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dam-l LS: Narmada Dam Displaced Protest at German Embassy
Narmada Dam Displaced Protest at German Embassy
By Ranjit Dev Raj
NEW DELHI, Nov 30 (IPS) - More than 100 villagers displaced by
the 500-million dollar Maheshwar Dam in central India's Narmada
Valley demonstrated outside the German embassy here Tuesday
protesting against funding from that country for the project.
The demonstrators who sang songs in praise of the Hindu god
Maheshwar and shouted anti-German slogans said they were in Delhi
to protest against the exploitative policies under the World
Trade Organisation (WTO) which affected their lives.
Maheshwar Dam, which falls in central Madhya Pradesh state and
is one of a series of large dams in the Narmada Valley project,
is being built by a private contractor, S. Kumar whose foreign
funders have deserted it following controversy over resettlement.
After a brief argument, riot police cordoned off the
demonstrators, many of them middle-aged women, with thick nylon
ropes and confined them to open lawns opposite the embassy gates.
But the spirited demonstrators held aloft banners which read
''No German Money for Our Destruction'' and ''Siemens Go Home,''
for embassy officials peering out from windows.
Tuesdays' demonstrations were focused against the funding
worth 125 million dollars being provided by the Bonn-based
Hypovereinsbank to the German engineering giant Siemens to
provide generation equipment for the Maheshwar dam.
Chittaroopa Palit, who led the demonstrators, said
Hypovereinsbank was prepared to lend the money in spite of being
aware of gross human rights violations in the construction of the
dam and has applied for a German government guarantee.
''The German government should not give this guarantee -- our
lives are more important than German business interests,'' the
demonstrators from villages in the fertile Maheshwar area yelled
in chorus outside the embassy gates.
A delegation from the Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the Narmada
Movement) led by Palit was allowed in to the embassy for a
scheduled meeting with Economic Counsellor E. Bierbrauer but
elicited no satisfactory response even after two hours of
discussions.
''We were told by Bierbrauer and other officials that our
petition would be forwarded to authorities in Bonn for a final
decision,'' Palit who led the delegation explained.
Bierbrauer who personally escorted Palit and other members of
the delegation to the gates of the embassy declined to speak to
journalists and demonstrators waiting outside, including Indian
writer Arundhati Roy, who has just returned from Germany and
Switzerland where she was campaigning against the Narmada dams.
Disappointed with the outcome, the villagers who have come on
tractors and by train to Delhi, set off another round of slogan-
shouting demanding that all German investment in India be
withdrawn.
''We don't believe that they are all that helpless,'' said
Patlan Ma Mardana, one of the many women among the demonstrators,
as they prepared to move away in a waiting bus to join
demonstrations being held elsewhere in Delhi against the Seattle
Ministerial meeting of the WTO.
The NBA, through sustained agitation on behalf of the
dam affected people, has forced several major banks out of the
project and these include Bechtel and PacGen both power utilities
from the United States.
In April this year, following a 21-day fast by the dam
displaced at Maheshwar, two major German banks, Bayernwerke and
VEW Energie withdrew the 49 percent equity they were to have
contributed saying they did not want to be a party to blatant
human rights and environment violations.
Siemens has a 17 percent share in the project while the Swiss-
owned Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) has another 10 percent -- but their
involvement is limited to the sale of power equipment.
Palit said the NBA would now approach the Indian Environment
Ministry to seek revocation of clearance accorded to the project
because of flagrant violations by the promoters.
Granted four years ago, the clearance was conditional on
proper rehabilitation and resettlement of all the displaced by
1998 but a recent government report has shown that no worthwhile
effort has been carried out in this direction.
The report recommended that all blasting work for the dam be
suspended until the people from Jalud, the first of the villages
to be submerged are satisfactorily resettled and rehabilitated.
According to Palit, the Maheshwar project has long ceased to
be of public interest because of constantly inflated cost
estimations made by the promoters who hope to recover it through
power tariffs far in excess of existing ones.
''Clearly this is no longer a least-cost project but has
become an inferior endeavour which must be abandoned,'' she said.
A total of 40,000 people who live on and make a living out of
the rich black cotton soil are to be displaced by the 400
megawatt hydro-electric project which is not designed to carry an
irrigation potential, unlike the controversial Sardar Sarovar
Dam, construction on which has been challenged by the NBA in the
Supreme Court.
''The dam will be built over our dead bodies - we will never
give up our struggle,'' vowed Lakhan Lal from Behegaon one of
61 villages which will be submerged if the project is ever
completed. (END/IPS/rdr/an/99)
Origin: New Delhi/ENVIRONMENT-INDIA/
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