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dam-l LS: Dilip D'Souza Article from Rediff on Narmada



Source: Rediffision on the Net, March 2000 (date not known)
>  -----------
>
>  Thirty Words About a Dam
>  ------------------------
>  Dilip D'Souza
>
>  When I read the Morse Report, back in 1992, I remember feeling stunned.
>
>  For one thing, it is an immensely readable book. This was not at all what I
>  had thought a report on a dam project would be. I expected a dry tome
>  filled with arcane statistics and obscure engineering details that I would
>  have to struggle to get through. Instead here was this book that I often
>  could not put down, that read suspiciously like a thriller.
>
>  For a second, it opened my eyes. I knew Governments were capable of apathy
>  and misgovernance and lies, but those had remained somewhat abstract
>  concepts to me. Morse gave them meaning and weight. That, by writing about
>  their ongoing consequences: resettlement shoddily done; plans for taking
>  drinking water to thirsty parts of Gujarat non-existent ("Despite the
>  stated priority of delivery of drinking water," the report observed, "there
>  were no plans available for review"); mandatory assessments and reports not
>  completed; benefits overstated and costs understated.
>
>  I believe it was this report that first convinced me that I must never --
>  never -- take a Government at its word. On anything. For that persuasion
>  alone, I silently thank Morse all the time.
>
>  For a third, it is thorough. Assertions are backed with data, not just
>  airily made. Every aspect that Morse examined gets careful, considered
>  attention. All the material submitted to his team is discussed before
>  reaching a conclusion. There is no evidence of haste, nor of half-measures.
>  Nor are its pages littered with figures upon figures, designed to confuse
>  and overwhelm. The book gives the impression of sober, thoughtful and
>  complete analysis, presented so an ordinary reader can follow along.
>
>  For a fourth, it is filled with astonishing findings stated in clear,
>  unequivocal language. This one is my favourite:
>
>    * "The Sardar Sarovar Projects are likely to perpetuate many of the
>    features that the Bank has documented as diminishing the performance of
>    the agricultural sector in India in the past."
>
>  Think about it: a dam that will diminish -- diminish! -- agricultural
>  performance.
>
>  In those 30 cold words, Morse simply demolishes the claims of mighty
>  benefits from the Sardar Sarovar dam. Now it has been eight years since
>  that report. But in those years, I don't believe there has been a more
>  pithy statement of what's wrong with the dam. Nor has there been anything
>  that would, today, cause Morse to change his mind. That dam is still deeply
>  flawed.
>
>  This week, the Supreme Court begins "final hearings" on a comprehensive
>  petition on Sardar Sarovar. Many arguments and figures will fly back and
>  forth. No doubt you've heard them all, so I won't go over them here. Let me
>  try, instead, to place Morse's criticism in the context of some other
>  criticism of the dam.
>
>  Of course, the reaction to any criticism has typically been innovative
>  dismissal of the critics. Medha Patkar is a mere "publicity-seeker." Does
>  Arundhati Roy think her Booker Prize "gives her the right to comment on
>  national issues?" And Morse? On October 4 1992, just months after the
>  report came out, then Gujarat CM Chimanbhai Patel pronounced angrily, if
>  irrelevantly, that Morse had no right to tell us "whether tribals are Hindu
>  or not." (Morse had not done this, but dear Chimanbhai knew few would call
>  his bluff and read the report. He also knew well the emotional power of his
>  pronouncement, which power I'm sure is working on some reading this right
>  now).
>
>  Still, there's a limit to innovation. How do you handle all the others who
>  protest the dam?
>
>  For example: during last year's monsoon, in tumbledown huts strung along
>  the banks of the river as it approaches the Sardar Sarovar dam, you could
>  have found hundreds of such protesters standing in the river. Some stood
>  for several days, holding hands and singing songs of solidarity as the
>  water rose to their chins. Eventually the police arrived and dragged them
>  out.
>
>  Many more like them have staged other protests at other dam sites along the
>  Narmada. On February 24, thousands sat down in front of the gate to a
>  hydroelectric project near the Maheshwar Dam in Madhya Pradesh. They intend
>  to say there, says a press release that came my way, "for the next few
>  months or as long as it takes to achieve their demands."
>
>  And I remember always the protest gathering I once travelled to in Bijasen,
>  upstream from the Bargi dam, a few hours from Jabalpur. The day before I
>  got there, the police had visited -- wading into the crowd with lathis and
>  fists, arresting several people in an attempt to break up the rally. A 70+
>  year-old woman, four feet and very little, bent over a stick, showed me her
>  forearm: smashed in two places by a police lathi. It might have scared her
>  away, but no. The tiny grandma was there that day with her broken elbow and
>  hundreds of her fellow-villagers, determined as ever to keep the protest
>  going.
>
>  And I thought then, as I think now: OK, so Medha Patkar is a
>  publicity-seeker. Fine, so Arundhati Roy should stick to her Booker prize.
>  All right, so Morse tried to tell us about Hinduism and so his report
>  deserves no attention whatsoever.
>
>  What about these protesters? What prompts many villagers to spend days in
>  water that rises steadily about their bodies? What motivates a large
>  gathering to sit in front of a hydel project, fully prepared to be there
>  "for the next few months"? What drives a shrivelled old woman on through
>  lathi blows that break her bones?
>
>  Yes, let's completely ignore Roys and Patkars and Morses. But can we, can
>  you, also ignore the others? After all, surely a desire for publicity alone
>  wouldn't keep people in water for days on end. Or fortify a little old lady
>  enough to absorb flailing lathis, to forget a cracking arm.
>
>  When will we recognize the spirit, the seriousness, in her? When will we
>  understand that people like her raise real issues, demand answers they have
>  never got?
>
>  Every other way of reaching you and me, and the dam-builders, has failed.
>  Credible and well-known people -- Morses, Roys and the like -- have carried
>  her message but are ridiculed. What's left to a frail grandmother in rural
>  MP, about to lose her home, but to sit down and protest? To keep up her
>  protest even if the police breaks her arm? What's left, except this
>  desperate effort to get you to understand her concerns?
>
>  And these, as I see them, are her concerns.
>
>  One: if she is to lose home and land to a dam, she wants to be compensated.
>  No doubt Governments make promises about such compensation. But there's an
>  irresistible urge to look at the record of such compensation that Indian
>  Governments have built since Independence. It is not a pretty record.
>
>  Two: given the impact that record will have on her life, she wants a voice
>  in whether the dam is built at all. She doesn't want, any more, that
>  decision to be taken by someone else, somewhere else. She must be part of
>  it.
>
>  Three: since that dam will turn her -- not you and me browsing our Netscape
>  bookmarks, but her -- destitute, she has misgivings about what we mean by
>  development as represented by that dam. Like you, she has no desire to go
>  back to living in trees: like you, she wants electricity and drinking
>  water. But so far, development has only meant dams where she lives, her
>  fields submerged, so you and I can follow links on the Web. She is saying,
>  broken elbow and all, enough. Enough of this development.
>
>  Four: she is fed up of being told what's good for her. She wants to decide
>  for herself. She wants the freedom to pronounce, as you and I do so easily,
>  that "some people must sacrifice for the good of the nation." Some other
>  people, of course -- isn't that what we city-folk mean anyway? some other
>  people? -- for she and her colleagues are tired of sacrificing.
>
>  Is any of this unreasonable? Whatever your answer, look again at Morse's 30
>  words. What are these dams "perpetuating"? What is the "good of the
>  nation"? And should you stand for it?
>
>  Really, that little grandma wants to be like me. Like you. How do you feel
>  about that?