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dam-l LS: WCD India Study: Everything's not right with dams
SOURCE: BUSINESS LINE March 8, 2000
Everything's not right with dams
S. Gopikrishna Warrier
HAVE the decades of dam-building in the country yielded
results, or has it been a disappointment? Participants at
the stakeholders meeting, organised by the World
Commission on Dams (WCD), discussed this question at
Chennai recently.
There are very few fence-sitters when dams are being
discussed. With the government joining the discussion
officially, the Chennai meeting to discuss the draft India
Country Study, prepared for the Commission, brought out
the nuances of the dam debate that has been going on for
years.
``Small is beautiful, but big is bountiful,'' said the
participant from the Central Water Commission. According
to him, with the population set to grow to more than 1.3
billions in the next 25 years, the country should not close
any option, be it intra-basin or inter-basin transfer of
water.
``Nature does not have equity,'' said the veteran engineer
who worked on the commissioning of the Mettur reservoir.
Water is dynamic and it flows away if not stored behind
dams. The Indian subcontinent being totally dependent on
the monsoons, only large dams can hold the necessary
water, he said.
Wrong, said the environmental activist from Mumbai.
Protecting the green cover on the catchment is the most
cost-effective option for holding rainwater.
According to the chief of the rural development
organisation from Madurai, the people at the grassroots do
not have any choice in decisions relating to dams, so they
cannot choose their cost-effective options. ``Should the
Command Area Development Authority or the farmers for
whom irrigation water is meant get the priority in
decision-making?'' he asked indignantly. In a bottoms-up
approach (which starts from the grassroots) decision on
dams come as a last resort.
The expert from the Indian Institute of Public
Administration said that, most often, cost-benefit analysis
does not try multiple options before the decision to build a
dam is taken. The decision to build the dam is taken
upfront and the cost-benefit analysis done next.
The economist from the Madras Institute of Development
Studies said that even when there is only one option, the
people must be given the choice of either having it or not
having it.
According to the activist from Koyna, the dam hit the
oustees twice. First, they were displaced by the dam and
then the adjoining forests was declared a national park,
making access to it very difficult.
The dam-displaced from Madhya Pradesh had a different
story. The dam was built but there was no money for
building the canals. So the reservoir came with no way to
distribute the water.
The representative from the Kerala Shastra Sahitya
Parishad said that history of rehabilitation showed most of
the time the place that people are displaced to is not
necessarily suitable for carrying out their profession: ``It
is like moving fishermen to the hills.''
The history of upper catchment deforestation is linked to
dam construction, said the other activist from Kerala. It is
time that the concept of State's eminent domain over
water resources be reviewed.
The economist from Pune said that dams transferred a
public resource into private hands. While the money for
building the dam came from public funds it transferred
water through the aquifer into a private well, which the
farmer uses to grow cash crops.
According to him, a series of micro-watershed projects in
the periphery of Pune had the potential to meet the city's
enhanced water requirements. ``Let us start thinking of it
as a large versus large discussion, rather than the usual
large versus small discussion. Watershed development has
become the main paradigm of development.''
The environmental cost has to be included in the
cost-benefit analysis, rather than having it considered ex
post-facto, added the Pune economist who had carried
out cost-benefit analysis for the Tehri and Narmada
projects.
The farmer from Chittoor said that emphasis needs to be
given to support dryland cultivation. Only this can take
away the farmer's desire to cultivate cash crops with
irrigation. As long as there is demand for this irrigation,
policy-makers will push for dams.
One of the participants stated that often projects were
announced by politicians even before various clearances
were obtained to please the powerful lobbies in their area.
The Chennai meeting concluded with a general agreement
that not everything is all right with dams, and serious
rethinking is required, the criteria used for selection of
dam projects are not fully satisfactory and need to be
improved, the existing criteria are not properly
implemented.
World Commission on Dams
THE India Country Study is being prepared by Dr. Nirmal
Sengupta of MIDS; Dr. Pranab Banerji and Dr. Shekhar
Singh of the Indian Institute of Public Administration; Mr.
Ramaswamy R. Iyer, former Secretary, Central Ministry of
Water Resources; and Mr. R. Rangachari, formerly with the
Central Water Commission.
After considering the various views, the country study will
be finalised by March 20 and submitted to the WCD to
form part of the knowledge pool from which the WCD could
draw to prepare its report.
The WCD is scheduled to submit its final report by August
2000. It started its hearings from December 1998 at
Colombo (the meeting was earlier scheduled to be held at
Bhopal but was shifted to Colombo as New Delhi was
opposed to the Commission).
The Commission was established as a follow-up of a
meeting organised by the World Bank and the IUCN-The
World Conservation Union at Gland, Switzerland, in April
1997.
It has as its chairperson, Prof. Kader Asmal, the South
African Education Minister. The 12 Commissioners are
drawn from various backgrounds, including dam managers,
academics, environmental movements and
non-Governmental organisations. Mr. L. C. Jain, former
Planning Commission member, and Ms. Medha Patkar of the
Narmada Bachao Andolan are the two commissioners from
India.
An assortment of organisations fund the WCD, including
conservation organisations, multilateral agencies, bilateral
agencies, private sector foundations and multinational
corporations.
G. W.