The River Interlinking Project: Another Disaster Waiting To Happen
By Kuldip Nayar
27 April, 2005
The Indian ExpressWhile India was busy watching the dismal performance of its over-rated cricket team, Dharaji — a small pilgrim town in Madhya Pradesh — was counting the dead. Nearly 70 bodies stuck in crevices between rocks and boulders were retrieved. But many were washed away by the torrent of water that the Indira Sagar dam of the Narmada series released to generate more power at peak hours. The dam authorities knew about the pilgrims bathing downstream. There was no warning system. Yet the turbines had to be run at full speed to meet the demand.
An inquiry has been ordered and the district magistrate transferred. The media has gone quiet because the tragedy has ceased to be news. Is it negligence or a part of pressure exerted all over to reap maximum benefits from government projects, whatever the costs? In such an atmosphere even normal safety precautions are not strictly followed. For the result-oriented end, the means do not matter. Maybe, the existing projects of the Narmada are working overtime because only a few days ago the Supreme Court observed in a judgment that no submergence of any area should take place unless the displaced were “completely” rehabilitated. In other words, the additional height to the main Narmada dam should be ruled out until the oustees were settled. True, people in Gujarat were anxious to have more water and more power. But they have always upheld the principle of rehabilitating the uprooted before moving them from their homes and lands. The Narmada Tribunal Award had laid down this many years ago.
Now that the myth of the Bhakra dam, an icon in the developmental history of independent India, has been exploded through a study it is time to find out how to have more water and power from the Narmada without increasing the dam’s height. The Bhakra dam study points out what really helped Punjab and Haryana was not the water from Bhakra but the groundwater systems and extensively developed agriculture. The dam commands only 20 per cent of the total cultivable area in Punjab and 31 per cent in Haryana. And even after 50 years, the displaced are “still struggling to put their lives back on line”.
How will Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra take care of the backlog of the 50,000 uprooted families from the Narmada area when there is no extra land available in these states? The Tehri dam victims are the worst sufferers because neither UP nor the Centre is sympathetic to their cause. True, at the time of building Bhakra, we did not know how gigantic projects could cause more harm than good. But before embarking on the Narmada and Tehri, we should have learnt from our mistakes. Big dams were not necessary and we could have got water, power and controlled floods through smaller dams at a lesser cost. The Narmada has already cost Rs 17,000 crore and we still have a long way to go.
A still bigger disaster is awaiting us on the river interlinking project. I thought it was only at the concept stage, but apparently it has become a project without any discussion in the country. The very idea of a “surplus” or a “deficit” basin needs another look. We should examine whether a projected “deficit” is the result of bad water management and unsustainable demands. Even in the states that are presumed to be water-rich — for example, Bihar, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh — there are problem areas. “Surpluses”, if any, should perhaps be first used in those states rather than sent to distant places. This gives all the more importance to the meeting to discuss the river interlinking project at Delhi on May 11. President Kalam is going to be there when top engineers, specialists, scientists and civil servants will be debating the pros and cons of the project. Let us put our heads together to find out the pluses and minuses of the project. A consensus is important because hundreds of crores of rupees would be required if the government were to take up the project.
This takes me to a larger question: whether the cost of development is in proportion to the loss from deprivation. I do not want to sound negative. But every gain has to be judged from the larger good it does. The touchstone should be how far a project thinks of the good of all. For example, displacing thousands from their homes to build plazas or malls cannot be termed as progress. There is also the question of environment that the Centre overlooks and which even the Supreme Court takes in its stride. How do the 90,000 families in Mumbai, still on the roadside, view the buildings that are going to come up at the expense of their houses? State power in a democratic system comes out of a process of competitive politics. Consequently, if it is identified too closely with narrow interests, it is bound to generate alienation and hostility in other groups.
It is no more a cliche that the rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer. The globalisation and economic reforms have primarily benefited the rich. The Manmohan Singh government should find out who has cornered the gains in the last one decade. In 1960, Jawaharlal Nehru appointed P.C. Mahalanobis, a Planning Commission member, to determine where the funds had gone and to ascertain the extent to which wealth and means of production had tended to concentrate. The Mahalanobis inquiry showed that companies having a paid-up capital of Rs 50 lakh and above constituted only 1.6 per cent of the total number of companies but accounted for 53 per cent of the total paid-up capital.
The remedy may well be in what Mahatma Gandhi suggested as far back as in November 1928: everybody should be able to get sufficient work to enable him to make the two ends meet. And this ideal can be universally realised only if the means of production of the elementary necessaries of life remain in the control of the masses. These should be freely available to all as God’s air and water are or ought to be
© 2005: Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
