RIGHTS-INDIA: German Govt. Report Backs Anti-dam Activists

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Aug 17 2000 (IPS) - A German government report on a central Indian multi-purpose river scheme has backed the stand of anti-dam activists that the project seriously violates human rights.

According to the report, based on an investigation in June commissioned by the German government’s Development Ministry, thousands of peasants, affected by the 400 megawatt Maheshwar dam project in central Madhya Pradesh state, were misinformed of their rights.

The report was released here last month by the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), which is campaigning against large dams across the Narmada Valley.

Maheshwar is one of the 30 large and 135 medium-size dams to be built on the Narmada river that flows westward across central India into the Arabian Sea. These include the mammoth Sardar Sarovar Dam, under construction downstream in western coastal Gujarat state.

The German government sent a three-man team to the area to make a first hand assessment of rehabilitation and resettlement of the project affected people.

The team included Richard E. Bissell, executive director at the United States National Research Council, Indian environmental expert, Shekhar Singh and Herman Warth, environmental consultant to the European Union.

In its report, the team notes that the affected people were misinformed of their rights and compelled to accept cash compensations rather than alternate land. In some cases, stones were dumped on their land to get them to agree.

Moreover, the cash compensation was too meagre to buy farming land elsewhere. Many of those who accepted it, were in distress having lost their means of livelihood, says the report.

“There is no reason why Indian citizens being displaced by a private sector project should be discriminated against to the benefit of the private investor,” the report observes.

Being built by ‘S. Kumars’, a leading Indian textile manufacturing firm, the Maheshwar dam is India’s first hydroelectricity project to be built by the private sector.

Neither the federal government nor the Madhya Pradesh state government have commented on the report.

The project has attracted foreign funding. The largest foreign investment was to be by the German Hypovereinsbank, which was to have provided a 130 million U.S. dollar loan for power equipment from the German company, Siemens.

Last year, the NBA began a campaign to head off the loan. More than 100 villagers affected by the project staged a protest outside the German embassy in New Delhi in November 1999. This was the first time that popular protests against the project moved outside Madhya Pradesh.

The NBA argued that the German government could not give Siemens an export guarantee because German laws forbid funding of agencies and projects that involve rights violation.

According to the German government report, project authorities recognise only major sons in an affected family as eligible for resettlement and rehabilitation. Daughters are not entitled to any compensation.

The report describes this as “discrimination against women”, noting that other development projects in India that involve displacement of people, give equal rights to women.

According to NBA estimates, some 40,000 peasants in the fertile cotton farming area, will be displaced by the dam. The electricity produced would cost four to five times more than what state-run utilities charge, claims the NBA. The dam is also said to have no irrigation potential.

The project was originally meant to get more than three-fourths of its funds from abroad. But several foreign investors, including the U.S-based Bechtel Enterprises, Pac Gen, Oregon Utility, Pacfic Corporation and the Netherlands bank ABN-Amro, subsequently backed off.

Other German investors, like VEW Energie and Bayernwerk, withdrew in April last year, mainly as a result of the sustained NBA campaign.

A broad coalition of 120 non-government organisations (NGOs) supports the NBA’s campaign in Germany. Prominent among these is Urgewald, which undertook its own study of the project two years ago.

“What we found was total lack of credible resettlement planning, a shocking disregard for the truth in project documents and systematic violations of the rights of affected people,” said Heffa Schucking of Urgewald after visiting 10 of the villages to be affected by the dam.

“If a cost-benefit analysis were based on the true costs of replacing assets and livelihoods of these communities, it is our firm conviction that this project cannot be considered economically viable,” she said.

The NBA is also trying to dissuade the U.S. power utility, Ogden Energy from picking up 49 percent equity in the project, under an agreement signed during U.S. President Bill Clinton’s visit to India in March.

Ogden Energy is expected to take a decision after meetings with NBA activists late August.