DEVELOPMENT-INDIA: New Phase of Anti-Narmada Dam Campaign After Court Defeat

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Oct 19 2000 (IPS) - Following the biggest set-back to their 15-year-old campaign, activists opposing the giant Sardar Sarovar dam are preparing to resume their people’s battle against ‘destructive development’ in the central Indian Narmada Valley.

After hearing both sides for the last six years, India’s Supreme Court Wednesday finally rejected a petition by the anti-dam ‘Narmada Bachao Andolan’ (NBA), and allowed resumption of work on the dam, which was stopped five years ago by the apex court’s order.

A majority ruling by a three-judge panel said the 85 metre-high dam wall could be raised immediately to 90 metres. The court said it was satisfied with relief and rehabilitation efforts for those to be affected by the four billion-U.S. dollar dam on the Narmada river in western coastal Gujarat state.

The judges allowed the dam wall to be raised to its full height of 138 metres in stages, after satisfying environmental and resettlement conditions.

The sole dissenting judge wanted construction stopped until a series of measures outlined by him, were implemented by project authorities.

The court ruling caused much jubilation in Gujarat where state Chief Minister Keshubahi Patel declared Thursday as ‘victory day’ and a half-day holiday for government employees.

India’s main ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is also in office in Gujarat, described the court ruling as a “Diwali gift” to the people of the state, ahead of the Oct. 27 main Hindu festival of lights.

“Those who have been creating hurdles to the project should stop politicising the issue further,” said senior BJP leader Narendra Modi.

However, anti-dam campaigners say they are disappointed, but not disheartened. Medha Patkar, the legendary NBA leader, said she planned to “fight to the end”.

“Law has a place in democracy, a limited place,” she told reporters. “This is a legal judgement. I will wait for a human judgement,” she said.

A statement issued by the NBA declared that the campaign would “fight this injustice at the hands of the judiciary tooth and nail.”

Anti-dam activists say the court did not fully consider their serious complaints against the project. These related to incomplete studies on the various costs and benefits of the dam, non-fulfilment of environmental and other conditions.

The World Bank pulled out of the Sardar Sarovar scheme seven years ago when project authorities expressed inability to meet bank norms for environmental and social rehabilitation.

“It (the court) has refused to go into the issues of legal, constitutional violations by the dam builders which were reflected in the dissenting judgement,” said the NBA.

The NBA is a coalition of people’s groups, which began as a campaign against big dams in the Narmada Valley. The Sardar Sarovar is to be the first of 30 big and hundreds of medium and small dams planned on the Narmada, which flows westward across central India into the Arabian Sea.

However, the movement has since widened its protest to target what it calls India’s ‘destructive development’ schemes like the Sardar Sarovar. These have social and economic costs that outweigh the claimed benefits, says the NBA.

The anti-dam campaign has urged India’s President K.R. Narayanan to intervene. “It is time that the President of India should intervene to protect the rights of the tribals which is his constitutional obligation,” read the NBA statement.

The NBA’s argument is backed by the finding of a survey of large dams in India, which was commissioned by the World Commission on Dams. The study found that the hundreds of big dams built in India in the past half century have boosted national food and industrial production but at a cost paid by the poorest.

According to the report, nearly two-thirds of the people displaced by multi-purpose river valley projects in India are either tribals or members of the socially oppressed ‘scheduled castes’ who have the lowest incomes among the country’s poor.

“There seems no justification for the imposition of costs on millions of innocent tribals and other rural people who lose even the little they have in order to benefit those who already have more than them,” the report said.

It estimates that on average, each big dam in the country has submerged nearly 5,000 hectares of forest. In the last 20 years, big dams are estimated to have swallowed up some 9.1 million hectares of India’s forests.

According to the NBA, when completed, the Sardar Sarovar will submerge nearly 40,000 hectares of land, but still fail to get water to the arid Kutch and Saurashtra regions of Gujarat as promised by the government. An acute water scarcity in the two regions drove hundreds of thousands of peasants out of their homes this summer.

“We are confident of supplying potable water in north Gujarat by June next year and will begin construction on 70,00 kilometers of a canal network as soon as possible,” said Gujarat’s minister for the Narmada Project, Jaynarayan Vyas.

Vyas said the government had already spent 2.5 billion dollars on the Sardar Sarovar and would spend an equal amount on it over the next two years to ensure its completion.

According to Vyas, the dam will produce 1,450 MW of electricity and allow farmers in the region to harvest three crops a year instead of one as at present.

Madhya Pradesh is to get 57 percent of the power generated, while the adjoining western Maharashtra state and Gujarat would get 27 and 16 percent respectively.

Among the staunchest critics of the project is famed Indian writer Arundhati Roy, who donated to the anti-dam campaign, the prize money from the British ‘Booker Prize’ for her book ‘The God of Small Things’.

Roy was earlier pulled up by the Supreme Court for her “objectionable writings” on the project and for “misinforming the public”.

DEVELOPMENT-INDIA: New Phase of Anti-Narmada Dam Campaign After Court Defeat

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Oct 19 2000 (IPS) - Following the biggest set-back to their 15-year-old campaign, activists opposing the giant Sardar Sarovar dam are preparing to resume their people’s battle against ‘destructive development’ in the central Indian Narmada Valley.
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