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Dalip D’Souza takes an
independent look at the controversial dam. He professes not to
speak for the Narmada Bachao Movement. He concedes that he is
not against all dams, some like the Bhakra have helped usher in
the Green Revolution, neither is he advocating smaller dams. But
he is very forceful and convincing on these very issues.
"The Nile,
perhaps the world’s most reliable river, sustained
civilisation in Egypt for thousands of years. It did this by
flooding Egypt’s arable land every spring. The floods carried
away the salts of previous year and deposited a fertile layer of
fresh silt. In the Mediterranean, a huge sardine fishery
flourished, nourished by the Nile’s yearly flooding". The
Aswan dam changed all this. The Nile no longer floods its coast
and no longer fertilises it every year. The silt accumulates in
the Aswan dam and the Sardine fishery is near extinction. The
farmer irrigates his land through canals and consequently
salinity and water logging are increasing. In Iraq, over 20 per
cent of arable land is permanently destroyed because of salinity
caused by canal irrigation.
In the name of
development we have no right to destroy forests or rivers. Look
at the Yamuna, the Eastern Yamuna canal took the Yamuna waters
to UP and the Western Yamuna canal diverted the remaining water
to Haryana. Both these canals have virtually killed the Yamuna.
From a perennial river it is now a seasonal stream that comes to
life only in the monsoon. Towns built on its banks are thirsting
for water. Delhi, a city that came up thousands of years ago,
because Yamuna flowed nearby, today has no water. The concept
that water flowing into the sea goes waste needs reassessment.
Rivers were meant to flow, providing water, flushing the salts
into the sea; and recharging the subsoil water along its banks.
Rivers flowed into the sea and monsoon brought sea water back as
rain. The Narmada Project is in totality a series of 10 dams on
the Narmada and a score of dams on its tributaries. The Bargi
dam on the Narmada was completed in 1990, after 16 years. It
displaced 1,00,000 people, who were given a measly Rs 3,000-4000
per acre. D’Souza is opposed to the Narmada dam as he believes
it to be illconceived for it would result in development of
people far away at the cost of uprooting many. Of those who
would be evicted by the Sardar Sarovar dam, almost half are
tribespeople. The dam would provide 1700 MW of electricity and
supply irrigation to M.P. and Gujarat. It is however touted as a
lifeline to Kutch for bringing drinking water to the region. But
D’Souza points out that this will become a reality only after
30 years. He advocates that we should explore other means to
conserve water.
With such
conflicting stands, it seems we are damned if we build and
damned if we don’t. It’s like the farmer who came back after
visiting his two married daughters. One was married to a farmer
and the other to a potter. The potter said that he would be
ruined if it rained as his unfired pottery would be washed away,
the farmer said that he would be ruined if it did not rain.
The Narmada dam,
however, is not that simple. It is a complex issue and the
controversy over it continues.
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DAMS
are no longer accepted as fountainheads of development. Long ago,
when droughts and famine were a recurring feature, dams were seen as
safeguards from floods and droughts. Harnessing water for irrigation
and power certainly ushered in the Green Revolution and laid the
industrial base. Nehru can be credited for building the largest
dams, Bhakra, Damodar, Hirakud, to name a few. He called them our
new temples. We have become a nation of dam builders. That was an
age when people did not protest when evicted from their lands. But,
then there was land on which the evicted people could be resettled.
The government’s record of rehabilitation has been poor through
all these years. There was forest land in the Terai and irrigated
land in Bikaner. Today after 50 years, with a population that has
quadrupled, there is no land to resettle the evicted.
