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dam-l LS: SSP Team Recalled/ Report and Commentary on "Harnessing Rivers" Meeting
This email contains the following articles from The Hindu:
1) Sardar Sarovar Project: Maneka team abruptly recalled, 4/24/99
2) Harnessing Rivers part 1, 4/27/99
3) Harnessing Rivers part 2, 4/28/99
Sardar Sarovar Project: Maneka team abruptly recalled
Date: 24-04-1999
By Gargi Parsai, The Hindu
NEW DELHI, APRIL 23. The three-member team of officials set up by Union
Welfare Minister, Ms. Maneka Gandhi, to assess the rehabilitation and
resettlement of people displaced by the Sardar Sarovar Project, was
abruptly recalled after it visited parts of Jhabua, Dhar and Khargone
districts, where the displacement will be maximum.
After taking a stand to have the affected sites inspected by the team of
joint secretaries drawn from the Welfare and Rural Development Ministries,
Ms. Maneka Gandhi, backed out. Attempts by The Hindu to talk to her on the
issue, were futile. The team was constituted following a massive dharna by
oustees from the three riparian States outside Shastri Bhavan led by the
Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) on April 8. The team comprised three joint
secretaries. Mr B.S. Parsheera and Mr Dharmendra Deo are from the Ministry
of Welfare and Mr P.S. Rana is from Ministry of Rural Development.
Interestingly, the team flew to Indore on April 10. It visited parts of
Jhabua, Dhar and Khargone and returned the next day. Speaking to The Hindu,
Mr Rana confirmed that the team had visited some sites, but he declined to
elaborate further.
It is understood that the team was recalled after the Prime Minister, Mr
Atal Behari Vajpayee, apparently prodded by the Gujarat Government, said
that a Rehabilitation Grievance Committee had been set up in Gujarat (for
Gujarat only) which had to give its report.
(The Committee has since submitted its report in the Supreme Court, which
is hearing a petition filed by the Narmada Bachao Andolan seeking stoppage
of construction till a full review of cost-benefit analysis and
rehabilitation and resettlement is done. The Court has recently in an
interim order permitted raising the height of the dam to 85 metres.)
The position stated by States in the court is contrary to ground reality
and needed to be verified, which is why Ms. Maneka Gandhi had set up the
three-member team, as her Ministry has to oversee rehabilitation and
resettlement of oustees.
But more misleading than Gujarat and Maharashtra, is the ``double-speak''
by the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Mr Digvijay Singh, who seems to be
following the policy of running with the hare and hunting with the hound.
At one time he says he doesn't have the land to rehabilitate thousands of
people who will be displaced by the SSP and several medium and minor dams
to be constructed on Narmada and that he was willing to forego some power
benefit to reduce displacement of people. Then his Government brutally
lathicharges a peaceful demonstration of the NBA at Bargi/Maheshwar.
Last fortnight, the Digvijay Government filed a separate suit in the
Supreme Court seeking ``status quo'' on the height of the Sardar Sarovar
dam to prevent massive displacement. Yet, yesterday in Bhopal, his
administration unleashed police repression and outraged the modesty of
tribal women demonstrators seeking rehabilitation.
To top it all, earlier this week the Chief Minister himself visited the
Magsaysay Award winner, Baba Amte, here in New Delhi and avowed that he
will fight tooth and nail the raising of the height of dam. But that is
what political double-speak is all about.
************************
'Harnessing' rivers part 1
4/27/99
By Kalpana Sharma, The Hindu
THANKS TO chaos in Delhi over the formation of a government, all other
issues that the country ought to address seemed to have been put on the
back burner. One more massacre takes place in Bihar but it is hardly
noticed. Villagers opposing the privately- constructed Maheshwar dam in
Madhya Pradesh go on a hunger- strike, their demonstration is brutally
broken up by the police but hardly anyone notices. The dilemmas of
development are thus, yet again, buried in the high drama of politics.
Yet, whatever the shape of the next government, these are issues that will
have to be addressed. Do we do anything about continuing Dalit massacres in
Bihar and blatant discrimination elsewhere? How do we deal justly and
equitably with displacement when dams, roads, power plants and other
infrastructure projects are planned? Should the affected communities have a
say in such decisions? These are not academic questions. They govern the
lives of millions of people. Yet, they figure nowhere on the ``national''
agenda.
Some of these deeper philosophical questions on how we view and use the
natural resources came up at a recent meeting in Kathmandu convened jointly
by the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), New Delhi, the Bangladesh Unnayan
Parishad (BUP), Dhaka, and the Institute for Integrated Development Studies
(IIDS), Kathmandu. Discussions centred on arriving at a consensus on
``harnessing'' the eastern rivers for the benefit of the entire region.
More than one person asked whether ``harnessing'' was an appropriate
concept in thinking about a natural resource such as river. The debate over
``taming'' or harnessing rivers, as one would harness a horse, has raged
for many years. The question how best to control the turbulence of swollen
rivers, for instance, has never been properly concluded.
The solution suggested by many who live in flood-prone areas like north
Bihar is to leave the river alone and instead prepare themselves for the
annual flood. These people argue that in the past floods did some damage
but also a great deal of good. The silt they deposited on the land added
greatly to its fertility. Within a few weeks of the flood, the land would
be ready for cultivation. Today, thanks to embankments, rivers have no
natural way to discharge silt. It builds up, raises the level of riverbeds
and forces the river to break through any weak spot on the embankment. The
force of this flood destroys everything in its wake. There are no benefits.
Worse still, the water does not recede for months, sometimes years, as the
embankments destroy the natural drainage of the land.
By virtue of its being at the tail-end of all major rivers flowing through
this region, Bangladesh has to suffer devastating floods during monsoon and
shortages during the dry season. The differences with India over sharing of
the Ganga waters after the construction of the Farakka barrage are now
legion. Despite the 1996 treaty between the two countries, the problems are
by no means over as this writer saw firsthand during a visit to that
country.
For one, there is the practical problem of implementing a lean season
sharing formula. An intricate system of measuring and checking has been put
in place. But ultimately the successful implementation of the treaty
depends on trust. At the moment, the ruling party in Bangladesh is for the
treaty. A change of government could result in reopening of all issues on
water sharing.
The dominant belief in Bangladesh, echoed by politicians, technocrats and
even the media is that the overall quantity of water in the Ganga is less
today than in previous years because of excessive use by India upstream.
Thus, Bangladesh has been pushing for ways to ``augment'' the river waters,
a concept unique to the subcontinent.
Whether augmentation is needed and whether it will make a difference or not
are still issues being debated. But central to any future strategy is
Nepal's role. Many of the rivers which are in floods annually and bring
with them huge loads of silt, like the Kosi which enters India in north
Bihar, flow through Nepal. It is argued that a high dam on such a river
could help regulate flows during the peak and low seasons.
Although on paper this might sound a straightforward proposition, it is not
so simple. Why, for instance, should Nepal agree to build large storage
reservoirs unless it gets some benefits? While it could sell the excess
power generated by such projects, is it worth the price it will pay in
terms of environmental costs? Equally relevant is the destabilising impact
of large projects, attracting large funds, in a poor economy. Several of
the projects recommended will cost many times more than Nepal's annual
budget. For a country struggling to establish a democratic system and
already heavily dependent on donor-money, such additional funds could prove
disastrous.
Apart from the pros and cons of ``augmentation'', the original proposition
- that flows in the Ganga are declining - is taken as a given. According to
Mr. M. Ramaswamy Iyer, former Water Resources Secretary and now with CPR,
although the quantum of water fluctuates seasonally, the overall quantity
has not declined significantly. He argues that what is needed are not high
dams and canals to feed more water into the Ganga during the lean season
but a wiser use of the water.
Interestingly, one of the papers presented, which was a consensus document
among the three institutes, also mentions this as one of three ways to
augment supply. One way is to divert water without creating a storage and
use barrages and canals, the second is a major surface water storage
through dams and a third, ``indirect form'', is ``through efficient
management strategy emphasising conservation. This strategy might include
conservation and management measures like water rationing, improved
distribution of the available supplies, increased efficiency of water use,
rain harvesting, prevention of water pollution, recycling and appropriate
pricing policy.''
Although this has been presented as a third alternative - which is
mentioned but not seriously addressed as the rest of the paper concentrates
on the second option of building dams - it ought to be the first. For this
is a strategy that all the three countries could implement right away
regardless of the areas of cooperation.
However, the argument against making this option priority is always
``time''. For instance, Mr. B. G. Verghese, who has written extensively on
water-related issues, emphasises that ``time is of the essence'' and that
there is no room for debates that delay decisions on harnessing water
resources for irrigation and power in all the three countries. Delay leads
to escalation of cost. For instance, although the Mahakali Treaty between
India and Nepal was signed in 1996, no progress has been made on building
the Pancheswar Dam, thereby leading to a 20 per cent escalation in cost.
Regarding environmental costs, Mr. Verghese holds that there is no such
thing as a ``pristine'' forest in this region which has to be saved as much
of the vegetation is secondary. Thus, these considerations should not
colour the importance of projects which would provide long-term benefits.
Mr. Iyer, on the other hand, projects a different view. He says that
proponents of large projects hold that all their negative implications
could be foreseen. But experience has shown that this is not true. They
also assume that these problems can be remedied or compensated. This too
has not happened in most recent projects in India. He says that the
alternatives are generally dismissed even without being given a chance. He
suggests that big projects are pushed because it is easier for a
technocratic bureaucracy to build one large dam than to manage and regulate
several smaller projects.
************************
'Harnessing' rivers part 2
Date: 28-04-1999
By Kalpana Sharma, The Hindu
THE DEBATE over how best to use the hydro resources of India, Bangladesh
and Nepal for their common benefit throws up important issues that have to
be resolved internally by each nation. However, the fascination with large
multi-purpose projects to deal with the needs of power, irrigation and
flood control continues to dominate the discourse - both official and
unofficial - within these countries and among them.
Take the issue of floods and the role storage dams can play in controlling
them. There are 6,000 big and small rivers in Nepal which then feed into
the major river systems and finally merge with the Ganga. These are
snow-fed rivers which also bring with them a heavy load of silt. Sometimes,
a cloudburst can result in an enormous quantity of silt in just one day as
a mountainside collapses into the river. Thus, it is difficult to plan
engineering interventions without accommodating these imponderables.
During monsoon, these rivers affect the low-level areas in Nepal and north
Bihar. The increase in the water level in the Ganga ultimately takes its
toll on Bangladesh. The two worst floods were witnessed in 1988 and last
year when 60 per cent of the country was submerged.
The engineering approach is to create reservoirs that can store monsoon
water and control the rate at which it is released. A second approach is to
build embankments to prevent the river spilling over its banks. A third is
to create channels to improve the flow of the river and the fourth is to
improve the drainage. All these are solutions based on the belief that the
river can and should be controlled. The problem with the first option, as
even engineers acknowledge, is that it is difficult to justify a high dam
just for flood control. If its purpose is to serve the needs of irrigation
and power, these two requirements are likely to be placed on a higher
priority than flood control. A majority of the multi-purpose dam projects
in India are outside the Himalayan Ganga system.
The belief that embankments ``protect'' vulnerable areas from floods has
repeatedly been proved wrong. Bangladesh has 8,300 km of embankments which
are breached at several points every year. According to a joint paper
prepared by the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), the Bangladesh Unnayan
Parishad (BUP) and the Institute for Integrated Development Studies (IIDS),
embankments in India and Bangladesh have ``inadvertently added severe
problems like drainage congestion'' because they cut off the natural
drainage. The drainage sluices which are provided cannot function when the
water levels are high.
According to the paper, ``Some persons in the `protected areas' claim that
while nature's floods last only for a few days, `man- made' floods last for
months, if at all they drain out.'' The paper concludes that embankments
will be satisfactory ``only in suitable locations if properly designed,
well-executed and adequately maintained.'' This conclusion, however, hides
the reality that there are few ``suitable locations'' for embankments and
that the design, execution and maintenance do not detract from the fact
that they cause more damage than good.
In the Eastern Kosi Embankment area of north Bihar, for instance, an
estimated 1,82,000 hectares is permanently waterlogged. On the western
side, an estimated 94,000 hectares is under water throughout the year and
of this 34,000 hectares cannot be saved. All the drainage schemes so far
have failed. Thus, concludes Mr. Dinesh Kumar Mishra of the Barh Mukti
Andolan in north Bihar (in an article in the South Asian monthly Himal
January 1999), ``the only solution is to do away with the embankments and
allow the river to go ahead with its natural land-building process.''
An unlikely, though strong, supporter of Mr. Mishra's position is Bihar's
Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Ramachandra Khan, whose family was
uprooted after the 1986 floods in the Kosi. In an interview to Himal, he
terms the Kosi flood-control project not just a failure but ``devastation,
disaster, catastrophe.'' The plan, he says, has failed and only resulted in
greater corruption. Indeed, the irony in Bihar is that while the
embankments lengthened from 160 km in 1954 to 3,454 km in 1988, the
flood-prone area did not decrease. Instead, it increased from 2.5 million
hectares in 1954 to 6.46 million hectares in 1988.
Mr. Mishra has long argued that even the British did not embark on a policy
of building embankments because they thought that it was unwise. But the
independent Indian Government decided to undertake an engineering solution,
thereby increasing the sufferings of people in north Bihar many times over.
People were deluded into believing that the embankments would become more
effective once a high dam was built on the Kosi. The negotiations between
India and Nepal on the 290-metre Kosi High Dam remain inconclusive although
in the meantime a barrage has been constructed on the border. It is not
clear whether the dam, if built, will actually reduce the damage from
floods in north Bihar.
The high dam solution also does not accommodate the real costs of
displacement and the dangers of building such structures in a geologically
unstable region. The tendency of those recommending a one-time solution for
all ills is to gloss over these problems while emphasising the benefits of
the economies of scale. But the costs of not realising that certain things
do not have a simple technological fix have to be borne by ordinary people,
such as poor farmers living in north Bihar, and not by the technocrats
pushing these ``solutions''.
Given the dismal record of embankments as an effective tool for flood
control in both India and Bangladesh, it remains a mystery why independent
research organisations in both countries still consider these a solution.
In fact, much more practical and feasible is the ``non-structural''
approach suggested in one of the papers prepared jointly by three
institutes.
At the moment, despite apparent improvements in the technology, the
apparatus for giving Bangladesh adequate advance flood warning is not in
place. Bangladesh's river authorities point out that a flood-warning system
could help reduce some of the problems as even a few hours of advance
warning enabled people to be prepared.Indeed, the agreed position as
articulated in the joint paper includes, apart from flood forecasting and
warning services, flood plain management measures, disaster relief, flood
fighting including public health measures and flood insurance.
These are areas in which, without too much controversy, India and
Bangladesh can share data and experience and develop joint strategies. This
will not cost too much, will not take too much time, and it could make a
real difference in terms of the annual devastation caused by floods,
particularly in Bangladesh.
The effort by the institutes to arrive at a ``consensus'' on ``harnessing''
water resources has tended to hide the value of alternatives. Thus, the
easily agreed upon strategies of building large projects are projected as
solutions while hidden in the text are viable alternatives that are not
given equal weightage.
This is a pity. For although there is a great deal that can be gained by
all the countries in the region through cooperation and dialogue,
approaches to the use of resources have to be developed internally based on
an honest assessment of the lessons of the past - including the cost of
pursuing capital-intensive strategies instead of low-cost alternatives -
and a realistic assessment of the needs of the future.