Justice Needed At Indira Sagar
By Angana Chatterji
21 September, 2005
Asian AgeFor those held captive by the Indira Sagar Pariyojana (also Narmada Sagar), the Madhya Pradesh High Court Order of July 27 and August 17, 2005 sets an unprecedented context for justice.
The people of the Narmada Valley are the nation's émigrés. They live within its borders, treated with contempt. In construction since 1984, the Indira Sagar multipurpose project is scheduled to displace over 175,212 people in western Madhya Pradesh. Records show that about 16 per cent of the displaced are adivasis. Almost 80 per cent of the total population engage in cultivation.
Most are economically disenfranchised. The Indira Sagar is one of 30 large dams on the River Narmada. At 262.19 metres, it stands to submerge 249 villages, 91,348 hectares of land, 41,444 of which are forests, to yield 1,000 MW of electricity and irrigate 123,000 hectares of land, a third of which is already irrigated. The resettlement and rehabilitation policy, shaped by the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal Award (NWDTA) of 1979, includes a land for land clause.
Even in its present and inadequate form, resettlement and rehabilitation provisions are systematically violated. Rehabilitation, when it occurs, discounts differences in culture and gender, ecology and society, occupation, religion, and ability. Families and communities are broken apart, forcing alienation, struggles with the unfamiliar, new forms of poverty, disrespect. Compensation amounts disable people from purchasing alternative agricultural land.
There are no provisions for socio-psychological rehabilitation that responds to the extensive trauma experienced by those displaced. Diverse categories of evicted peoples are excluded in determining rehabilitation, in some instances disregarding their inclusion as stipulated by the government's own policies. The condition of disenfranchisement is used against the poor to invalidate their right to life and livelihood.
In July 2004, Harsud was evacuated at gunpoint, as 85 villages remained partially and fully submerged, and 32 others waited to sink. A Dalit woman from Bhavarali village testified: "They (government officials) said we were getting in the way of the dam. Sometimes I think it would be easier to drown, easier if my children were not born." The government of Madhya Pradesh (GoMP) proposed to shut down 20 gates of the dam, ensuing submergence for 91 additional villages in the monsoon of 2005. On December 31, 2004, the GoMP ordered that the evacuation of 91 villages be completed by April 30, 2005, displacing 10,000 families.
That's when the people of Indira Sagar said "No." They refused to move. The government's diktat contravened the injunctions of the Supreme Court writ petition [(Civil) No. 1201/1990] that resettlement be completed in all respects at least six months in advance of any likely submergence, and the NWDTA, decreeing rehabilitation of all impacted families at least one year prior to submergence.
Over two decades, the people of the Narmada Valley have been profuse and prolific in their resistance to large dams, to the state capture of adivasi and peasant lands through development and nationalisation. In Indira Sagar, the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA, Save the Narmada Movement) involved itself since July 2004 to mobilise struggle. Solidarity across affected peoples of the Narmada has been integral to shaping dissent to Indira Sagar.
In April 2005, a massive rally at Khandwa pledged to fight for justice. As homes were demolished, in May 2005, Ram Kuwar, from Khedibalwadi, Maan dam, others from Sardar Sarovar travelled to Indira Sagar to support and organise. On May 7, 2005, the NBA filed a writ petition [(Civil) No. 3022/2005] to challenge the state in court.
Chittaroopa Palit testified for 25 hours, on behalf of the 10,000 affected families. On July 27 and August 17, 2005, the division bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court passed its interim order.
The July 27 order expresses the court's outrage at the GoMP's December 2004 notification, citing that compensation efforts began only after April 30, 2005. In answer to the NBA's petition, the interim order adjudicated that the GoMP and National Hydro Development Corporation (NHDC, implementing authority) stop construction at 255 metres to halt the 91 villages from drowning.
The court directed that the government offer Rs 10 crores to recompense those evicted without compensation, without house-plots or agricultural lands, and in violation of the six-month rule. The court's decision extended to include the nearly 100,000 people impacted by backwater effect (in hydrology-speak, raising of surface water upstream as a consequence of the dam) who have until now been barred from rehabilitation processes. The court stated that the Narmada Control Authority (NCA) failed to monitor the submergence survey, and rehabilitation and resettlement of oustees.
The court asked that monitoring and grievance procedures be set up, ordering that the Grievance Redressal Authority convene weekly to receive complaints. The bench instructed that resettlement and rehabilitation of the 91 villages be completed by December 31, 2005. Conditional on which, the court ruled, the GoMP might commence the submergence of these villages during the monsoon of 2006.
While the court clarified that the NBA's conduct or intent are not in question, in retaliation, the minister in charge of Narmada development from the GoMP's ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has rumoured that the Andolan is engaged in corruption and anti-national acts. Immediately after the July 27 order, the GoMP disobeyed its prescriptions.
On August 3, 2005, Fatehgarh, an adivasi village on the Narmada, from where you can gaze at Joga Kala's historic fort, was attacked by 400 policepersons, two male residents beaten, 60 houses broken. The sub-divisional magistrate of Kannaud harassed Meema, an adivasi woman, baiting her to leave. She refused, and was threatened and intimidated by the police.
Twenty-one houses were razed in mid-June. Flouting the six-month tenet and resettlement provisions, 200 resident families were awarded compensation, arbitrarily, in end-July. Three days later the police arrived, municipality workers participated, bulldozers cracked homes.
The people of Indira Sagar maintain hope in anguish, resolute in resistance. They are affirmed, even elated, by the court's decision, yet sceptical of the state's adherence to the rule of law. Their resistance is shaped by a larger despair, as they are forced to leave what is "home." The state apparatus, diverse, often incongruent, here, acts in concert, with methodical callousness, to subjugate.
The human rights practises of the GoMP, NCA, Narmada Valley Development Authority, NHDC, and its progenitor, National Hydroelectric Power Corporation, record the absence of transparent functioning, vast neglect and egregious abuses. How will the judiciary enforce accountability on part of the state and its affiliate corporations?
As we witness the magnitude of the disaster following passage of Hurricane Katrina through south/south-east United States, and the severity of ineptitude and racism in the US government's response, evidence suggests that the impact on New Orleans is compounded by the mismanagement of the Mississippi river, where the construction of 29 dams has led to the sinking of the Louisiana coast.
Large dams do not work. The world over, those economically poor and socially disenfranchised bear the burden of elite modernisation. Accompanied by liberal development, state-administered terrorism, majoritarian nationalism, and the consolidation of a cohesive middle-class base, nation building in India continues the subordination of marginalised castes, women, adivasis, religious minorities.
The imaginary of maldevelopment collaborates to displace and mutilate, commit ecocide, ethnocide (Narmada, Bhopal, Kashipur). A hundred thousand Harsuds: purposefully planned, performed, labelled "necessary," called "progress."
"Our struggle is for the Narmada, the people and the river, the forests and wildlife," Chittaroopa says, "it is also for a world we wish in which people are not pauperised, but treated with dignity and humanity." Will the state submit to those of conscience in Indira Sagar, to chart a different, ethical, course?
Angana Chatterji is associate professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at California Institute of Integral Studies
