by Dilip D'Souza

Are dams political symbols?

With its 18 October 2000 judgement, the Supreme Court allowed construction to resume on the Sardar Sarovar dam. But controversy still rages around the dam, and any chance of debate between the widely differing opinions on it is drowned in angry rhetoric. Where does that leave the common man in the affected states, or even elsewhere in the country? Seeking answers, activist and journalist Dilip D’Souza searches beyond polemics for an understanding of the Narmada project.

Analysing documents put out by the dam authorities themselves, the author builds his simple thesis--that regardless of conflicting feelings on the dam, the way it has been conceived and is being built should be a matter of grave, general concern. He finds a pervasive haziness in the way key issues recurring in this material are addressed—the statements of aims (the ‘lifeline of Kutch and Saurashtra’), the numbers of people displaced, the benefits claimed for the dam.

Besides, there are innumerable contradictions in the figures presented. Further, D’Souza’s first-hand experiences among affected people only underline this gap between paper and fact, and the inescapable conclusion he reaches is that dams are being built less for solving the problems of water, floods and power, and more for the sake of politics.

Such findings in themselves, besides the alternative strategies described, constitute the strongest case against dams like the Sardar Sarovar. Passionate and incisive, this book becomes a searing indictment of the type of development we have pursued since independence.

This is the context in which I want to place this book.

After all, as their champions will tirelessly point out, dams do bring benefits. Electricity, water, improved agricultural production, the control of floods, and so on. In India, we have grown up learning about the great boon of Punjab's Green Revolution, brought about not just by Norman Borlaug and his radically new strains of grain, but also by the water the Bhakra-Nangal dam delivers across the state. And you can find more such dams, such gifts to India, all over the country—Hirakud, Tungabhadra, Nagarjunasagar and many more.

Besides, it was by building all these dams—and we Indians have been some of the world's most industrious dam-builders—that free India showed the world it was a nation that could stand on its own. I suspect there's a good argument to be made that in the first decades after independence, these dams gave us the self-respect and worth that a young nation seeks. Hadn't Jawaharlal Nehru reminded us, on that ecstatic day in 1947, of our 'tryst with destiny'? And hadn't Nehru himself famously proclaimed dams the 'temples of modern India'? 'What a stupendous, magnificent work,' said Nehru as he walked around the Bhakra dam site, 'a work which only that nation can take up which has faith and boldness!' (McCully: 1)

And, in fact, it is that spirit that suffuses the building of the dams on the Narmada. I have a 1988 leaflet about the Sardar Sarovar dam, which lists four 'Unique features of the project':

i. About 7 million [cubic metres] of chilled concrete will be placed in the Dam. This is the highest quantity of concrete to be placed in any dam in India. This quantity is equivalent to the quantity that would be normally required to construct say one lane concrete road around the equator.

ii. For erecting [cable ways to lay concrete] height of A-frame required will be nearly 1 1/2 times the height of the famous Kutub Minar. Such a huge system involving placement of concrete at a rate of 7000 cubic metres/day has never been operated in India.

iii. The Underground River Bed Power House ... will be one of the biggest hydro electric underground power house in the country.

iv. The main canal ... will be largest capacity Irrigation Canal in the World. (Sardar Sarovar Narmada Project leaflet).

This is no mere accusation. In a publicity booklet about the Sardar Sarovar dam, the then-chairman of the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Limited (SSNNL), Sanat Mehta, says: '[T]his is the first ever project of the country wherein rehabilitation problem was considered in much details [sic]....[If] the project would have been executed in the old fashion, its cost would have been far less.' [Emphasis added] (Mehta, no date).

Mehta goes on to praise the rehabilitation package for the Narmada oustees, but these sentences say a lot. Through the first few decades of independence, rehabilitation was never a priority with our dam builders. That was the way it was in the 'old fashion' style of dam building.

To explain this away, the popular wisdom was that it was a question of trade-offs. If you wanted progress, 'some' people would have to sacrifice. After all, it was in the national interest.

A fine sounding mantra, and it kept the shame successfully hidden for many years. But it couldn't last. Soon, some Indians began to ask increasingly uncomfortable questions. Who are these people who are expected to sacrifice? How many are there, have there been? Why are the same people affected so often, some of them twice and thrice over? Is this trade-off itself reasonable? Is progress always to be achieved at their cost, and if so, is it truly progress? Is it truly in the national interest? In fact, whose is the national interest, really?

As plans for damming the Narmada took shape through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, there was no reason to expect anything but the same story to unfold: of the state's indifference to the issue of rehabilitation, despite people's questions. And yet it was these very questions that resulted in the plans for resettlement and rehabilitation (R&R) that Sanat Mehta praises in that booklet.

To me, all of this says that it is time that we began discussing dams not just in terms of their costs and benefits. Certainly there is a value to that kind of analysis and it must be done, but, as we have seen on the Narmada, the debate always ends in stalemate. To me, a definitely interested observer, it has become increasingly clear that dams are not built because of, or after, a careful consideration of costs and benefits. They are, above all, symbols. In our early years, they were symbols of Indian prowess. More recently, and especially in Gujarat, they have become symbols of a particular notion of progress, of that elusive idea of 'development.'

Why are such symbols important? There is an unstated, though hardly subtle, logic at work here. After all, surely every true Indian must want his country to progress and develop. And if dams are designated markers of that progress, we must build them, mustn't we? The builders of dams want us to make just this link in our minds. And those who speak out against dams, why, they must want India to remain backward and undeveloped. What's more, such people cannot be true Indians. In fact, they are antinational.

Development is thus easily conflated with a concept such as patriotism—because this conflation allows opponents to be branded as anti-national, their arguments ridiculed for that reason rather than on the merits. This is a theme that runs through whatever debate takes place about dams today. In fact, in Gujarat, criticizing the Sardar Sarovar dam is seen as akin to urging the secession of Kashmir. Not something to be done lightly, and certainly not something that any political party would indulge in. Which is why every political party in the state has made so much political capital on the Sardar Sarovar dam. In the end, dams are political symbols. That's why they are built. That's the way we must debate them.

The Narmada Dammed: An Inquiry into the Politics of Development
By Dilip D'Souza
ISBN: 0143028650
Penguine Books, India

Branded by Law examines the lives of native tribes in India. It is an exploration of what it means to brand entire communities criminal, to live your life treated as a criminal simply because you are born in that community. The book also traces the historical and political roots of why certain tribes were notified ‘criminal tribes’ by the British, the constitutional attempts to denotify them after Independence and the current socio-political impacts. The core spirit of the book, however, is really an examination of prejudice.

Branded by Law: Looking at India’s Denotified Tribes
By Dilip D'Souza
ISBN: 0141007494
Penguine Books, India