Gloves are off in dam battle

The Indian Supreme Court recently dealt a huge blow to the effort to block a massive dam project that has drawn the support of well-known personalities like Booker Prize-winning writer Arundhati Roy. But India correspondent NIRMAL GHOSH reports that anti-dam protesters are not giving up the fight

NEW DELHI - Beneath a canvas canopy a few metres from the Mahatma Gandhi memo- rial, Ms Medha Patkar and others recently pledged a new Gandhian resistance movement before a gathering of some 2,000 people.

The target of the civil disobedience campaign: a multi-billion-dollar dam project.

Many of those who turned up for the rally on the banks of the Jamuna river were from the tens of thousands of families who stand to lose their homes under a permanent flood of water when the US$4-billion (S$7-billion) Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada river is raised by another few metres under a Supreme Court order.

Others were tribal and village-level leaders and activists from across the country.

There was a tinge of desperation in their voices, for last month's Supreme Court judgment ordering resumption of construction on the controversial dam threatens to permanently silence the now more than 15-year worldwide struggle to scrap it.

Ms Patkar, the charismatic and dedicated leader of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) or Save the Narmada Movement, believes the dam issue will draw all the threads together and become symbolic of the contradictions in India's development paradigm - big projects that benefit rich farmers and cities at the expense of remote, poor rural people.

Gandhian or not, the gloves are off.

A struggle that has occasionally veered towards violence was turned uglier recently by a half-page advertisement in The Indian Express alleging that the NBA was passing on confidential documents related to projects of national importance to foreigners out to block the country's progress.

It accused the movement of receiving foreign donations through the unofficial backdoor route, and of wriggling out of disclosing its finances by avoiding official registration as a non-government organisation (NGO).

DAM BUDGET OVERRUNS

SAYING the advertisement space had been 'donated by a Patriot', the text went on to suggest that the movement's blocking tactics were to blame for the cost overruns of Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) from an estimated 130 billion rupees (S$5 billion) in the early 1990s to the present 200 billion rupees.

It also attacked Arundhati Roy, the Booker Prize winning author who last year took up the cause of the NBA and became a leading spokesman against both the dam project and India's nuclear weapons programme.

The advertisement is only one tactic that pro-dam lobbyists - and there are many, from water-hungry villagers in the arid Kutch region to commercial vested interests like construction contractors - are using to discredit the NBA.

At a Nov 1 public ceremony at the dam site to mark the symbolic start to the resumed construction, Home Minister L. K. Advani, regarded as a hawkish nationalist, accused the movement of acting on behalf of 'foreign interests'.

In a clear reference to Roy, Mr Advani said it was 'more than a coincidence' that the same people were opposing both the Sardar Sarovar dam and India's nuclear weapons.

Soon after, it was reported that the government would now closely scrutinise the sources of foreign funds received by the hundreds of NGOs in India and how these bodies make use of those funds.

The decision, announced by junior Home Minister Vidyasagar Rao, is said to be targeted mainly at the popular movement against the Sardar Sarovar dam.

According to Mr Rao, Indian NGOs are expected to receive more than US$1 billion in foreign assistance this year.

'Tightening the laws has become necessary because some organisations were receiving foreign donations without the permission of the Home Ministry,' he said.

NBA leader Patkar has welcomed a special investigation into her movement and challenged the Home Minister to prove that it had used foreign money. She said that if this could not be proved, Mr Advani should step down.

Indian NGOs must provide full details to the government and apply for permission to receive donations from overseas, under existing regulations which many say are too bureaucratic and needlessly tight.

The government counters that many NGOs are fronts, while critics of the system as a whole say the set-up encourages corruption.

The Supreme Court verdict was a serious blow to the NBA - but raised eyebrows across the country because of the unusual feature of a dissenting verdict issued by one of the panel of three judges.

That factor has provided a chink of light at the end of the tunnel for the NBA, which hopes to take its case to the President.

Noted environmentalist Bittu Sahgal: 'Long before the Supreme Court became involved in the issue, the whole weight of government was ranged against the people of the Narmada. We are merely back to square one.

'The battle against the Narmada Project must continue with renewed vigour till the SSP grinds to a halt under the weight of its own contradictions - not enough money, not enough water, not enough planning.'

The cost overruns on the mega-project were partly due to the Supreme Court's four-year consideration of the public interest case filed by the NBA, the movement's spokesman said.

He added that the NBA was a people's movement and was therefore not required to register as an NGO. Its books were open to scrutiny, he said, and they would show that whatever donations it received came from within India.

The blizzard of accusations and counter-accusations that has been a feature of the controversy has often tended to obscure the simple human issues.

One placard resting against a tree near Rajghat summed it up with the words 'Below your dam sleep our ancestors.'

The day the Supreme Court verdict was announced, Ms Patkar broke down and wept.

Later on television, she encapsulated the stark contradictions involved in the dam debate when, in response to hectoring by a pro-dam Gujarat government minister, she pleaded: 'All these figures you quote are not just numbers, they are human beings!'

Pro-dam lobbyists, which include the government of Gujarat, say that if the dam had been completed last year, the summer's damaging drought in Saurashtra which killed thousands of cattle and temporarily displaced tens of thousands of people, would have been avoided.

PROBLEM OF RESETTLEMENT

APART from producing badly needed electricity and drinking water, the Narmada project is supposed to eventually irrigate up to 1,300 sq km of agricultural land in three states: Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

But in order to do this some 3,500 sq km of forests, 2,500 sq km of agricultural land and the homes of over 1.5 million people will drown.

The Gujarat government has announced that work on raising the height of the dam from the present 85 m to 90 m will begin in a week.

The Supreme Court in its ruling said it would review the environmental aspect after 90 m. The dam has a stipulated height of 138 m.

Amid the euphoria over clearance to the project, Gujarat has to now look at the mounting problem of resettlement.

Of the 40,000 people affected by the project so far, only about 12,000 have been resettled.

Most of those not yet settled are from neighbouring Madhya Pradesh, which has said it does not have the resources to do the job.

Noted Bittu Sahgal: 'Politicians and businessmen in central Gujarat will alone benefit from the million-dollar contracts being awarded.

'Some of Asia's largest sugar mills are coming up smack in the middle of the water flow to Kutch and Saurashtra.

'It insults one's intelligence to be asked to believe that sugar barons and industrialists will embrace 'voluntary drought' in favour of their 'thirsty brethren' in drought-ridden Kutch and Saurashtra.'

Speaking to Sunday Review, writer Roy said the NBA was still trying to evolve a strategy in the wake of the Supreme Court judgement.

One prong of that strategy would call for protesters, in typical civil disobedience fashion, to block efforts to build the dam.

But she said she feared the confrontation over the Narmada ran the risk of becoming more brutal.

'This is a fishbowl for all development projects. It has ripped off the smiling mask. Big dams are no longer temples, they are graveyards.

'I don't see anything except a more spiralling and brutal confrontation. The state is going to not only beat it down but try to hide it. Thousands will lose their homes,' she said.