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dam-l LS: Omvedt Discussion Part 4/6 - Ashish Kothari Response
>>AN OPEN RESPONSE TO GAIL OMVEDT'S 'OPEN LETTER TO ARUNDHATI ROY' (continued)
>>BY ASHISH KOTHARI
>>proposed projects like Suvarnarekha and Koel-Karo). Our conclusion: in
>>today's context, and at least for the foreseeable future, big dams are
>>ecologically unviable and socially unjustified. And there are real
>>alternatives.
>>
>>This response is already getting too long, so let me be brief. Big dams
>>almost always mean either big displacement of people, and/or big
>>submergence of forests or other natural ecosystems. The Narmada projects
>>involve both. In theory, one can resettle and rehabilitate people, and
>>perhaps with the kind of mobilisation that Ms. Omvedt talks of as having
>>happened in the Krishna Valley, this theory can be translated into practice
>>for a few thousand people. But for 200,000 or 300,000 people? Where is the
>>land for resettlement? Ms. Omvedt would say in the command area --- take it
>>from the farmers getting irrigation --- but again, this may be politically
>>feasible for a few hundred, perhaps a few thousand, but for a few lakhs?
>>Does anyone really think that so much land is available, or will be
>>possible to obtain? And in the Narmada situation, one is talking of
>>displacing people in Maharashtra and M.P., and giving them lands in the
>>command area in Gujarat, where there is already an incredibly high amount
>>of hostility to 'outsiders'. Can anyone predict the kinds of social and
>>political tensions that may erupt, indeed, have already come up in some of
>>the resettlement sites? Ms. Omvedt may perhaps know of the horrible
>>incident in the Taloda, Maharashtra, when an adivasi woman already resident
>>in the area, and defending her customary rights to land that was earmarked
>>for the SSP oustees, was shot dead by police? Add to this the tens of
>>thousands of farmers affected by the SSP canals (not even considered
>>Project Affected Persons!), in Gujarat itself, and this seems an ideal
>>recipe for social disaster. Such recipes are brewing in most areas where
>>large-scale displacement is proposed.
>>
>>Ms. Omvedt herself advocates a stand of "first the rehabilitation, then the
>>dam". As I am sure she is aware, NBA itself took this position in its early
>>years, and only when it was convinced that just rehabilitation of so many
>>people was simply not possible, and that there were other critical question
>>marks on the viability of the SSP, did it take a "no-dam" position.
>>
>>The question of viability becomes even more serious when we bring in the
>>environmental angle. Curiously, Ms. Omvedt has not dealt with this at all,
>>except the passing remark that Koyna dam "did not submerge significant
>>areas of forest". I have looked carefully at the environmental record of
>>big dams, and it is not pretty. EVEN IF A LARGE DAM CAN BE MADE TO WORK, AS
>>MS. OMVEDT SAYS, IN A "DECENTRALISED" MANNER AS FAR AS ITS SOCIAL AND
>>POLITICAL FUNCTIONING GOES, THERE IS NO WAY IT CAN BE ENVIRONMENTALLY
>>DECENTRALISED. It inevitably means a large-scale disruption of the river
>>system, with inevitable large-scale impacts upstream, downstream, and at
>>the river mouth. Experience worldwide, as in India, suggests that there is
>>precious little humans can do to reverse the negative impacts. In India, we
>>have already lost 1.5 million hectares of forests and countless other lands
>>and wetlands to dams (no-one can replace a natural forest once submerged),
>>we have endangered several species of fish and mammals by drowning their
>>homes or blocking their migration (no-one can recreate a species once
>>gone), and we have increased salt-water ingress along the coastline as the
>>outflow of river-borne freshwater has decreased. Contrary to popular
>>engineering perception, rivers do not go waste into the sea, they perform
>>critical functions of keeping sea-water at bay (literally!), enriching fish
>>spawning grounds with nutrients, and a dozen other functions which we only
>>imperfectly understand. I have not yet come across a single convincing
>>argument that such impacts can be effectively countered. Large dams are, in
>>this sense, a classic reflection of humanity's hubris, one that makes us
>>believe that we can 'tame' nature. And considering that the most advanced
>>country as far as hubris is concerned, the USA, has recently started
>>decommissioning dams (actually breaking them down), it may be worthwhile
>>for us to pause and take stock. (For a more detailed expose of the
>>environmental impacts of the SSP, pl. see the Kalpavriksh booklet
>>"Environmental Aspects of the Sardar Sarovar Project. For a detailed report
>>of the decommissioning of dams, see The Asian Ecologist, special issue on
>>large dams, September-October 1998.
>>
>>There are those who say that environmental impacts can be mitigated. Here's
>>India's record in this respect. As part of the Government of India's
>>Committee on Environmental Evaluation of River Valley Projects, we examined
>>the fulfilment of environmental conditions under which 300 large dams were
>>given clearance since 1980. In an astounding 89% of these dams, the
>>conditions were being violated….and yet construction had not been halted.
>>IN OTHER WORDS, THE VAST MAJORITY OF DAMS IN INDIA HAVE BEEN BUILT NOT JUST
>>IN WAYS THAT ARE NOT ENVIRONMENTALLY COMPATIBLE, BUT IN VIOLATION OF THE
>>LAWS OF THE LAND! This is scandal of epic proportions, one which would put
>>Bofors and the like to shame. In most cases, compensatory afforestation has
>>not been done, R&R is severely deficient, wildlife corridors have not been
>>restituted, catchment areas left to erode, and so on and on. Anyone who
>>says that big dams can be made ecologically viable (since Ms. Omvedt has
>>not dealt with this issue, I don't know if she believes this or not) is
>>living in a fool's paradise.
>>
>>Actually, Ms. Omvedt has not really put many substantial arguments in
>>favour of large dams, except to say that they are necessary for
>>low-rainfall areas. This is also the main emotive argument behind Sardar
>>Sarovar…that it will dispel the desperately drought-prone situation in
>>Kutch and Saurashtra. Will SSP actually do this, and are there no other
>>alternative ways of reaching water to dry areas? The answer to the former
>>is a firm NO…SSP's own official documents reveal that only 10% of Kutch and
>>Saurashtra will actually receive the canal water according to current
>>plans, and that too after another TWO DECADES! Getting additional areas
>>water by lifting it from the canals will require several thousand crores of
>>rupees more, none of which are budgeted for in the current cost-benefit
>>analysis of the dam. The real beneficiaries of SSP are not these areas, but
>>rather central Gujarat, where a big farmers' lobby has been extremely
>>influential in pushing for the early completion of the project. Why?
>>Possibly because they want to switch to sugarcane production, extremely
>>lucrative but requiring much more water. I won't get into whether they are
>>justified in this demand or not, but at least let us dispel the notion that
>>the project is going to eradicate drought from Gujarat's north and
>>north-western areas. Central Gujarat's farmers will simply hijack much of
>>the water well before it can reach Kutch and Saurashtra…and all the
>>sophisticated computerised network of irrigation channels thaT the SSP
>>authorities are promising, will come to naught. (For a more detailed
>>critique of this, pl. see Kalpavriksh's booklet "Muddy Waters").
>>
>>So is there an alternative? When NBA and others argue for decentralised
>>water harvesting structures in Kutch and Saurashtra, are they playing a
>>"cruel joke" on the people of these regions? I will not venture to state
>>with any finality that such an alternative is indeed possible for these
>>areas, as I am not very familiar with them. But I do know of another
>>region, also desperately dry, where indeed decentralised water harvesting
>>has been the answer. This is in Alwar district of Rajasthan, in a region of
>>at least two hundred villages with an average rainfall of about 600 mm.
>>Over this region, johads and bandhs built by local villagers with NGO and
>>some government help have transformed a "dark" (severely deficient in
>>groundwater) zone into a "white" one (surplus in groundwater). Some 3000
>>small water harvesting structures have achieved this transformation, in the
>>space of a little over a decade. Along with this has come major
>>mobilisation of the villagers on issues of forest conservation (one of the
>>villages, Bhaonta-Kolyala, has the country's first "public wildlife
>>sanctuary"), sustainable agricultural development, common property
>>management, etc. No external canal water is involved. If this is possible
>>here, why not elsewhere? And indeed, what of the many similar experiments
>>reported from Kutch and Saurashtra? I have only read passing references to
>>them, but they appear promising…provided the government allows it. Recently
>>there was a report that all other irrigation and drinking water projects in
>>Gujarat, including in Kutch and Saurashtra, are stalled for lack of
>>funds…because all the allocated money is going into the SSP!
>>
>>To argue for the Alwar type of model is not to discount other possible
>>alternatives, including the one proposed by Paranjape and Joy. Their
>>suggestion certainly merits close consideration by all concerned, including
>>by the NBA. But to assert that because NBA is not interested in this one
>>alternative, it is not interested in ANY alternatives at all, is again to
>>betray an illogical bias. NBA has consistently asked for the search of
>>alternatives, but has understandably been too deeply into simply fighting
>>the upcoming projects to spend much of their own time on these alternatives
>>(when you are fighting a fire in the house, you cannot be expected to start
>>designing a fire-proof house at the same time). I know that they have
>>certainly been in favour of alternatives like the small Balli Rajya Dam
>>(mentioned by Ms. Omvedt). NOW THAT THEY HAVE FORCED THE M.P. GOVERNMENT TO
>>CONSIDER ALTERNATIVES FOR A COUPLE OF THE BIG DAMS IN THE VALLEY, NBA IS
>>GEARING UP TO ACTUALLY TRYING SOME OF THESE OUT….INCLUDING WATERSHED
>>DEVELOPMENT, DECENTRALISED WATER HARVESTING, EFFICIENT WATER USE, ETC.
>>
>>Ironically, it is worth asking whether Paranjape and Joy's alternative
>>would have been devised were it not for the intense opposition to the SSP
>>launched by the NBA! This is not a rhetorical or polemical point. Movements
>>like the NBAs force us to question many deep-set assumptions, open up
>>questions that we thought had been answered long back, and impel us to
>>search for more humanitarian, more ecologically friendly, ways of living
>>our lives.
>>
>>And more sustainable ways of engaging in that much-bandied about word,
>>'development'. When Ms. Omvedt characterises the NBA as being
>>"anti-development", she is way way off the mark. Never once has the NBA, or
>>indeed other mass movements like it, said that they are against development
>>per se. But what definition of development? Whose definition of
>>development? At whose cost, at whose benefit? And at what cost (or benefit)
>>to yet unborn generations?
>>
>>WHAT WILL BENEFIT THE DISPRIVILEGED?
>>
>>And so to the final of my points of response. Ms. Omvedt, in characterising
>>NBA as "anti-development", says that it is only development of the kind
>>promoted by the movement supporting 'equitable' big dams in the Krishna
>>Valley, which will bring caste-ridden, exploited people in India's villages
>>out of their misery. Presumably she thinks the Narmada dams can also do
>>this, albeit if the NBA or others were to struggle for the equitable
>>distribution of benefits from it. She ridicules Arundhati's vision of
>>traditional India, with every house full of bags of grain, and points out
>>the severe inequities in rural areas as the real story.
>>
>>Once again, Ms. Omvedt makes two basic logical mistakes, which perhaps is
>>pardonable for an artist, but not for an academic, and not in a debate like
>>this. The first mistake is that of generalisation of a reality which is
>>immensely complex and not amenable to generalisations. The second mistake
>>is to compare a "no-dam" situation with an "after-dam" one…ignoring the
>>third possibility, of an "no-dam but alternative projects" situation.
>>
>>The first mistake is made perhaps both by Ms. Omvedt and by Arundhati.
>>India's villages are indeed full of severe social and economic
>>exploitation….but this is not so everywhere, and the degrees and kinds vary
>>considerably. Surely Ms. Omvedt knows, far better than I, that many parts
>>of adivasi India do not display the kinds of caste exploitation that
>>non-adivasi India does. And that in case after case, where such adivasis
>>have been forced out of their lands and villages, they have ended up as
>>industrial or urban labour, as servants, as child labour, as sex workers,
>>as faceless nameless workers who are exploited more brutally than any
>>exploitation they would have traditionally seen?
>>
>>I just came back from Dhomkedi and Jalsindhi, adivasi villages in the
>>submergence zone. Life there is not easy, it is not worth romanticising.
>>But people have things to eat, when their crops fail, they have forests to
>>fall back upon. They have flowing water to use. They have productive lands
>>to cultivate. And they have their cultures, their relationships, their
>>gods, to take shelter in. Uprooted for a dam of dubious benefit, even with
>>the most 'generous' R&R package, will they really get all this? And if
>>indeed they are facing problems (such as health and nutritional
>>deficiencies) in their existing settlements, surely it is rather
>>round-about to suggest that their only salvation lies in being uprooted and
>>being given solutions to these problems somewhere else? People in Manibeli
>>had asked the right question: why was no road built to their village for
>>decades, while it suddenly came up when the dam construction started and
>>they had to be resettled? Why not bring appropriate (culturally and
>>ecologically sensitive) 'developmental' inputs to where people are, to
>>Dhomkhedi and Jalsindhi? Activists are fighting for such 'in-situ'
>>facilities even in slums in cities, rather than displacing slum-dwellers
>>and dumping them on the outskirts of the city…so why not in every village
>>of the country? Indeed, would it not be more sensible to help local people
>>everywhere to gain the capacity to once again take control over their own
>>lives, their own local natural resources (here I agree with Ms. Omvedt that
>>one of the problems is the take-over of forests by the state)….rather than
>>argue that a "no-dam" scenario would condemn them to eternal exploitation
>>and misery?
>>
>>I would make the same argument for non-adivasi areas, or many adivasi
>>areas, where indeed there is severe social exploitation. These have to be
>>tackled at site, not by displacing them first and then using this as a
>>means of tackling them. In the example I gave above of Alwar district,
>>caste heirarchies are still strong, but they are just beginning to be
>>whittled down, especially as the whole village has to unitedly make and
>>maintain johads, and to conserve their forests against outside vested
>>interests. Indeed, the NBA's own mobilisation has begun to have this
>>effect…adivasi and non-adivasi members, who would have traditionally
>>shunned each other, are eating together, living together, WILLING TO DIE
>>TOGETHER. Some of those sitting for jal samarpan in Lohariyabhai's hut in
>>Jalsindhi or in Dhomkhedi, belong to the big landlord class in Nimad in
>>M.P. By no means have inequities disappeared in the NBA-mobilised areas of
>>the valley, but surely, what stronger force for fighting against such
>>inequities than being part of a long-term struggle together? And putting
>>into practice alternative modes of even education, such as the Jeevan
>>Shalas initiated by the NBA in the valley? At least in these schools, and
>>in the rallies and the dharnas and the myriad meetings and other activities
>>of the NBA, "knowledge, grains, and songs" are shared equally….including
>>the most incredibly evocative version of our national anthem that was sung
>>by adivasis and non-adivasis and middle-class activists together, on August
>>4th, at Dhomkhedi, a song which spoke of having control over one's destiny
>>and ones natural and social resources, a song that accompanied the
>>unfurling of a flag which stated, simply "hamare gaon mein hamara raj".
>>
>>And in any case, can anyone make out a convincing case that big dams in
>>India have been a major force in reducing exploitation and poverty, more
>>than, say, small-scale water harvesting structures? Ms. Omvedt says that
>>"big dams can be sustainable and work in a decentralised manner"…can she
>>give a few examples where this has indeed happened (not just on paper, but
>>on the ground), as documented by independent observers? Perhaps it has, but
>>it would be useful to get some evidence. When we did the study of Hirakud,
>>Ukai, and IGNP, we inquired from various agencies whether there was a
>>single case of an assessment which comprehensively looked at the
>>environmental, social, and economic impacts of a big dam….the sad truth is,
>>there is no such assessment.
>>
>>One last word. I, like many other supporters of the NBA and critics of big
>>dams, am not starry-eyed about the ability of movements like the NBA to
>>solve all the ills plaguing our society. They have failings, like we all
>>do. They must be offered firm but constructive criticism, criticism that
>>helps them to evaluate themselves…just like we must be able to evaluate
>>ourselves based on questions they are asking. But to denigrate them with
>>sweeping statements and biased generalisations, AND TO DO SO WHEN THEIR
>>MEMBERS ARE IN THE MIDST OF A DESPERATE STRUGGLE AGAINST DROWNING, is to
>>not only be insensitive, but to play right in the hands of the repressive
>>state which Ms. Omvedt otherwise so rightly criticises. That is the tragedy
>>of the content and timing of her "open letter".
>>
>>
>>Ashish Kothari
>>11 August, 1999
>>
>>Kalpavriksh
>>Apartment 5, Shree Dutta Krupa
>>908 Deccan Gymkhana
>>Pune 411 004, India
>>Ph. and fax: ++91-20-565 4239
>>Email: ashish@nda.vsnl.net.in
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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Aviva Imhof
South-East Asia Campaigner
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley CA 94703 USA
Tel: + 1 510 848 1155 (ext. 312), Fax: + 1 510 848 1008
Email: aviva@irn.org, Web: http://www.irn.org
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