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WITH the completion of the concrete work on the Sardar Sarovar dam on December 31, a range of superlatives were seen on the official web site of the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Ltd. Referring to the dam as "one of the world's eight modern wonders", "life-line of the people of western India", "one of the largest engineering endeavours in the history of mankind", "India's third highest concrete dam", and as having "some of the largest aquaducts", the "world's largest irrigation canal" and the "world's largest canal network."
As in the case of most hype, the crucial aspect has been pushed aside. In the case of Sardar Sarovar, it is the rehabilitation of the dam-displaced. Around 1,000,000 people have been affected by the construction of the Sardar Sarovar and the other 3,200 dams on the Narmada river. The majority of the affected families either have received no compensation or are deemed not eligible for compensation or have received paltry sums.
This fact has been consistently glossed over by the dam's promoters until recently when the plight of the displaced was mentioned at a ceremony dedicating the dam to the nation. The ceremony, held on January 19 in Gujarat, was attended by the Chief Ministers of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, both belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party.
At the function, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi made an appeal to the Centre to waive the interest on the loans taken for the dam's construction. He said the exempted interest amount would go towards the welfare of the tribal people, especially to create a special industrial package for the rehabilitation of the project-affected. In his classic style, Modi threw the ball into the court of the Congress-led Union government, saying that the latter would have no hesitation sanctioning it if it was truly concerned about the welfare of the tribal people.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan claimed that his government was working at a fast pace to resettle the project-affected families. He claimed his government had resettled 18,000 families as opposed to the 6,000 who had been resettled by the earlier Congress regimes in the State. He said 14,000 more families awaited resettlement.
Controversial project
The largest of all the dams on the Narmada, Sardar Sarovar, is also the most controversial, but this fact finds no mention on the web site. The mission statement on the web site states: "Harnessing the untapped waters of the Narmada for survival of millions of people and environmentally sound sustainable development of the western India by providing the essence of life - Water and Energy."
Does that mean that the waters of the Narmada were "untapped" until the dam was built? Do fishing, draw-down cultivation and fields irrigated for centuries by the river not count as tapping into the river's wealth? Also, even if the principle of greater good was employed to bolster the argument that the dam harnesses the river for the "survival of millions of people", nothing can justify the little or no compensation given to those who lost their homes, lands and livelihoods .
As for "providing the essence of life", the dam's promoters are yet to prove their tall claims regarding electricity, drinking water and irrigation. If anything, Sardar Sarovar has only played a destructive role even for its supposed beneficiaries, a fact seen consistently over the last five monsoons. Unable to bear the sudden and immense pressure of water released from the dam, the canals downstream have been breaking and flooding fields and towns and even causing loss of life.
The canals, in fact, have been cause for much heartache to the residents of villages along the Narmada. Many had given land willingly for the construction of the canal because they thought it would be beneficial to have a canal running through their fields. They lived to regret the decision. Poor canal construction resulted in seepage of water into the surrounding fields, making them waterlogged and unfit for cultivation. The farmers are not entitled to any compensation for this.
The negative aspects of the project were first comprehensively brought out in the Independent Review of the Sardar Sarovar Project on the Narmada conducted by a World Bank-appointed team as far back as 1991-92. The Bank had been financially supporting the project but vociferous objections to its feasibility forced it to go in for a review. The report came to be called the Morse report after Bradford Morse, a former United Nations Development Programme chief, who headed the team.
One of the most damning statements in the report read: "The Sardar Sarovar Projects as they stand are flawed, resettlement and rehabilitation of all those displaced ... is not possible under prevailing circumstances ... [and] the environmental impacts of the Projects have not been properly considered or adequately addressed." Another statement said: "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." The Morse report was responsible for the World Bank's withdrawal from the project.
So, what are the benefits that are expected to ensue from the 121.92-m Sardar Sarovar? What justifies destroying a river valley for long noted for its prosperity? The dam's promoters claim that it will provide 1,450 MW of environment-friendly hydro energy, safe potable water for 8,215 villages and 135 urban centres and 1.9055 million hectares of equitable irrigation, and create 13,950 ha of forest land.
The Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), which has been opposing the dam, has consistently debunked these claims. It has maintained that the dam's potential benefits did not outweigh the human costs involved. It has pointed out that the lands and homes of about 1,50,000 villagers would be inundated by the 200-kilometre-long Sardar Sarovar reservoir. The 75,000 km of irrigation canals would mean that about 24,000 farmers would lose more than a quarter of their land. And countless other families would be affected by secondary displacement, a feature that is always witnessed in the case of large projects.
The predictions of the NBA have been proved correct to a great extent. When the dam height was 110 m, it was found that only 10 per cent of the beneficiary villages received at least an irregular supply of drinking water when all 8,215 villages should have received water at that height. Though the claim was that 5.5 lakh ha would be irrigated at that height, only 57,000 ha got water. The expected power was not generated. The dam is expected to provide full power generation only when it is at its full reservoir level of 138 m, but the NBA has calculated that even then "the benefit to Maharashtra [which had been wooed with the promise of extra power] would be only to the extent of 0.2 per cent of the State's present annual consumption".
Drinking water to far-off Kutch in Gujarat from the Narmada was another sensational promise. This, despite warnings from experts that water would reach Kutch only through an elaborate and prohibitively expensive system of lift irrigations. Three years ago, the Gujarat government announced that water from the Narmada had reached Kutch. But it was soon discovered that the water had been released from the Mahi dam in Saurashtra and not from Sardar Sarovar as publicised.
In January this year, NBA leader Medha Patkar further debunked claims that the priority of the dam was to slake Gujarat's thirst. She revealed that instead of using the water for drinking purposes, "Gujarat had started allocating large amounts of water and land in the command area of SSP to corporates such as Reliance, indicating that there is no urgency and primacy for water to the people as was claimed". The NBA also says that the present dam height was achieved in contravention of laws.
Kailash Awasya, a project-affected adivasi, filed a contempt of court petition in the Supreme Court on January 4 stating that the construction flouted all Supreme Court judgments from 2000 to 2005 and ignored the Narmada Water Dispute Tribunal Award (NWDTA). Unconcerned, the Gujarat government has announced its intention to get clearance from the Narmada Control Authority to erect metal gates atop the dam.
Judging by the ground realities, this permission would not be as easy to get as Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi hopes. To get it, relief and rehabilitation (R&R) in the case of about 50,000 families in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra would have to be completed by March 31 - that is, 35,000 families at the 122-m level and an additional 15,000 families if the gates are added at 138.68 m. (That 35,000 families are in need of R&R was substantiated last July in the findings of the V.K. Shunglu Committee Oversight Group appointed by the Prime Minister).
There are, however, fears that the necessary R&R monitoring will be glossed over. The fears have a justifiable basis as this example from the past shows. In the early 1990s, after the Morse report was submitted, the Indian authorities made a plea to the World Bank not to withdraw from the project. One of the criteria set by the Bank for continued association with the project was that the States constantly review the R&R process. An action plan was devised to put R&R on the right track through monitoring and review.
A political project
That the Sardar Sarovar project is a politically driven dream was only too apparent from the point-blank refusal of the main beneficiary State - Gujarat - to accede to any sort of compromise. So high were the stakes for the State that during the last general elections, the Congress and the BJP both laid claim to Sardar Sarovar. Even though the dam was started and nurtured by Congress governments in Gujarat, it will be the BJP who will derive the maximum mileage from its construction. Narendra Modi made this all too clear when he dedicated the Sardar Sarovar dam to the nation. The politicisation of the dam was only too obvious when former Congress Chief Ministers of Gujarat decided to boycott Modi's function to dedicate the dam and Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh refused to attend the function despite the State being a beneficiary of the project. Gujarat's Congressmen opposed the inauguration not on account of the poor R&R or the overrated claims of the project, but because it was an "incomplete project" and because Modi used the dam for "personal propaganda" even though every major hurdle the dam faced had been cleared by a Congress leader.
For Modi it was no ordinary inauguration - it saw a dramatic end to the dam's construction on the last day of 2006 and a symbolic new start for Gujarat on the first day of 2007. If nothing else, he hopes the Sardar Sarovar will be a political victory for him and his party.
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