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dam-l LS: The Independent (London) on Maheshwar, Ogden (fwd)
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From owner-irn-narmada@netvista.net Tue Mar 28 14:55:58 2000
From: owner-irn-narmada@netvista.net
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 11:26:00 -0800 (PST)
Message-Id: <200003281926.e2SJQ0X29911@DaVinci.NetVista.net>
subject: LS: The Independent (London) on Maheshwar, Ogden
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The Independent, London, 28 March 2000
Clinton's visit seals future for controversial Indian dam
By Peter Popham in Delhi
President Bill Clinton's legacy to the people of India is that the
country's most controversial dam project is now set to be
completed.
Funding for the project has been secured after a US energy
company agreed to meet nearly half the construction costs in
an effort to end bitter protests, led by the Booker prize-winning
author Arundhati Roy. Executives from the Ogden Energy
Group, part of Ogden Corporation of New York, flew in as part
of the business party with President Clinton on his five-day
state visit last week, which left the Indian media and probably a
fair proportion of the population, swooning in the President's
wake. For a couple of weeks, Mr Clinton and America can do
no wrong in India. But the news from the Narmada River may
break that spell.
The Maheshwar Dam in Madhya Pradesh, central India, is
half-built. When completed, it will make homeless nearly
40,000 farmers and fishermen in 61 villages.
In January Ms Roy and thousands of other protesters, the
overwhelming majority local people, occupied the dam site in
protest. They have two main objections.
First, although the state authorities have a legal obligation to
relocate and rehabilitate all made homeless, they have taken
no meaningful steps to do so. The small patch of land made
available is infertile - and already squatted on by impoverished
graziers.
And because the flow of the Narmada, outside the monsoon
season, is sluggish for eight months of the year it will generate
power for at most 90 minutes a day, say protestors.
That power will be prohibitively expensive. Ogden Energy
Group is the fifth multinational to dip a toe in the turbid waters
since the project was privatised in 1994.
Three companies previously involved, Pacgen of the US and
Bayernwerk and VEW Energie, both of Germany, quit in the
past three years because of opposition as well as misgivings
about commercial prospects.
When news of the proposed tie-up between Ogden and the
Indian company involved, S Kumars, emerged last year,
people in the valley wrote to the company pointing out the
problems. When they received no answer, 300 local
representatives sent a resolution to Ogden declaring their
opposition. Still no answer, nor have any officers of the
company visited any of the villages affected.
A protest leader, Ms Chittaroopa Palit, said yesterday: "In the
coming months, we will intensify our struggle. We will succeed
in stopping the destruction of this rich area." Ogden Energy
Group declined to comment.