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dam-l LS: Praful Bidwai on Narmada in ToI
Unblocking the Narmada
People First, Tribunals Later
By PRAFUL BIDWAI
ONE does not have to be an uncritical admirer of the Narmada Bachao
Andolan to recognise the powerful popular sentiment behind the
struggle against the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) or acknowledge the
need for a thorough review of the whole scheme. The sheer scale and
tenacity of the struggle, highlighted by the recent impressive mass
mobilisation in the valley, bear testimony to the first proposition. The
second is borne out by numerous alternatives proposed to the SSP,
besides changes in the basic parameters in its original design. The
approaching Supreme Court hearing of the NBA petition for the ``final
disposal'' is an appropriate occasion to scrutinise the SSP. The
litigation has become a litmus test not only for environmental
protection, but equally for issues of displacement and development;
balancing the larger public interest against sectional gains from
irrigation projects, and relevance of the law to people's vital concerns,
indeed to the fundamental right to life with dignity and justice.
Utilitarian Calculus
The SSP raises many questions: Should a project based on 40 or 50
year-old assumptions about water flows and environmental impacts be
considered totally unalterable even when those assumptions are
demonstrably false? Should the displacement of two lakh people, many
of them underprivileged and vulnerable -- and half of them Adivasis
-- be considered a fair price to pay for irrigating land that can get the
same quantity of water in other, less destructive, ways? Must the
21-year-old award of a river water tribunal be treated as sacrosanct
when the project's cost-benefit ratios have radically changed? What
justifies the project authorities' insistence on adding an extra 19 feet
to the dam height only for power generation when that spells the
submergence of 26,000 hectares (half of it prime-quality forests), and
when another riparian state offers an alternative power source?
Besides these practical questions, there are larger issues of ethics and
jurisprudence too. How long are we going to follow a crude 19th
century utilitarian calculus which justifies sacrificing the vital interests
of the underprivileged for the greatest good of the greatest number, and
which violates the requirement of modern ethical theory that we must
first protect those very interests? How do we take social and legal
cognisance of the truth that some 30 million Indians have been
uprooted and brutalised since Independence in the name of
`development'? How do we remedy this? Should immutable legal
verdicts be reached in this era of democracy without consultation with
those liable to be affected by them on a mass scale? What can be done
to defend the human rights of project-affected people in independently
monitored, verifiable, ways? If the courts prescribe urban vehicular
pollution standards to governments in minute detail, where should they
stop with rural projects?
Predatory Bureaucrats
The Narmada litigation began with a broad agenda, but has increasingly
got narrowed in scope to the issue of resettlement and rehabilitation
alone. It is imperative to broaden its scope to reflect the true range of
issues at stake. Even on resettlement, the project authorities have a
thoroughly unsatisfactory record, marked by repeated non-compliance
with stipulated norms at this early stage of displacement. (Some
31,000 of the total of 41,000 families whose lands will be submerged
are on the displacement roster). And it is already apparent that there
isn't enough land in contiguous areas to resettle those ousted.
Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh (where the maximum displacement
will occur) have said as much in official documents. This is confirmed
by numerous non-official surveys. These numbers exclude people
displaced by canals, drainage creation, colony construction,
sanctuaries, etc. Nineteen years after construction began, there is no
master plan for rehabilitation.
To complicate matters, a good chunk of the available land is
uncultivable or already encroached upon. So unsurprisingly, over 300
families, which had left their homes for rehabilitation sites, have
returned, e.g. in Mokhadi, the first SSP-affected village. Thousands
have firmly refused to move out altogether. Hostilities have broken out
between Adivasi groups, instigated by predatory bureaucrats and
driven by competition for scarce resources. This makes nonsense of
any authentic notion of rehabilitation, which must be consensual, not
confrontationist, and minimally involve full economic reparation and
community rehabilitation, with a degree of cultural and social cohesion,
especially for Adivasis. It violates the basic principle that no displaced
person should be worse off than before his/her `rehabilitation'.
It will not do selectively to cite the scrappy reports of the PD Desai
committee to counter this reality. Gujarat which appointed the
committee is not a neutral actor, but a partisan government which has
taken a confrontationist stand on the SSP, refused cooperation with the
Centre and co-riparian states and even threatened the tripartite World
Commission on Dams, which includes irrigation and
construction-industry interests.
Real Issue
If the rehabilitation side of the SSP balance-sheet is embarrassing, the
economic side is no better. The irrigation potential capital cost works
out at over Rs 2 lakh per hectare, even assuming a high irrigation
efficacy (60 per cent instead of the normal 40). Depreciation and
interest on this alone would render downstream agriculture utterly
unviable, given that our annual irrigated-land farm output is of the
order Rs 20,000/hectare. Besides, the SSP authorities exaggerate the
power and drinking water benefits. There are cheaper,
environmental-and people-friendly alternatives to the second. SSP
water won't reach parched Kutch (for which only two per cent is
earmarked) till 2020 or 2025. No financial allocation has been made for
this. Kutch and Saurashtra farmers feel cheated and are already
agitating over this, and have started cooperative water users' groups
to recharge aquifers -- an excellent, sustainable, method.
There are numerous alternatives to the SSP as currently designed,
including a reduction in dam height. These were adumbrated in two
reports of the five-member expert group appointed (1993) by the
Centre, and the Morse Review appointed by the World Bank.
Engineers and social scientists (Paranjpe and Joy) have drawn up
conjunctive groundwater-use schemes to supplement a
reduced-height dam which would decrease displacement and
submergence by nine-tenths or more. It would be foolhardy to ignore
these and push ahead with the SSP. At the end of the day, the real
question is not one of technology or law, but of people, rationality and
democracy. If rationality and democracy are to have any meaning, and
if public interest litigation is to survive -- it is already in decline --
the SSP must be fully opened up for review and radical revision.
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