The Narmada dam has been in the news for a number of weeks now. First it was because its height was going to be increased from 113 metres to 121.92 metres. Then, because the leader of the anti-Narmada dam movement, Medha Patkar, was forcibly taken to hospital. She is on an indefinite hunger strike to stop the height of the dam from being raised, and was taken to hospital by the police who feared for her life. Most recently, the people of Gujarat have been raging against film star Aamir Khan for supporting the anti-dam movement.

What isit about this dam that’s getting so many people so angry?

The Narmada dam, officially the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP), is a development scheme proposed by the three states of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh on the 1,289 km-long river Narmada which flows through them. Originally the plan was to construct 30 large, 135 medium and 3,000 small dams along the river. These dams were supposed to generate electricity and provide irrigation and drinking water to the three states, and Rajasthan.

When people speak of the Narmada dam now, they mean the biggest dam which, when and if it is finished, will flood an area the size of New Delhi.

Although the Narmada dam has been sporadically in the news for the last 10 years, it’s actually quite an old project. The then prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, laid the dam’s foundation stone as far back as 1961. It was then supposed to be 49.8 metres high. The entire project is supposed to be finished by 2025, by which time the height of the dam will be around 130 metres.

In the middle of the last century, dams were considered necessary for countries to develop. Most countries, rich or poor, that had big rivers built dams.

The main function of dams is to block the flow of a river and store the water so that it can be released slowly when needed. They are usually built for electricity and irrigation but are also supposed to prevent seasonal flooding by controlling the flow of water downstream, and to help during a drought by allowing stored water to be used when needed. Since they did not seem to pollute, like coal or nuclear generators, dams were considered environmentally safe. The electricity and the irrigation helped industries and agriculture grow wherever dams were built, helping the country itself to grow. Hence most developing countries were encouraged to build dams by the industrialised countries working through the World Bank and other aid agencies. In fact, the World Bank and a Japanese aid agency were originally the biggest foreign funders of the Sardar Sarovar Project.

Since then, the tide has turned and people have begun to realise that big dams often cause more problems than they solve. By blocking the natural flow of rivers they completely change the downstream ecology. For example they don’t allow fish to swim to their natural breeding grounds, and the water storage area behind the dam floods large areas, destroying forests and killing animals. Dams can be dangerous during earthquakes as they could collapse, flooding vast areas downstream. Some people suspect that the weight of the water behind a dam may actually increase the frequency and intensity of an earthquake.

In the developing world, the most serious problem caused by dams is displacement. When a dam is built, especially one as big as the Narmada dam, a huge number of people need to be moved from their lands and homes to make way for the flooded reservoir. The size of the reservoir depends on the height of the dam. The taller the dam, the more water it can store behind it, hence the larger the area that will be flooded, therefore more people will be displaced. People who have lived in a particular village for generations may suddenly be told to move, to give up their ancestral lands and their livelihoods. This is why so many people were against the construction of the Narmada dam; thousands were going to be chucked out of their lands. And these are mostly poorer people, tribals and other small farmers whose families have lived, farmed and worked alongside the river Narmada for centuries.

Meanwhile, the supposed benefits of the dam do not go to the displaced people but to richer people: the electricity and drinking water to people in the cities, and the irrigation water to richer downstream farmers. Those asked to make sacrifices in the name of the dam receive nothing.

Officially, the displaced people are supposed to be compensated and resettled. This means giving them money and alternative land where they can farm and live the way they used to before they were displaced.

This was not done in the case of the Sardar Sarovar Project. And so the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), with Medha Patkar as its leader, sprang up to fight the cause of the displaced people. The NBA has been fighting for over 20 years now, trying to stop the dam with its destruction and displacement of villages and people. The organisation realised that nearly half-a-million people would be affected by the project, and the environment dramatically altered, while very few people were actually benefiting.

In a way this dam is a symbol of India’s development, where a few well-off people get richer whilst the poor stay poor and have to give up the little they have.

The NBA, with help from international organisations fighting dam-building in their countries, built such a good case against the dam that the World Bank and the Japanese aid agency backed out and stopped their funding. The World Bank did its own research into the SSP and came out with a very negative report.

The NBA also took the dam-builders to the Supreme Court. Though the Supreme Court did not manage to stop construction on the dam and sided with the government on the issue, one thing it did insist on is that resettlement had to be carried out along with construction; that there could be no construction without resettlement.

Then, suddenly on March 8, 2006, from its present height of 113 metres, permission was given to increase the height of the dam to 121.92 metres. This is why Medha Patkar started her hunger strike, because the state governments decided to increase the height of the dam before people had been properly resettled. According to the NBA, over 35,000 dam-affected families are yet to be rehabilitated. If construction goes ahead, against the orders of the Supreme Court, these families will be forgotten.

-- Manoj Nadkarni

InfoChange News & Features, April 2006