Injustice At
Indira Sagar Dam
A Report
Read
the full report here
In
August 2004, the National Campaign for People's Right to Information
of India constituted an independent people's commission to investigate
the present situation of displacement, resettlement, relief and rehabilitation,
in the villages and towns affected and submerged as a result of the
Indira Sagar Pariyojana multipurpose project (alternatively, the Narmada
Sagar Dam) in western India, and those that are due to submerge in the
future. The two person commission was convened by Naresh C. Saxena,
Member of the National Advisory Council of the Government of India and
former Secretary of the Planning Commission of India, and is comprised
of Angana P. Chatterji, Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology,
California Institute of Integral Studies, and Harsh Mander, Member,
National Campaign for People's Right to Information and Right to Food
Campaign. In early August, Dr. Chatterji and Mr. Mander visited Harsud,
neighboring villages, and resettlement sites in Khandwa District in
Madhya Pradesh. They heard over 1400 people at public hearings, and
held extensive meetings with, among others, Chittaroopa Palit and Alok
Agarwal of the Narmada Bachao Andolan. The Commission is in the process
of submitting its report to the National Advisory Council of the Government
of India, headed by Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi.
The Commission's
report, entitled, "Without land or Livelihood. The Indira Sagar
Dam: State Accountability and Rehabilitation Issues", states:
"Significant
research demonstrates that large dams incur considerably more costs
than benefits, and it has been amply confirmed that the social and ecological
damage that results from large dams is prohibitive and disproportionately
borne by marginalized peoples and cultures. This Commission finds the
Indira Sagar Pariyojana in Khandwa district in Madhya Pradesh to be
no exception
We find that vast human rights abuses have taken
place and that the Government of Madhya Pradesh in the construction
of the Indira Sagar Pariyojana has perpetrated indefensible social,
political and economic injustices on the people of the Narmada Valley.
Affected people across cultures, classes and genders continue to endure
conditions that are dehumanizing and cruel in a context bereft of processes
allowing an acknowledgment of the enormity of the decimation and resources
necessary to heal from it. It is of particular concern that poor and
disenfranchised people are treated with contempt by the state, as groups
to whom the nation is not accountable. The violence of the everyday
experienced by individuals and communities is incomprehensible, as brutality
and oppression are administered through the state's mistreatment of
the affected. These injustices also highlight the severe and existing
hierarchies of caste, tribe, religion and gender in the state, and compound
social suffering and cultural violence in the name of development."
The Commission made 32 recommendations including a directive to amend
the 1987 Rehabilitation Policy of the Government of Madhya Pradesh to
allow for land compensation to the landless, ensuring the eligibility
and assured access of all cultivators, including landless workers, to
housing and cultivable agricultural land.
Read
the full report here