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dam-l LS: NBA PR on German Maheshwar Report (fwd)
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subject: LS: NBA PR on German Maheshwar Report
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Narmada Bachao Andolan
62 Mahatma Gandhi Marg,
Badwani. Tel: 07283-33162, 07290-22464
E-mail : nobigdam@vsnl.com
Press Note : New Delhi, 4 July, 2000
GERMAN MINISTRY REPORT EXPOSES MAHESHWAR PROJECT
NBA URGES GERMAN GOVERNMENT TO REFUSE HERMES GUARANTEE ,
CALLS UPON THE INDIAN GOVERNMENT TO SCRAP THE PROJECT
In a very significant development, a hard hitting report of the
Development Ministry of Germany made public late last week has
severely indicted the social and environmental viability of the
Maheshwar project and found that the rehabilitation of the thousands
of affected families is well nigh impossible. The Maheshwar
Hydroelectric Project is a big dam under construction on the river
Narmada in Central India. A team of three internationally renowned
experts was commissioned by the German Development Ministry in
May-June this year to assess the ground realities in the project
impact zone, in order to be able to take a decision on the Siemens
application for a Hermes export credit guarantee for the Maheshwar
Project. The report has confirmed the issues being raised by the
three-year-old struggle of the local people which has been carrying
on in the face of governmental apathy and severe police repression.
The German Development Ministry has welcomed the report and said that
it only confirmed their expectations. The Green Party has also come
out with a statement demanding that the Hermes guarantee must be
immediately refused.
In the wake of this report, which has exposed the fundamental and
irreparable flaws in the Maheshwar Project and the complete
impossibility of any fair and just resettlement and rehabilitation,
the mass organisation of the affected people -the Narmada Bachao
Andolan calls upon the German Government to finally and decisively
refuse the Hermes export guarantee sought by Siemens for the Project.
It also urges the Govt. of India as well the Govt. of Madhya Pradesh
to take cognizance of this report and immediately scrap the
destructive project. It may be recalled that the Reports of the Task
Force constituted by the Madhya Pradesh government and that of the
Environment Ministry of the Central government in 1998and 1999 had
come to similar conclusions about the Project but the Central and
state governments had simply sought to ignore them.
The report of the German government notes that despite the fact that
the project is already under construction, even the most preliminary
demographic and socio-economic data about the impacts is totally
unavailable. It says that " Significant uncertainty exist about the
amount of land to be seriously affected (submerged or waterlogged) by
the project, and there are no apparent plans by the authorities to
remedy the problem." It also says that there is uncertainty about the
number of people to be seriously affected and that the authorities
are unlikely to "identify the thousands living in areas not yet
agreed by the authorities to be affected by the Project or those
whose livelihoods are affected ". The Narmada Bachao Andolan has
estimated that the numbers of such families living on sand quarrying,
fishing, draw down agriculture , etc. whose livelihoods will be
affected by the Project is around 7000-8000 families.
It notes that the affected people have never been consulted or
properly informed about the Project and that in the absence of the
same, the Project has been sought to be continued with the use of
brute force and human rights violations. It clearly says that "the
approach of the rehabilitation program till date has failed to be
transparent ,participatory and democratic, and dissent has been
handled with police force rather than communication."
Noting the most flagrant and open violations of the Rehabilitation
policy of the Madhya Pradesh government as well as the statutory
clearances of the Central Ministry of Environment and Forests the
team concludes that "the Project has not implemented the land for
land policy set by the government of Madhya Pradesh and by
international standards " and that the "the R&R implementing agency
has not allocated land to the landless, as called for in the
environmental clearance of the Ministry of Environment and Forests
and, in any case, required by international and other national
standards".
Instead it found that the Project authorities have misinformed the
affected people about their rights in order to compel them to accept
cash compensation rather than land, and in some cases where the
affected people insisted on their rights and refused to accept cash
compensation, stones were dumped onto their lands by the Project
authorities in order to bulldoze them into submission. It found that
in the cases that people had accepted cash in lieu of land, "the
damage to family income and future prospects arising from cash
compensation instead of land for land are already evident in the
project area and the validity of cash compensation, given the
misinformation about the R&R policy, is questionable."
It concludes that there is no cultivable land for the rehabilitation
of the affected people available in sufficient quantity even by the
admission of the Government of Madhya Pradesh itself, and that "if
the R&R policy were executed as provided, the additional cost to the
project would require an entirely new financing package several times
larger than currently provided for R&R. "
It is thus clear that in the absence of large amounts of cultivable
land and financial resources and institutional capacities to ensure a
just and fair resettlement of all the affected people, rehabilitation
is impossible.
The Maheshwar Hydroelectric project, one of the controversial 30 big
dams being built in the Narmada Valley in Central India, is the first
privatized hydel project in India. The Project will affect the homes,
lands, and livelihoods of approximately 40,000 people of the area and
submerge thousands of acres of rich, agricultural lands, scores of
sand quarries, draw down agriculture and a rich composite culture.
Since 1997, the affected people of the area have been pointing out
that the cost of power to be produced by this Project will be
prohibitively high - at least 3-4 times the current cost of power in
the area and the large part of power will be in the months when there
is a surplus of power in the state. In these circumstances by putting
electricity out of the reach of common people they anticipate that
this Project will bring darkness to the people.
They have also been pointing out that in the absence of any
cultivable land and other resources for rehabilitation , any further
construction on the Project can only lead to a massive human tragedy
and the use of the most unacceptable forms of repression and ruse on
the people struggling against this destruction. Thus it is clear
that this ill conceived and destructive Project that will pauperise
the thousands of prosperous families currently living lives of
dignity and working in this area, must immediately be scrapped,
without any further delay.
The writing is clear on the wall. After this clear and unambiguous
report, the German government must act swiftly to refuse the Hermes
guarantee to the Maheshwar Project. For the people of the valley each
day that the decision is kept hanging means a fresh outrage, a
further violation and pushing of the Project towards a fait accompli.
The Narmada Bachao Andolan also calls upon the Ogden Energy Group, a
power utility from the U.S. that has tentatively picked up 49% of the
Project equity, vacated by the German companies Bayernwerk and VEW
Energie in April 1999, to take cognizance of the ground realities and
report of the Independent Review and withdraw from the Project, now
rather than later. It may be recalled that this Project which is yet
to achieve financial closure was planned to have 78% foreign
investment . Yet besides the two German power utilities that withdrew
from the Project in the midst of an indefinite hunger strike by the
affected people in April 1999, even earlier in 1997 and 1998 , the
Bechtel Enterprises and the PacGen companies of the U.S. had first
involved themselves in and then withdrawn from the Project.
The single largest foreign component of this project is a loan from a
private German Bank, the HypoVereinsbank, which is to give the
Project over 5000 million Rs. This loan is tied to the purchase of
power equipment from the Seimens. It was in the context of this loan
that the Siemens has applied to the German govt. for an export
guarantee for this project.
In 1997 the Christian Democratic Government of Germany gave the
project in-principle guarantee. However, as disquieting news from the
project started to filter in from India, the decision to confirm the
guarantee was put on hold. The Social Democrats and Green coalition
government that came to power in 1998 also refused to confirm the
Hermes guarantee.
It was in order to resolve the contentious issues that the
Development Ministry, Government of Germany commissioned a team of
internationally renowned experts to travel to the affected area and
meet the different stake-holders and access the ground realities of
the resettlement. This team travelled to the valley in the first
fortnight of June 2000 and met affected people as well as project
promoters and govt. functionaries at the state and central levels.
The team comprised of Mr. Richard E. Bissell, presently Executive
Director of the Policy Division at the US National Research Council
and former Chairman of the World Bank's Inspection Panel, Prof.
Shekhar Singh, Environmental Expert ,faculty member at Indian
Institute of Public Administration, New Delhi and Member of the
Environmental subgroup of the Narmada Control Authority- the
statutory body looking after construction of the large dams in the
Narmada valley. and Dr. Herman Warth, well known environmental
consultant to the German and Austrian governments and to the European
Union.
Finally the Narmada Bachao Andolan calls upon the Government of India
and that of Madhya Pradesh to scrap this Maheshwar Project that is
destructive for the affected people and the state and people of
Madhya Pradesh without further delay , and to implement the cheaper
and better energy options such as pump storage on existing dams,
demand side management measures and bio- mass based dispersed power
production that were detailed in the Task Force report of the Madhya
Pradesh government.
The Narmada Bachao Andolan understands that the Indian government
will not be able to fund this expensive Project on its own. Yet, if
small amounts of public funds are injected into the Project simply in
order to force the people out of their homes, the affected people of
the valley reiterate their intentions never to let this dam be built
and assert that they will use all means at their command through non
violent direct struggle, legal redressal and mass mobilization in
order to stop this Project.
Chittaroopa Palit Urmila Patidar
Alok Agarwal
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