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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?