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DAM-L LS: Outcry Greets Indian Court's Clearance for Dam (fwd)
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subject: LS: Outcry Greets Indian Court's Clearance for Dam
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Thursday October 19 9:10 AM ET
Outcry Greets Indian Court's Clearance for Dam
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Booker prize-winning writer
Arundhati Roy led a howl of protest Thursday after India's
highest court cleared the way for a controversial dam stalled
for six years by an environmental lawsuit.
Wednesday's stamp of approval from the Supreme Court
did little to dampen the spirit of
critics led by Medha Patkar, head of the Narmada
Bachao Andolan (NBA or the Save
Narmada Movement).
``We will certainly go back to the people. People are
ready to fight a battle even beyond
this verdict,'' said Patkar, who staged a 26-day
hunger strike against the Narmada river
hydroelectric project in 1994.
Patrick McCully, campaigns director of the California
based environment and human
rights organization International Rivers Network,
added his voice to the outcry against the
verdict.
``The ruling is utterly illogical and an insult to
democracy and justice,'' he said in a
statement.
``The Sardar Sarovar Project is one of the world's
most controversial dam projects and
would forcibly displace more people than any other
infrastructure project in the world
except for China's notorious Three Gorges Dam.''
Patkar, who crisscrossed hundreds of miles in the
central Indian Narmada valley in years
of building up her movement, broke down in tears at a
Bombay news conference
Wednesday.
``The court is bound by law, but people are bound by
life and livelihood,'' said Patkar, who
cites reasons ranging from low economic gains and
environmental damage to emotional
trauma for the tribals being displaced by the project
for opposing the dam.
Patkar wanted the Indian president to intervene to
stop the project which mainly covers
the central Madhya Pradesh state and the western
Gujarat state. Gujarat is banking on the
project to ease its acute water needs.
Court Decision ``Heartbreaking''
The Narmada Valley development project is India's
biggest dam project. Some 3,200
small, medium-sized and large dams are to be built on
the 1,300-km (800-mile) river and
its tributaries to generate electricity and provide
water to millions of people.
Roy, who donated to the Narmada cause the $35,000
prize money she won in 1997 for her
novel ``The God of Small Things,'' said the court
decision was ``heartbreaking.''
``The court has crushed the most non-violent peoples'
movement in the country,'' the
Indian Express quoted her as saying.
``This shows that you can stand in front of the map of
India and throw darts anywhere on
it without bothering about the environmental or human
costs or analyzing its benefits for
the people,'' she said after the verdict was announced
Wednesday.
The Supreme Court in a majority judgement of
two-to-one struck down a petition filed by
Patkar's environmental group, and asked the
governments of Gujarat and Madhya
Pradesh to resume construction of the Sardar Sarovar dam.
The petition was mainly against raising the height of
Sardar Sarovar, the biggest of the
dams being built, which would submerge hundreds of
villages and displace millions of
people.
McCully said several hundred thousand people will now
lose their livelihoods to irrigation
canals, housing for construction workers, the
desiccation of the river downstream of the
dam and a wildlife reserve planned to compensate for
the ecosystems to be flooded.
Raising the height of the dam to 90 meters (295 feet)
from 88 meters will be taken up
immediately, in line with the Supreme Court decision,
the Gujarat government said.
The project is being largely financed by state
governments and market borrowings after
the World Bank withdrew financing in 1993, and is
expected to be fully completed in 2025.
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