Published in Times of India 25.10.2000

The People vs the God of Big Dams

By Arundhati Roy

On the morning of the 18th of October the three judge bench of the Supreme

Court delivered its verdict on the PIL filed by the Narmada Bachao Andolan

against the Union of India and the state governments of Gujarat,

Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. After six-and-a-half years of litigation,

the primary imperative of what has come to be called `the majority

judgment' by Chief Justice Anand and Justice Kirpal is that the

construction of the (currently 88 metre high) Sardar Sarovar Dam be

completed as `expeditiously' as possible. Further, it says that the court

ought to have no role in deciding such matters. (Ought it to take a six

year legal injunction and three Supreme Court judges to come to this

profound conclusion?) Justice Bharucha, the only one of the three judges on

the Bench to have heard the case through from the time it was filed, wrote

a dissenting judgment, detailing the reasons why he could not bring himself

to agree with his brother judges.

In an earlier essay on the Narmada valley, The Greater Common Good, (for

which I was rapped on the knuckles by the Supreme Court), I described how

successfully the Indian State has used all the institutions at its command

- the army, the police, the bureaucracy, the courts - to achieve what it

set out to achieve. To appropriate India's resources - including its land,

its forests, its rivers - and redistribute them to a favoured few. The

Indian State is superbly accomplished in the art of protecting the cadres

of its paid-up elite and pulverising those who inconvenience its

intentions. Its finest feat of all is the way it achieves all this and

emerges smelling sweet. (After all, we're not Burma, or Indonesia, or

Rwanda or even Pakistan. We're the proud citizens of the world's biggest

democracy.) If you want a quick fix on how the smell is sweetened, a sort

of Lazy Person's Guide to The Way India Works, read the two Supreme Court

judgments side by side. Had Justice Bharucha chosen not to place his

dissent on record, we would never have known the unimaginable process by

which the Sardar Sarovar project insinuated itself into the world. For

this, I doff my cap to Mr Bharucha. Thank you sir.

In 1961 Nehru laid the foundation stone for a 49.8 metre high dam - the

midget progenitor of the Sardar Sarovar. In 1979, after the Narmada Water

Disputes Tribunal announced its award, the Sardar Sarovar was redesigned to

be a massive, 138.68 metre high dam, which, though located in Gujarat,

would submerge villages in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.

In 1985, before any detailed studies had been done, before any costs were

computed, before anybody had any idea what the human cost or environmental

impact of the dam would be, even before the Union ministry of environment

cleared the project, the World Bank sanctioned a 450 million dollar loan.

(Eight years later, in March 1993, after commissioning an Independent

Review, which said that the project was inherently flawed and that

rehabilitation would be impossible, the World Bank withdrew from the

project. This does not absolve it from the sin of setting the ball in

play.)

As soon as the World Bank load was in place, the state governments set up

an unseemly clamouring for the project to be approved by the Ministry of

Environment and Forests regardless of the fact that no proper studies had

been done. In his judgment, Justice Bharucha documents this process in

detail, quoting note after incriminating note.

In October 1986, a Note was prepared by the Ministry of Water Resources on

the environmental aspects of the Sardar Sarovar project. It said that the

clearance of the projects from the environmental angle and under the Forest

Conservation Act 1980 had become a matter of urgency for the governments of

Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh (that luscious loan was waiting). The Ministry

of Environment and Forests said that it was doing its best ``but have been

finding the material submitted inadequate and unsatisfactory.'' Under a

sub-heading ``Should the project be taken up at all?'', the Note said that

abandoning the project was not advisable even though critical information

(which would take at least three years to collect) was not available. There

is a remarkable, Kafkaesque section in the Note: ``with the project

postponed for three years and with no assurance at the end of that period

that the decision will be positive, it is difficult to believe that all

these studies, surveys and plans relating to the environmental aspects will

be pursued with energy and enthusiasm and the necessary resources devoted

to them. In other words, the postponement of the decision in the interest

of collecting information...may in fact prove to be a self defeating

exercise.''

In other words, the government sees no point in doing studies unless it

already knows the outcome will be favourable to the project. (And,

axiomatically, if it already knows the outcome, why bother with the

studies?)

On November 20, 1986, another Note was prepared by the Ministry of Water

Resources and forwarded to the Additional Secretary to the Prime Minister.

Considering the fact that basic data on vital aspects of the project was

still not available the Note says ``there could be but one conclusion, that

the project(s) are not ready for approval.'' Yet on January 15, 1987 a note

was put up to the Prime Minister by his Secretary, seeking his approval for

conditional joint clearance of the Sardar Sarovar and Narmada Sagar

projects. The Department of Environment and Forests said that the

rehabilitation plan was not ready, that land had not been surveyed, that

areas of land use capability and water availability had not been identified

and the land being suggested for rehabilitation, prima facie appeared to be

infertile. The PM's Secretary, however, said that the project had been

waiting for clearance for over seven years (what were they doing all that

time?) and that the chief ministers of MP and Gujarat were ``keenly

awaiting'' it. On January 19, 1987 the Prime Minister (Rajiv Gandhi) jotted

a hand-written comment on the note: ``Perhaps this is a good time to try

for a River Valley Authority, discuss.''

This is the only thing on record that constitutes the `Prime Minister's

clearance'. This single throwaway sentence is then used to announce to the

press that the projects have been cleared. The file is judiciously fattened

with various notes and letters from the state governments hailing the

clearance.

On June 24, 1987, based on what the Ministry itself called inadequate

information, the Ministry of Environment and Forests gave a clearance to

the projects subject to several conditions including a Catchment Area

Treatment Scheme, Command Area Development Plan and the submission of a

Rehabilitation Master Plan. In his dissenting `minority' judgment, Justice

Bharucha says ``An environment clearance based on next to no data in regard

to the environmental impact of the project was contrary to the terms of the

then policy of the Union of India in regard to environmental clearances

and, therefore, no clearance at all.'' His judgment goes on to say that it

was mandatory under the conditions of clearance that catchment area

treatment and the full rehabilitation of all displaced people be completed

before any water is impounded in the reservoir. According to Justice

Bharucha, the fact that this has not happened constitutes a clear violation

of the conditions of clearance. He says that in the 13 years that have

passed since the conditional clearance, no comprehensive environmental

impact assessment has been done. For all these reasons the dissenting

judgment says that the project must be sent back to the Ministry of

Environment for fresh clearance after proper studies have been done.

The `majority judgment' however, sweeps this aside calling environmental

clearance ``only an administrative requirement.'' Only an administrative

requirement? Environmental clearance for two dams whose reservoirs will,

between them, hold more water than any other reservoir in the Indian

subcontinent is only an administrative requirement? What sort of precedent

does this set for the planners of the 695 big dams that are being planned

and constructed in India right now? Should they throw darts at a map where

they want to build a dam and then go ahead and build it? Will the Supreme

Court support them pari pasu?

The `majority judgment' actually goes on to blame the NBA for filing the

petition so late. ``For any project which is approved after due

deliberation (notice how in the course of 13 years a Prime Minister's

casual one-liner becomes `due deliberation') the Court should refrain from

being asked to review the decision...Pleas relating to height of the dam

and the extent of submergence, environment studies and clearance,

hydrology, seismicity and other issues except implementation of relief and

rehabilitation, cannot be raised at this belated stage.''

What this means is that the government sees no point in doing studies

before the project starts, and that citizens have no right to question it

once construction begins. The message from the highest court in the land is

pretty clear: Poor? Adivasi? Dalit? Happen to live in the submergence zone

of a big dam? Tough luck. Go away, and go quietly.

The `majority judgment' decrees that the project should be completed

according to the guidelines of the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal Award

under the supervision of the Narmada Control Authority (NCA), supposedly an

independent authority. The Chairman of the NCA Review Committee is the

Minister of Water Resources. The Chairman of the NCA itself is Secretary,

Ministry of Water Resources. (Round and round the apple tree. Little

partner dance with me...) Never mind that for 13 years the NCA has

consistently violated the Award of the Tribunal, which is what led to the

filing of the petition in the first place. Despite this shocking record,

their lordships see no reason to ``assume that the authorities will not

function properly.'' In October 2000, 13 years after the so-called

``environmental clearance'' and commencement of construction, the court

asks the NCA to produce within four weeks a Rehabilitation Master Plan

which they haven't managed to produce in 13 years. Mind you, we're still

talking of a plan --not of actual rehabilitation.

In 1979, the number of families that were to be `officially' displaced by

the SSP was 6,000. In 1987, it was 12,000. In 1991, it surged to 27,000. In

1994, when the petition was filed it was 41,500. That's more than 200,000

people. Today God knows what the real figure is. The court has it on

affidavit from the government of Madhya Pradesh (the state to which 80 per

cent of the displaced people belong) that it has no land for

rehabilitation. In the last 13 years, since construction began, MP has not

provided a single hectare of agricultural land for rehabilitation. What's

more, the governments of MP and Maharashtra have said under oath on legal

affidavits that 368 families who have been displaced by the present height

of the dam (88 metres) have not been given land. (Of course the MP

government doesn't mention the 114,000 oustees from the Bargi Dam and the

30,000 oustees from the Maheshwar Dam and the indeterminate number of

oustees from all the other dams it has planned, who have also not been

given land). And yet, the Supreme Court of India clears the immediate

raising of the dam height up to 90 metres.

In other words, it orders the violation of the Tribunal Award. For the BJP

government in Gujarat this comes as a life-raft. Having suffered a severe

setback in the local panchayat elections, the judgment couldn't have been

better-timed for the Gujarat government had drafted it itself. The perfect

Diwali gift for a perfect government. Honestly, some people have all the

luck.

After having repeatedly prevented the NBA from making any submissions in

court on the merits and demerits of Big Dams, the last few pages of the

`majority' judgment launch into a badly written eulogy to big dams based on

no evidence whatsoever. Two quotes, two points:

(a) The petitioner has not been able to point out a single instance where

construction of a large dam has, on the whole had an adverse environmental

impact. On the contrary the environment has improved.

Maybe their lordships don't travel very much. They could go to Punjab and

have a water-logged weekend in the command area of the famous Bhakra Nangal

Dam. Or stay at home and read the study of 300 projects by the Expert

Committee on River Valley projects which found that 89 per cent of them

violated the guidelines laid down by the Ministry of Environment. Or just

keep in mind that despite India's 3,600 Big Dams, drought-prone and

flood-prone areas have actually increased since 1947, that 200 million

Indian citizens have no access to safe drinking water, that not a single

river in the plains has potable water, and that 10 million hectares of

irrigated agricultural land are currently saline and water-logged.

(b) At the time of Independence foodgrain was being imported to India but

with the passage of time and the construction of more dams the position has

been reversed. The large-scale river valley projects per se all over the

country have made India more than self-sufficient in food.

I thought so too, your lordships. Until I began to look for some official,

government facts to back that thesis up and found that there weren't any.

Until now no studies have been done to determine what percentage of India's

foodgrain is produced by big dams. To believe that Big Dams are the key to

India's food security is to have faith without facts because facts don't

exist. At least they didn't until recently. This year, a chapter in the

India Country Study done for the World Commission on Dams (whose report

will be released in London by Nelson Mandela on November 16) says that 10

per cent of India's foodgrain is produced by big dams. That's 20 million

tonnes. The Ministry of Food and Civil Supplies says that 10 per cent of

India's foodgrain is eaten every year by rats. And that's 20 million

tonnes. We must be the only country in the world that builds dams, uproots

millions of people (56 million people in the last 50 years according to the

India Country Study), submerges forests and destroys the environment in

order to feed rats. Clearly we need better warehouses more than we need Big

Dams.