task as
it comes along. In Gujarat who will come to lend us a hand and
make our work lighter? Will the big Patidars come to weed our
fields or to construct our houses ? In our weddings and funerals,
everyone contributes to the brideprice or the funeral costs. If there
is a quarrel then the elders of other villages sit as panch to break
the quarrel. If we are uprooted from here, then how will we arrange
for our weddings and funerals, who will come to settle our quarrels?
Here, if we are out of seeds or if our bullock dies then everyone all our relatives - help us out. In Gujarat, if there is no rain one year,
if our seeds finish or if our bullock dies, then who will give us
another bullock or some seeds? Our daughters’ and sisters'
husbands’ villages are close by here; our wives natal homes are
also near. When we go away from here, then we will nevet get to
meet our relatives. They will be dead to us. The women of our
village threaten us, “We are willing to leave our husbands; we can
always find other men. But we can't get other parents; so we will
never leave this place. In Gujarat, if any sorrow or evil befalls us,
to whom can be go to tell of our troubles? You are not going to give
us the bus fare and send us back, are you?”
Here in our villages, from our villagers, why do we get so
much support? It is because we are all alike here; we share a
common understanding. Only a few are tenants; everybody owns
land. No one has a lot of land, but everyone has a little bit. When
we go to Gujarat, the big landowners - Bania and Patidar - will
crush us. As early as forty-fifty years ago, they took awhy the land
of the adivasis who used to live there. Even now they are doing
this. And we strangers - we don't know the language or the customs;
it is their rule. If we can't do the kind of farming that needs a lot of
money, then we'd have to mortgage our land to them, and slowly
they would take it over. If they took away the land of the adivasis
who lived there, then why won't they take away ours? Then who will
give us other land? This is the land of our forefathers. We have a
right to it. If this is lost, then we will only get spades and pickaxes,
nothing else.
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43
IVe were bom in this village. Our umbilical cords are buried
here - it is as if we sprang from this earth. Our village gods are all
here. Our ancestors’ memorial stones are all here. W/e worship
Kalo Rano, Raja Panto, Indi Raja. We also worship Aai Khada and
Khedu Bai. Our great devi is Rani Kajal. Her and Kumbai and
Kundu Rano’s mountain is in Mathvad. If we leave all of them, then
where will we get new gods from? People come from all over to
celebrate our festivals - indal, divasa and divali. For bhangoria, all
of us go to the market where our youth choose their own spouses.
Who will come to us in Gujarat?
You tell us to take land in Gujarat. You say that our leaders
are inciting us, and that we should not be swayed by them. So we
are not being swayed by them. We are being swayed by our land,
our forest, our river and our livestock. They are what is leading us
astray.
You tell us to take land in Gujarat. You tell us to take
compensation. What is the state compensating us for ? For our
land, for our fields, for the trees along our fields. But we don’t live
only by this. Are you going to compensate us for our forest? In the
forest we have teak, bamboo, umbar, tendu, salai, mahua, anjan,
palash and many more. What will be compensation for this ? Or are
you going to compensate us for our great river - for her fish, her
water, for the vegetables that grow along her banks, for the joy of
living beside her ? What is the price of this ? Our livestock and the
fodder - water that is essential for it - are you going to compensate
us for that ? How are you compensating us for our fields either we didn t buy this land; our forefathers, cleared it and settled here.
What price this land ? Our gods, the support of those who are our
kin - what price do you have for these ? Our adivasi life - what price
do you put on it ?
You tell us to go to Gujarat, that our situation will improve
there. There will be schools and our children will get educated.
There will be roads and travel will be easy. There will be electricity
and if we fall sick, there will be doctors. We also say that we want
all these things. But we want them in our own villages. Our women
have to start grinding corn at the break of dawn. If we get electricity,
we can get flour from the mill. If we get handpumps, we won't have
44
to drink river water in the monsoons. If we have a school, our
children can get educated too. If we have electricity then we can
take water from the river and get a winter crop as well. But why
don’t you give us motors for irrigation, electricity and schools in our
old villages. Forty-five years have passed since independence why haven't you given us these things till now ? Why do we have
to go to Gujarat to get these things ? Our relatives from other
villages spent all the year labouring in Surat and Navsari. Why don’t
their children get an education there? Do they get electricity there?
They have to build tall buildings and themselves sleep on the
roadside. This is becoming the state of adivasis everywhere. The
government doesn’t ask us, consult us; you sit in Bhopal-DelhiAhmedabad and decide our life and death. Do you think that we
adivasi peasants are not human too ?
We have been fighting against displacement, but even those
people who have agreed to move have been forcibly settled in
Gujarat. Till today, you have not shown even an inch of land in
Madhya Pradesh. You tell us that the policy here is not as good as
Gujarat's. Are we the residents of Madhya Pradesh or of Gujarat?
We understand that you will consider and decide this matter
in your own way. >4s you are the new Chief Minister, we have put
this entire matter before you. We have also reached our collective
decision. For the first time in Madhya Pradesh, land will be flooded,
our village will be drowned. All of us adivasi people are going to
drown in Jalsindhi village.
The land in Gujarat is not acceptable to us. Your compensation
is not acceptable to us. We were born from the belly of the Narmada,
we are not afraid to die in her lap. You will just keep watching - now
Gujarat has shut the sluices; in the summer before the monsoons
our village will be filled with water and we will drown in that water.
We will drown but we will not move I
- Bava Mahalia
1QQA
45
‘I praise you, O Narmada,
You who have come from the heavens
to reslove the troubles of the world,
Just your presence brings us salvation’
Narmada Puran
DAMS
PROPOSED
ANO
NARMADA
THE
fX IS T IN G
B A S IN
Text
: S. Santhi
Editing
: S. Sathis Chandran Nair
Illustration
: Benny K.A.
Typeset and layout
: PageMakers, Y.M.C.A. Road, Tnvandrum - 1.
Pnnted at
: Navakerala Offset, Trivandrum -13. Ph : 341522
Revised reprint
: December, 1995
Published by INTACH (Natural Heritage) Southern Regional Office,
'Deepa', A-49, Elankom Gardens, Thiruvananthapuram - 695 010, Kerala.
Acknowledgement : This publication is made possible by financial support from
the Friedrich Nauman Foundation.
The outstanding characteristic ability of life is response. The
responses need not always be rational or logical. Yet so long as there is
life there will be a response to stimuli. Populations of animals and human
beings also respond collectively. Such codified responses are an important
aspect of culture. Perhaps the most stirring, poignant responses are evoked
when the very foundations of culture and life are threatened. For millions
of people across the length and breadth of India this is what is happening
right now. This is the soul stirring poignancy of movements by the Bhopal
gas affected people, the Narmada oustees, the tribal people displaced by
military firing ranges etc. Development, the direction, the process and the
proceeds of which none of these people have any say are bulldozing them
to oblivion. Their common resources are taken'away, plundered, their
cultural identity and their social cohersion are torn to shreds. They then
can no longer respond. They are easy prey for the rapacious consumers
after cheap human energy and lives.
All this is in the name of progress and prosperity for some. True.
But who are those beneficiaries we realize only too late. As development
becomes more sophisticated those who profit by it become fewer and
fewer, even though the quantum of profit for each may be big. Yet
collectively humankind has not asked itself two basic questions. The first
is regarding the intrinsic injustice of this developmental model towards the
weak, the poor, the marginalised, the ill-equipped, the micro-cultures, the
old, the women and so on. The same injustice extends to the rest of the
living world and to nature in general. We must ask ourselves how injustice
can be corrected through changing the very model of development. The
second question is regarding the sustainability of the monetary prosperity
and the material progress attained through the current development. If the
profits and achievements attained by even those few are not long lasting
what is the real balance sheet of profits and losses. This question will also
lead us to change the basic concept of development.
The Narmada valley development, both the story of the dams
completed in the past and the ongoing Sardar Sarovar Project bring into
sharp focus the terribly costly myth of modern development. At the cost
of countless precious lives, it provides us yet again an opportunity to reset
our goals.
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