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DAM-L LS: A. Roy: The People vs the God of Big Dams (fwd)
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subject: LS: A. Roy: The People vs the God of Big Dams
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Published in Times of India 25.10.2000
The People vs the God of Big Dams
By Arundhati Roy
On the morning of the 18th of October the three judge bench of the Supreme
Court delivered its verdict on the PIL filed by the Narmada Bachao Andolan
against the Union of India and the state governments of Gujarat,
Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. After six-and-a-half years of litigation,
the primary imperative of what has come to be called `the majority
judgment' by Chief Justice Anand and Justice Kirpal is that the
construction of the (currently 88 metre high) Sardar Sarovar Dam be
completed as `expeditiously' as possible. Further, it says that the court
ought to have no role in deciding such matters. (Ought it to take a six
year legal injunction and three Supreme Court judges to come to this
profound conclusion?) Justice Bharucha, the only one of the three judges on
the Bench to have heard the case through from the time it was filed, wrote
a dissenting judgment, detailing the reasons why he could not bring himself
to agree with his brother judges.
In an earlier essay on the Narmada valley, The Greater Common Good, (for
which I was rapped on the knuckles by the Supreme Court), I described how
successfully the Indian State has used all the institutions at its command
- the army, the police, the bureaucracy, the courts - to achieve what it
set out to achieve. To appropriate India's resources - including its land,
its forests, its rivers - and redistribute them to a favoured few. The
Indian State is superbly accomplished in the art of protecting the cadres
of its paid-up elite and pulverising those who inconvenience its
intentions. Its finest feat of all is the way it achieves all this and
emerges smelling sweet. (After all, we're not Burma, or Indonesia, or
Rwanda or even Pakistan. We're the proud citizens of the world's biggest
democracy.) If you want a quick fix on how the smell is sweetened, a sort
of Lazy Person's Guide to The Way India Works, read the two Supreme Court
judgments side by side. Had Justice Bharucha chosen not to place his
dissent on record, we would never have known the unimaginable process by
which the Sardar Sarovar project insinuated itself into the world. For
this, I doff my cap to Mr Bharucha. Thank you sir.
In 1961 Nehru laid the foundation stone for a 49.8 metre high dam - the
midget progenitor of the Sardar Sarovar. In 1979, after the Narmada Water
Disputes Tribunal announced its award, the Sardar Sarovar was redesigned to
be a massive, 138.68 metre high dam, which, though located in Gujarat,
would submerge villages in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.
In 1985, before any detailed studies had been done, before any costs were
computed, before anybody had any idea what the human cost or environmental
impact of the dam would be, even before the Union ministry of environment
cleared the project, the World Bank sanctioned a 450 million dollar loan.
(Eight years later, in March 1993, after commissioning an Independent
Review, which said that the project was inherently flawed and that
rehabilitation would be impossible, the World Bank withdrew from the
project. This does not absolve it from the sin of setting the ball in play.)
As soon as the World Bank load was in place, the state governments set up
an unseemly clamouring for the project to be approved by the Ministry of
Environment and Forests regardless of the fact that no proper studies had
been done. In his judgment, Justice Bharucha documents this process in
detail, quoting note after incriminating note.
In October 1986, a Note was prepared by the Ministry of Water Resources on
the environmental aspects of the Sardar Sarovar project. It said that the
clearance of the projects from the environmental angle and under the Forest
Conservation Act 1980 had become a matter of urgency for the governments of
Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh (that luscious loan was waiting). The Ministry
of Environment and Forests said that it was doing its best ``but have been
finding the material submitted inadequate and unsatisfactory.'' Under a
sub-heading ``Should the project be taken up at all?'', the Note said that
abandoning the project was not advisable even though critical information
(which would take at least three years to collect) was not available. There
is a remarkable, Kafkaesque section in the Note: ``with the project
postponed for three years and with no assurance at the end of that period
that the decision will be positive, it is difficult to believe that all
these studies, surveys and plans relating to the environmental aspects will
be pursued with energy and enthusiasm and the necessary resources devoted
to them. In other words, the postponement of the decision in the interest
of collecting information...may in fact prove to be a self defeating
exercise.''
In other words, the government sees no point in doing studies unless it
already knows the outcome will be favourable to the project. (And,
axiomatically, if it already knows the outcome, why bother with the
studies?)
On November 20, 1986, another Note was prepared by the Ministry of Water
Resources and forwarded to the Additional Secretary to the Prime Minister.
Considering the fact that basic data on vital aspects of the project was
still not available the Note says ``there could be but one conclusion, that
the project(s) are not ready for approval.'' Yet on January 15, 1987 a note
was put up to the Prime Minister by his Secretary, seeking his approval for
conditional joint clearance of the Sardar Sarovar and Narmada Sagar
projects. The Department of Environment and Forests said that the
rehabilitation plan was not ready, that land had not been surveyed, that
areas of land use capability and water availability had not been identified
and the land being suggested for rehabilitation, prima facie appeared to be
infertile. The PM's Secretary, however, said that the project had been
waiting for clearance for over seven years (what were they doing all that
time?) and that the chief ministers of MP and Gujarat were ``keenly
awaiting'' it. On January 19, 1987 the Prime Minister (Rajiv Gandhi) jotted
a hand-written comment on the note: ``Perhaps this is a good time to try
for a River Valley Authority, discuss.''
This is the only thing on record that constitutes the `Prime Minister's
clearance'. This single throwaway sentence is then used to announce to the
press that the projects have been cleared. The file is judiciously fattened
with various notes and letters from the state governments hailing the
clearance.
On June 24, 1987, based on what the Ministry itself called inadequate
information, the Ministry of Environment and Forests gave a clearance to
the projects subject to several conditions including a Catchment Area
Treatment Scheme, Command Area Development Plan and the submission of a
Rehabilitation Master Plan. In his dissenting `minority' judgment, Justice
Bharucha says ``An environment clearance based on next to no data in regard
to the environmental impact of the project was contrary to the terms of the
then policy of the Union of India in regard to environmental clearances
and, therefore, no clearance at all.'' His judgment goes on to say that it
was mandatory under the conditions of clearance that catchment area
treatment and the full rehabilitation of all displaced people be completed
before any water is impounded in the reservoir. According to Justice
Bharucha, the fact that this has not happened constitutes a clear violation
of the conditions of clearance. He says that in the 13 years that have
passed since the conditional clearance, no comprehensive environmental
impact assessment has been done. For all these reasons the dissenting
judgment says that the project must be sent back to the Ministry of
Environment for fresh clearance after proper studies have been done.
The `majority judgment' however, sweeps this aside calling environmental
clearance ``only an administrative requirement.'' Only an administrative
requirement? Environmental clearance for two dams whose reservoirs will,
between them, hold more water than any other reservoir in the Indian
subcontinent is only an administrative requirement? What sort of precedent
does this set for the planners of the 695 big dams that are being planned
and constructed in India right now? Should they throw darts at a map where
they want to build a dam and then go ahead and build it? Will the Supreme
Court support them pari pasu?
The `majority judgment' actually goes on to blame the NBA for filing the
petition so late. ``For any project which is approved after due
deliberation (notice how in the course of 13 years a Prime Minister's
casual one-liner becomes `due deliberation') the Court should refrain from
being asked to review the decision...Pleas relating to height of the dam
and the extent of submergence, environment studies and clearance,
hydrology, seismicity and other issues except implementation of relief and
rehabilitation, cannot be raised at this belated stage.''
What this means is that the government sees no point in doing studies
before the project starts, and that citizens have no right to question it
once construction begins. The message from the highest court in the land is
pretty clear: Poor? Adivasi? Dalit? Happen to live in the submergence zone
of a big dam? Tough luck. Go away, and go quietly.
The `majority judgment' decrees that the project should be completed
according to the guidelines of the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal Award
under the supervision of the Narmada Control Authority (NCA), supposedly an
independent authority. The Chairman of the NCA Review Committee is the
Minister of Water Resources. The Chairman of the NCA itself is Secretary,
Ministry of Water Resources. (Round and round the apple tree. Little
partner dance with me...) Never mind that for 13 years the NCA has
consistently violated the Award of the Tribunal, which is what led to the
filing of the petition in the first place. Despite this shocking record,
their lordships see no reason to ``assume that the authorities will not
function properly.'' In October 2000, 13 years after the so-called
``environmental clearance'' and commencement of construction, the court
asks the NCA to produce within four weeks a Rehabilitation Master Plan
which they haven't managed to produce in 13 years. Mind you, we're still
talking of a plan --not of actual rehabilitation.
In 1979, the number of families that were to be `officially' displaced by
the SSP was 6,000. In 1987, it was 12,000. In 1991, it surged to 27,000. In
1994, when the petition was filed it was 41,500. That's more than 200,000
people. Today God knows what the real figure is. The court has it on
affidavit from the government of Madhya Pradesh (the state to which 80 per
cent of the displaced people belong) that it has no land for
rehabilitation. In the last 13 years, since construction began, MP has not
provided a single hectare of agricultural land for rehabilitation. What's
more, the governments of MP and Maharashtra have said under oath on legal
affidavits that 368 families who have been displaced by the present height
of the dam (88 metres) have not been given land. (Of course the MP
government doesn't mention the 114,000 oustees from the Bargi Dam and the
30,000 oustees from the Maheshwar Dam and the indeterminate number of
oustees from all the other dams it has planned, who have also not been
given land). And yet, the Supreme Court of India clears the immediate
raising of the dam height up to 90 metres.
In other words, it orders the violation of the Tribunal Award. For the BJP
government in Gujarat this comes as a life-raft. Having suffered a severe
setback in the local panchayat elections, the judgment couldn't have been
better-timed for the Gujarat government had drafted it itself. The perfect
Diwali gift for a perfect government. Honestly, some people have all the
luck.
After having repeatedly prevented the NBA from making any submissions in
court on the merits and demerits of Big Dams, the last few pages of the
`majority' judgment launch into a badly written eulogy to big dams based on
no evidence whatsoever. Two quotes, two points:
(a) The petitioner has not been able to point out a single instance where
construction of a large dam has, on the whole had an adverse environmental
impact. On the contrary the environment has improved.
Maybe their lordships don't travel very much. They could go to Punjab and
have a water-logged weekend in the command area of the famous Bhakra Nangal
Dam. Or stay at home and read the study of 300 projects by the Expert
Committee on River Valley projects which found that 89 per cent of them
violated the guidelines laid down by the Ministry of Environment. Or just
keep in mind that despite India's 3,600 Big Dams, drought-prone and
flood-prone areas have actually increased since 1947, that 200 million
Indian citizens have no access to safe drinking water, that not a single
river in the plains has potable water, and that 10 million hectares of
irrigated agricultural land are currently saline and water-logged.
(b) At the time of Independence foodgrain was being imported to India but
with the passage of time and the construction of more dams the position has
been reversed. The large-scale river valley projects per se all over the
country have made India more than self-sufficient in food.
I thought so too, your lordships. Until I began to look for some official,
government facts to back that thesis up and found that there weren't any.
Until now no studies have been done to determine what percentage of India's
foodgrain is produced by big dams. To believe that Big Dams are the key to
India's food security is to have faith without facts because facts don't
exist. At least they didn't until recently. This year, a chapter in the
India Country Study done for the World Commission on Dams (whose report
will be released in London by Nelson Mandela on November 16) says that 10
per cent of India's foodgrain is produced by big dams. That's 20 million
tonnes. The Ministry of Food and Civil Supplies says that 10 per cent of
India's foodgrain is eaten every year by rats. And that's 20 million
tonnes. We must be the only country in the world that builds dams, uproots
millions of people (56 million people in the last 50 years according to the
India Country Study), submerges forests and destroys the environment in
order to feed rats. Clearly we need better warehouses more than we need Big
Dams.
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