The Narmada Valley Development Project
is a plan to construct 30 large, 135 medium-sized and 3,000 small
dams in India’s Narmada Valley to provide drinking and irrigation water
and electricity for the development of agriculture and industry in the
four states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan in the
western part of the country. Disputes over the actual distribution of
the water of the Narmada River have been on-going since the 1960s. It
was not until 1979—after 10 years of negotiations—that
arrangements for sharing and using water by the four benefiting states
were defined
by the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal.
Protests against the dams by landowners, farmers and other affected
people have been going on since the beginning of the project. It
was not until
the 1980s that the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), a coalition of villagers
and farmers threatened to be affected or displaced by the dams, students,
activists and other concerned people, came to fruition. In the true
spirit
of Satyagraha ("truth-action"), the non-violent civil disobedience
movement begun by Mohandas Gandhi, the NBA’s struggle against
the dams has involved educating, organizing and civil disobedience.
People
in flood zones have threatened to stand in the rising waters until
they drown rather than leave their homes and accept the insufficient
rehabilitation
and relocation packages offered by the government.
The NBA’s success in organizing protests against the dams have brought
worldwide attention to the highly-charged environmental, social and political
stakes of large dams. Pressure from the NBA and groups around the world
forced the World Bank to conduct the first ever independent review of
one of its projects. Completed in 1992, the independent review substantiated
the NBA’s claims about the environmental and social impacts of the
dams. It found that the government’s calculations on the amount
of energy to be produced and the number of people to be affected
were completely
inaccurate. It also found the rehabilitation and relocation efforts
of the government to be insufficient and in violation of human rights.
As
a result, the World Bank withdrew its funding in 1993.
Most recently, the focal point of the NBA has been the $8.1 billion
Sardar Sarovar dam in the state of Gujarat. In 1994, they filed a
case against
the building of the dam with the Supreme Court of India. After reviewing
the case, the Court issued a cease-building order, granting the NBA
a
major victory. After a four-year stay, however, in February of 1999
the government allowed the height of the dam to be raised five meters.
In
response, Medha Paktar, one of the NBA’s leaders, fasted and held
prolonged periods of silence in an effort to force the creation of a new
tribunal and to end the construction of the Sardar Sarovar dam, and also
called for a full review of the project. If the dam is completed, it could
force the relocation of more than 500,000 people. The issue came to a
head last August when heavy rains caused reservoir waters to rise. Paktar
and more than 60 activists—"Satyagrahis"—stood for
several hours in waist-high waters (see photo). Their slogan became "not
moving but drowning." Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small
Things, joined anti-dam protests and has been vocal in her opposition
to the dams
(see interview). The Satyagrahis were eventually
arrested and many were beaten. The Indian Supreme Court began a final
hearing on the Sardar Sarovar dam on February 29, 2000 and the case is
still pending.
