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Thanks for small mercies

Many inhabitants of Delhi and Bombay would have witnessed the recent demonstrations by adivasis who are fighting a last-ditch battle against the Sardar Sarovar dam across the Narmada, led by their intrepid leaders, Medha Patkar and Baba Amte.

Seeing the bedraggled state of the protesters, many observers may have imagined that theirs was a fight that was doomed: little Davids against the Goliath of the state, backed by very powerful commercial and industrial interests. And yet, the very fact that the construction of the dam has been intermittently put on hold since it began a dozen years ago speaks volumes of the success of this people's movement.

It is no exaggeration to say that the struggle has altered the national policy in relation to big dams -- particularly the rehabilitation of those displaced -- and to a certain extent, has also influenced the international debate on these projects. Medha Patkar, incidentally, is also a Commissioner of the World Commission on Dams, which met in Colombo a few weeks ago.

The immediate provocation for the long yatra which the anti-dam activists embarked upon, starting in Gujarat, and passing through Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra en route to the capital, was the Supreme Court's ruling earlier this year, permitting the Gujarat government to raise the height of the dam by five metres.

While the state government has understandably construed this as a victory, which ends the four-year-old interim stay on construction ordered by the same court, the Narmada Bachao Andolan points out that the benefits of irrigation and power will only flow once the dams reaches a height of around 110 metres, out of its final height of 138 metres.

What the permission to raise the height to roughly 85 metres now will do is to inundate more areas, once the river rises in the monsoons, and force the villagers to flee. On the issue of rehabilitation alone, the Sardar Sarovar authorities stand faulted. Despite their best efforts, including offers to let those ousted from their land identify their own alternative sites which the state government would buy, they have not been able to find such land.

It is common knowledge that it is almost possible for the dam builders to provide land which is of the same quality as that vacated. This "land-for-land" policy, comprising both quantity and quality, has now come to be accepted in cases where there is massive displacement by a big dam, thanks in part to pressure from the World Bank which was lending money for the project till the Andolan forced it to have a change of heart and mind. Some of the villagers from Manibeli, the first area to be flooded as the river rose during the monsoons after construction of the dam began, have still not been resettled, along with people from other villages.

Interestingly enough, the anti-Narmada dam movement has received support from an unexpected source - the Madhya Pradesh government. This is the state which will be worst affected by flooding, and stands to gain very little from the project. Digvijay Singh, who has incidentally been acclaimed for being one of the country's few `green' chief ministers and has made good progress in reforesting catchments and launching water missions in dry zones, has gone on record stating that the original Narmada tribunal award is no longer valid because the flow of water in the Narmada has been substantially reduced over the years.

At the start of the project, the river had a flow of 28.5 million acre feet, but it has now been reduced by 6 million acre feet. He argues that there is thus no need to raise the dam to its scheduled height of 138 metres, since the volume of water no longer warrants it; it can be raised to just 116 metres.

His detractors believe that he is trying to evade bearing the state's share of the costs of the project, which come to Rs 500 crore, and also to save the nearly 200 villages in Madhya Pradesh from being submerged. However, MP's political leaders are only too well aware that they do not have the funds to bear the cost of a dam from which they will receive minimal benefits but will pay a heavy price in terms of the numbers of villages displaced.

Indeed, this ought to be a good provocation to re-examine the validity of tribunal awards in river water disputes between states in the light of fresh hydrological and economic evidence. While politicians in Gujarat assert that the Narmada award is sacrosanct and cannot be challenged till its validity runs out in 2025, there is surely need to look at this issue afresh. If countries can redefine their borders, there is no reason why these awards cannot be reopened either.

The question of the total costs of the Sardar Sarovar project refuses to die down. When work began 13 years ago, the 138-metre-high dam at Kevadia was to have cost some Rs 6,400 crore, along with a 485-km-long canal and 66,000-km-long distribution system. By the early 'nineties, this cost had almost doubled and now officials believe that they will require another Rs 14,000 crore, taking the total to Rs 20,000 crore.

After the World Bank pulled out of the project, the authorities have been trying to tap the resources of non-resident Gujaratis, among others, to raise funds for the mammoth scheme. However, it is still not clear how they will be able to return such a huge amount of money and meet the regular payments of interest on it. There is every likelihood of the state being strapped for funds for all other projects; many believe that this single scheme will take the state to the edge of bankruptcy.

It seems fairly evident that there are powerful agro-industrial interests behind the project: the same lobbies present in the oilseeds trade, for instance, who are a power to reckon with even on a nation-wide scale. These are the cash crop-rich groups who will benefit from the irrigation that Sardar Sarovar will bring. They will reinforce their strength from this form of development, which is highly concentrated and not at all egalitarian.

As for the water-starved regions of Saurashtra and Kutch, in whose name the project was originally sanctioned, their residents should not expect to receive any supplies from the project, because the bulk of the water will be siphoned off much before it reaches these western areas.

At this late stage in the controversy, it is out of the question to call off the project, considering that some Rs14,000 crore or more has already been sunk into it. The best alternative would be, as Digvijay Singh himself suggests, to halt the dam at 116 metres and thereby reduce the submergence, even as this reduces the area irrigated and power generated.

At the same time, all those who have been pushed out of their homes in the name of `development' ought to be properly rehabilitated and in principle, there ought to be no further displacement till the earlier `refugees' are resettled. There is also need to look at a wide spectrum of alternative methods of harvesting rain water and providing energy -- not necessarily electricity -- to people. As things are, drought-prone states like Gujarat and Rajasthan have been resorting to these methods for centuries, but they are falling into disuse under the mistaken impression that they are outdated.

If one thing is clear, it is the hard environmental fact that water and energy are becoming ever more scarce with each passing year, and no amount of capital-intensive and centralised schemes like Sardar Sarovar will provide benefits to thousands of people in remote rural areas.

Darryl D'Monte