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dam-l LS: AR Interview in 'The Week'
from www.the-week.com
Aug 1, 1999
I went to Narmada and became a mad molecule floating around
Interview: Arundhati Roy
By V. Radhika
As a student of architecture, she challenged her teachers on the norms of
architectural thesis they set for final-year students. They wanted students
to draw designs, she wanted to submit a written thesis. She won. Arundhati
Roy's thesis was on manipulation of a city's space by city planners. Years
and a Booker Award later, the process of questioning continues through her
writing.
If her essay 'The End of Imagination' was a passionate denunciation of
India's nuclear tests, her recent damning of the Sardar Sarovar project is
a journey through the havoc wrought by big dams. The essay has once again
turned the spotlight on the Narmada issue. Amid hectic travelling schedules
to save Narmada, Arundhati Roy spoke to The Week in defence of the small.
Excerpts:
Was it after the Supreme Court vacated the stay on raising the dam
height that you delved into the Narmada issue?
Like most people I assumed that the stay was because they were reviewing
the project. I always knew that Narmada valley was the faultline.
Initially I only wanted to help the Narmada movement financially, then I
realised that it was an easy way out. I knew I had to be able to defend my
position and I needed to know everything about it before I made that move.
When I started reading I could not believe what was going on. I realised
that the stay was only on the central portion of the dam till
rehabilitation was carried out.
Everybody knows for 50 years there has been no rehabilitation, 40 million
people have been displaced by big dams, but India does not have a National
Rehabilitation Policy.
If people are rehabilitated properly then big dams are not an issue?
What is a big dam? It is not just a big dam, it is big politics.
India is the third largest dam builder but 85 per cent of rural households
do not have electricity; 200 million tonnes foodgrains are produced, never
mind only 12 per cent of it is due to irrigation. What big dams do is, it
sequesters all resources, then it says, 'we will decide'. So it is not just
a physical structure, it is a political monument to this kind of
development.
It is nonsensical to say 'suppose rehabilitation is okay'. How can
it be okay if you have 3,200 dams being built on a river when for 15 years
you have not rehabilitated half-a-dam older people? It's like saying,
'supposing we manage to build housing colonies on the moon would you
believe in big dams?' That myth has to be exploded.
Proponents of big dams argue that only they can fulfil the
large-scale requirement for power and irrigation? You are saying we need
electricity for so many people, so we have big dams, but still 85 per cent
people do not have electricity. What I am saying is you have to produce
that locally for those local areas. Of course, you have to cater to the
cities, but if you carry on doing it in this centralised way the connection
between city and village is torn and there will be complete breakdown of
systems eventually.
Why are these alternative patterns unpopular?
These alternatives cannot be national alternatives unless the
establishment realises that what they are doing is not an alternative and
is not acceptable. Otherwise they will go on gobbling at the edges of our
own society, the peripheral people will be gobbled up and spat out.
It is not about economics, it is about power. If you say I am taking
the river away from half a million here and giving it to 40 million there
the same account should mean I am taking over the bank accounts of Tata,
Birla, Roy and all of them and distributing them to people who do not have
money. It does not work out. They will never do it. Power is not just what
you take, but what you give. If you want to wish it away and do not want to
look at it, you will never understand.
How much difference has your entry made to the movement?
Hopefully by writing this the light is shining on them (decision
makers). They can't take a decision in the dark. They have to take
responsibility openly on what they are doing. Whatever they are doing they
have to answer to whoever is questioning them, people are equipped to
question. Whether they agree or not is not the issue. The point is that
people are equipped. That is the main thing as a writer.
How many people will turn up at the rally and what impact will it have?
I do not know, and it does not matter even if it is 10 people to go
to the valley. You have an opportunity to speak directly to Maharwa,
Loharwa and others. I want B.G. Verghese to speak to them. Let them look
him in the eye and say, "Sorry boss, this is the price you have to pay."
It is not an emotional thing. I just think people must be aware of
the trade-off. Even if you want to make that trade-off, watch it. Have the
guts to see the price that is being paid. That is what I want to say. The
Sardar Sarovar in particular. Yes they have spent Rs 7,500 crore, but they
need to spend another Rs 35,000. They have only submerged one-fourth of the
submergence area. It could still be saved. Whether it is saved or not is
not up to me, it is for everybody else to join because I feel it is the
faultline that separates the rich from the poor.
The point is in the 90s we need intellectual rigour. That is why I
am not interested in thousands of people coming for the rally, because
those thousands go for any rally. If you have 50 people who really
understand the issue, those 50 become real warriors. I went there and
became a mad molecule floating around. Getting in touch with what is
happening there will give you strength. The connection needs to be rewoven.
A charge against the NBA is that they only criticise and do not
offer a constructive alternative and the ones they suggest like small dams,
water harvesting, etc. cannot work. When you are saying that 40 million
people have been driven from their homes, is that only criticising?
It is like someone saying, Oh, these people are only criticising the
holocaust, they are not suggesting an alternative to it!
After all the most creative thing that you can do is to stop
destruction. There is no question of your ever saying we have to look at
the rate of consumption, no that is not to be questioned in the right form.
When we suggested alternatives, like what is happening in Alwar, two dry
rivers were rejuvenated. Now they have taken all industries from Delhi and
dumped them there. They are digging tube wells, this is almost deliberately
destroying something.
It is a mindset when they say small dams are not an alternative. Not
an alternative to what? Not an alternative to holding on to your power.
They are an alternative when you try to be truly democratic, which you
don't have the courage to be. You don't want that, you want to break people.
What is it that you are essentially questioning? The politics of
inequity?
It is the politics of inequity, but more and more it is also the
politics of the small. I don't feel that at the end of the century there
has been a proven political ideology that is going to be the bandage
solution to the world. So what I am saying is to solve specific problems in
specific ways. So Sardar Sarovar has a problem, stop it. Be specific about
issues. That is the only way.