A story of official callousness

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The long-running struggle by poor villagers displaced by the multipurpose Narmada Valley project has entered a new phase with the arrest of renowned social activist Medha Patkar and a few others who have staked their lives to pressure the callous administration to fulfil the promise to rehabilitate them.

The project, under which 30 major dams, 135 medium ones and 3,000 small ones, were to be constructed on the 1312-kilometre-long river Narmada, was one of the largest of its kind. It was promoted as one that will irrigate two million hectares of farm land and provide drinking water to 30 million people, besides generating electricity to meet the needs of agriculture and industry.

The biggest of the dams, Sardar Sarovar, was to be in Gujarat, which was the project’s main beneficiary. Successive governments of that state exerted considerable pressure on the Centre for its implementation, arguing it was necessary to irrigate the parched lands of Kutch and Saurashtra regions.

The promoters of the project hid the fact that it would inundate 37,000 hectares of forest and agricultural land in Madhya Pradesh and deprive hundreds of thousands of people, most of them tribes living in the forests, of their homes and livelihood.

Medha Patkar visited the project area in MP in 1985 to gather material as a research scholar. Moved by the plight of the people threatened by the project, she gave up her PhD ambition and committed herself to their cause.

The Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save Narmada Movement) which she founded has been spearheading the campaign for their rehabilitation since then.

During the last three decades the NBA mounted many mass agitations, and Medha Patkar undertook two indefinite fasts, one of which lasted 22 days, and fought a long court battle. They could not stop the project but they chalked up many victories not only for themselves but also for people elsewhere in the world who were under the shadow of mega dams.

Acting on Medha Patkar’s petition, the Supreme Court ordered that the height of the Sardar Sarovar dam must be raised in stages and that work on a new stage should be taken up only after rehabilitation of those affected by the previous stage was completed. It is another matter that the authorities circumvented this restriction by submitting false reports stating that the rehabilitation work had been completed.

In 1985 the World Bank agreed to provide $450 million towards the Narmada project’s originally estimated cost of $6 billion. After the NBA drew attention to the enormous social and human costs involved, it set up an independent committee, headed by former UN Development Programme chief Bradford Morse to review the project.

The committee said the project was flawed, resettlement of the affected people was not possible under the prevailing conditions and environmental impacts had not been adequately addressed.

Following this, the World Bank withdrew its offer of funds.

The NBA’s heroic resistance inspired groups in several countries to take a fresh look at big dam projects. This prompted the World Bank and the International Union for Conservation of Nature to set up the World Commission on Dams with a mandate to draw up comprehensive guidelines on dam building. Medha Patkar was a member of the committee.

Many of the fears voiced by critics when the mammoth project was taken up have proved to be true. The water flowing into Gujarat is used mostly in the southern regions, which already had the benefit of irrigation, and very little was reaching Saurashtra and Kutch.

Available data suggests that the benefits accruing from the project are not commensurate with the huge investment.

Recently the Centre permitted Gujarat to close the gates of the Sardar Sarovar dam. This will raise the water level in Madhya Pradesh and submerge the homes of an estimated 40,000 families in four districts of the state. The current agitation is to press for their rehabilitation.

Instead of approaching the issue from a humanitarian point of view, the state government let loose a reign of terror on the protestors. The police attacked and arrested school children who had come from different parts of the country to show their solidarity with the affected villagers.

Medha Patkar and her associates had decided to hold a rally at Rajghat where there was a Gandhi statue and a memorial to the Father of the Nation before beginning their indefinite fast on July 27. The police removed the statue and the memorial the previous night.

The Madhya Pradesh government’s representatives have met Medha Patkar in an effort to persuade her to end the fast. But they have not made any meaningful proposal regarding the rehabilitation of the affected villagers.

The state must realise that it is playing with the lives of people.-- Gulf Today, Sharjah. August 8, 2017

Sardar Statue not for Unity but for Polity of Falsehood, says NAPM

The following is a statement issued by the National Alliance of People's Movements:

Mr. Narendra Modi’s speech at the Sardar Patel Statue, next to Sardar Sarovar Dam in the downstream today was a piece as much of fully false claims as there have always been over the Sardar Sarovar Project. Mr. Modi did not care to speak on Sardar Patel’s heritage and contribution to the freedom and farmers’ movements and this was obvious from the fact that he referred to this day, not as the birth but death anniversary of the Sardar! May one call it a lie or a lapse, it indicates how much important was and is Sardar Patel in Modi’s politics, based on opportunist strategy, illegally pushing the Dam ahead in an utterly filmy and heroic way.

• Modi made a number of claims related to the Project, however, every one of it is false as is known to those following the history to the present, as also the anticipated future of this Project. First and foremost the claim that rehabilitation of all the affected families is completed and that the Grievance Redressal Authorities in all the three states headed by Retired Judges have given ‘clearance’ is an utter lie, since there are not less than 50,000 families yet to be rehabilitated, as anyone visiting the densely populated village communities, or even the resettlement sites in Maharashtra and M.P can realize.

• Hundreds of families in Gujarat too are awaiting declaration as ‘oustees’ and allotment or change of allotted land. Without having visited the affected villages in the valley, he would not know about the illegal submergence of thousands of hecatres of land, standing crop and a few thousand houses, and 1,000 crore worth corruption in rehabilitation in his own party led state of Madhya Pradesh, which is under inquiry by a High Court appointed Justice Jha Commission, since 5 years.

• Will the Gujarat Government have guts to pressurize the UPA Govt. to give ‘clearance’ by law and Supreme Court’s judgements and drowning not less than 2.5 lakh people in their houses, farms and villages, best of agriculture and horticulture, hundreds of temples, mosques, cultural monuments, schools, dispensaries, shops and markets, millions of trees etc. turning the Narmada Valley into another Uttarakhand ?

• The people from the resettlement sites in Gujarat are more upright and honest, to ask, when they have given ‘lahu’ (blood), why should they give ‘loha’ (steel)? They almost boycotted the statue inauguration function and the reports indicate that free vehicles that were sent to get the villages had to return empty to the programme site! Mr. Modi’s claim that clearance has been granted by the R&R Sub Group (of Narmada Control Authority), which no one else but he and us would understand is also not true, as we are told by the concerned officials of the Central Ministry of Social Justice recently..The Gujarat - M.P. political nexus is no doubt trying to pressurize and cull out such a clearance, which no authority with a legal mandate can subject itself to. If they do, not Mr. Modi, but they would be liable to legal action, for committing an offence, which they very well know. The Centre has, in fact, both a duty and opportunity to initiate a comprehensive cost-benefit review by the Planning Commission and other stakeholders.

• Modi’s claim for credit, for maximum investment into the Project during his 10 year tenure than any other Govt. is an attempt to conceal the fact that the Central Govt. gave, unfortunately, without the Ministries and Planning Commission playing their monitoring role, under the Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme, maximum assistance to SSP (almost Rs. 5700 crore rupees) between 1996 and 2008, amounting to almost 20% of the total country level release of funds. CAG’s Reports have also brought out diversion of central funds granted for drought prone areas to the canals, which were covered under not one, but different assistance projects, leading to double accounting and false reporting.

• Mr. Modi boasted of Kutchis weighing him with silver, with a great hope that Kutch would get its share in Narmada waters. However, he did not reveal to the ignorant masses that the Kutchi’s who had to approach the Supreme Court for their rightful share in Narmada waters, which they haven’t got, in spite of the legal battle. Neither Saurashtra nor Rajasthan is satisfied with miniscule of water allocation, not satiating their thirst, but allocated to the industries with primacy. They are indeed being cheated, as the dam is being built in their name, while more than the allocated share of water is diverted to the corporates, along with land in Gujarat.

• Mr. Modi is actually shedding crocodile tears, while claiming that more water is required for the parched earth, cattle and trees affected by drought in Gujarat and Rajasthan, since his government has de-notified any where upto 4 lakh hectares of the command area land that is excluded from irrigation and reserved for the corporates. Gujarat has also not built minor and sub-minor canal network and field channels beyond 30%, resulting in non-utilization of the available capacity, upto few lakh hecatres. It has, on the other hand, allocated to the industries, a much larger share that what is given for the rural area and townships, while the first preference is given to the non-drought prone cities of Gandhinagar, Ahmedabad and Vadodara. The Chief Ministers’ hollow sympathy to the cattle grazers in Gujarat does not get vindicated when one sees the intense agitation of the grazers community going on in Gujarat.

• This time, changing his own earlier statement, Mr. Modi claimed that Maharashtra (not M.P. this time) is to get power from Sardar sarovar at a cheaper rate, which would save Rs. 400 crores. This too is untrue since both Maharashtra and M.P. are paying due share of capital investment and unit cost of power as decided by the Central Electricity Regulatory Authority. The tarrif as on date is Rs. 2.10 per unit and is likely to go anywhere upto Rs. 4 per unit. With 30,000 + hectares of land and Narmada river itself being sacrificed with the lives of and livelihoods of lakhs of adivasis, farmers and other oustees, a lie repeated cannot turn into truth.

• While making a mockery of the legal procedure that everyone including the Modi Govt. is bound to follow, before claiming its right to build the dam from the present 122 mts to the final height of 138.68 mts or even to raise the pillars and erect the gates (17 mts high). Mr. Modi did not show any honesty that was the tradition of all the patriotic politicians he referred to, Sardar Patel, Baba Saheb Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi, in the same sequence.

• The facts are dispersed in umpteen number of reports of various official Committees and Commissions that have assessed the Dam Project, concluding violation of conditions in the environmental clearance granted in the 1987, Planning Commission clearance granted in 1988, violation of the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal Award and multiple Judgements of the Hon’ble Supreme Court. The ground reality confirms the same and hence, in spite of megalomaniac strategies of the Modi Government, the clearance cannot be granted unless every family is rehabilitated with alternative land or livelihood and every tree is compensated for.

• Forgetting the adivasis in the 6 villages of Gujarat, whose land were grabbed for the Project and its colony, yet to be rehabilitated, Modi Govt. has tried to push in the Kevadia Area Development Authority, on the lands belonging to 70 villages, around the Dam for the sake of tourism and urbanization. It is the determination of the adivasi Panchayats, following the PESA Act, which his Government violated in toto that seems to have made the Modi Govt. submit or bow down and not bow down, as apparent from the fact that he did not refer to KADA, but rather declared the decision to form a new Tehsil, Garudeshwar, in the district of Narmada.

• The CM, also announced few sops including water to the tribal areas around the Dam, as speaking orders that are baseless without change in the Plans and necessary clearances. However, by not permitting a peaceful fast by the representatives of adivasi villages, along with senior activists, Rohit Prajapati, Lakhan Musafir, Trupti Shah and others, with the local leaders, the Government has, do doubt, expressed its cowardice even in the face of a peaceful protest.

• ‘Sardar Patel’, if and when, it will be completed, will look beyond the Dam, as the statue is to be at least 80 metres higher than the Dam. No doubt, Sardar will see the destruction and devastation caused by the Dam and borne by the farmers, whom he loved and organized, against paying the unjust tax, during the British rule. The Project, to be pushed in the name of the farmer leader that could once abolish the princely states, only to benefit the present vote bank politics, supporting the new princely states of the Ambanis and Adanis will no doubt be historic, but not in support of either the destructive SSP or Modi-mode of development.

People of the valley, beyond party lines and truly united beyond caste and religious diversity who have fought the Dam and its destruction for 28 years will challenge the parties and their candidates in the upcoming elections and continue to struggle for their right to life and no unconstitutional push to the Dam, with the statue of Mr. Modi’s dream.

Medha Patkar,   Devram Kanera,   Meera

Ph: 09423965153 / 09179148973

An Open Letter to the PM on 25th anniversary of Narmada Andolan

To
The Prime Minister of India
7, Race Course Road
New Delhi
INDIA

Sir,

The people in the Narmada Valley have been fighting for survival, for right to life, with dignity since the last twenty-five years, hoping that the Indian state would respond to their just demands. The Sadar Sarovar Project which was touted as the 'best project' ensuring ecological balance and ideal rehabilitation policy stands fully exposed with 200,000 and more people still in the submergence area, awaiting their entitlement and a few thousand Adivasis having lost their land to submergence, without obtaining agricultural land in compensation.

Not one, but four reports of the Expert Committee appointed by the Ministry of Environment and Forest till 2010 clearly indicate the position taken by the Narmada Bachao Andolan of grave non-compliance on environmental measures and conditions in the project clearance granted in 1987. Even the backwater levels of the project are far from finalized, after thirty full years since the declaration of the Tribunal award.

What about the benefits, you may ask. Kindly take time to look into the report of performance appraisal of the Sadar Sarovar Project. The Planning Commissions own working group on water resources estimate that the final project cost to be 70,000 crores by 2012. When such escalation, almost ten times of the original cost has occurred, how could a further clearance for 40,000 crores be granted, that too after having spent 30,000 crores without a review of the post benefit analysis, may we ask? The most shocking is the fact that Gujarat has built only 20 percent of the canals over thirty years, the ponded waters are not even utilised beyond ten percent, resulting in very low irrigation and power benefits, much below the expectations.

Obviously the enormous cost paid by the people and nature are not utilised in this situation. We all, concerned about the justice and the sustainability ion the development planning are highly disturbed and anguished and hence would like to issue this appeal to your conscience and your government to take serious cognizance of the unprecedented devastation to take place in the Narmada Valley due to the large dams and canals. We would like to assert that the central government, under your leadership, must immediately undertake a comprehensive review of not only Sadar Sarowar, but also the entire Narmada Valley project, involving the decade old non-violent people's movement.

There is a need, you would agree, to not only ensure democratic and just process in dam building but also to save the prime agricultural land, leaving dense populated communities of Advasis, farmers, fisher people and others and minimise unwarranted destruction, displacement and destitution. This is both possible and necessary and we would seek your full cooperation in this vital initiative.

Without your taking such a step forward, we do not see any other alternative before the people but to exercise all forms of democratic Satyagraha and resistance to assert their constitutional, legal and human rights.

Yours sincerely,

The people of Narmada Valley
National Alliance of People's Movement

Will the Namada project be pushed through at the cost of 200,000 people?

The following is a statement issued by the Namada Bachao Andolan on Saturday:

Gujarat’s politics on Narmada is at its peak once again trying its best to grab 11,000 crore rupees of financial ‘assistance’ from the central government. After environmental clearance was received in 1987, Gujarat went ahead pushing the dam height without planning either the canals or the command area development. Having completed only 30% of the canals in 30 years, the Gujarat government announced a few months ago that it will not build the remaining 70% of the canal network, with many contradictory statements, sometimes favouring the canals and at other times the pipeline!!

Gujarat’s Chief Minister Narendra Modi finally announced the appointment of a committee of water resource persons, mostly former bureaucrats, headed by B.N. Navlavala, a former Planning Commission member, to review the feasibility of laying pipelines (three feet underground), in lieu of the massive and expensive canal network, based on economic, social and environmental criteria. The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) had already appointed an Expert Committee in 2008 to assess and approve as also monitor various environmental studies / plans of Sardar Sarovar, Indira Sagar and Omkareshwar dams. This committee recently received submissions on the Command Area Development (CAD) plans of Madhya Pradesh and heard presentations of some officials from MP and Gujarat as late as on 31-01-2010, but it is yet to approve the same.

Can Gujarat have it own way against Environmental and Rehabilitation Sub-Groups?

Although raising the height of the dam has not been permitted by the Environmental Sub Group (ESG) led by the MoEF and the Rehabilitation (R&R) Sub-Group led by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, (MSJE) of the Narmada Control Authority (NCA), the Modi Government is known to be pursuing all kinds of political strategies and machinations to get Central clearance for raising the dam to its full height of 138.68 m by erecting gates at one go! It wants to bypass all the pre-conditions put forth while sanctioning the gigantic dam and disobey the Supreme Court’s judgment of 2000 (NBA vs Union of India and others) in terms of completing the social and environmental measures. It is clear that the vicious attempt is to take over the process of monitoring by these two Sub-Groups and the upcoming Interim Report of the Expert Committee of MoEF, which is expected any day, in the backdrop of serious violations and non-compliance.

The Narmada Basin is a huge catchment area. The three states; Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra have not done the preliminary work necessary to sustain the dam throughout its planned life without getting silted, after having submerged living villages, best land and forests. Canals in Gujarat cannot be dug nor can the waters flow in them, unless and until the CAD plans are finalized and approved by the Environment Ministry. This has been a known condition as stated in the Guidelines issued by the Central Water Commission and River Valley Guidelines (1985) of MoEF. Without implementing these conditions, the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) is sure to go the Bhakra way. The Government of India’s own findings way back in 1991 have established that the much-trumpeted Bhakra Nangal Project, which was pushed through without following the command area guidelines, led to degradation of a massive 2,50,000 hectares of land in Punjab and Haryana.

Will political expediency Gujarat frustrate the right moves of MoEF?

The MoEF has the necessary mandate and the responsibility to ensure that the plans to prevent water logging and salinization i.e. ensure drainage or conjunctive use of surface and ground water; to prevent negative impacts on health and on flora and fauna including cropping pattern are to be in place sufficiently in advance of the canal construction and irrigation. These were the conditions set when the project was cleared by the Rajiv Gandhi government with a lot of hesitation and under pressure from Gujarat, as stated in the records of the Prime Minister’s office (1986-87) submitted before the Supreme Court in 2000 and reported in the Apex Court’s judgment as well. Therefore, Secretary, MoEF had to write to the Secretary, Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR) in November 2007, stating that the canal project of Sardar Sarovar must not be funded till the full compliance is ensured. Moreover, a categorical decision was taken in the 41st Meeting of the ESG, in January 2005 itself to forbid Gujarat from carrying on irrigation until the plans are approved.

It is also to be noted that Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh himself wrote to Narendra Modi on August 6, 2009 regarding such serious non-compliance on these issues and seeking full compliance of his state on the pari-passu conditions (simultaneous implementation with dam not achieved) imposed since the environmental clearance of 1987. Considering all this, the Government of India cannot pro-actively violate the right moves by its own Ministries and facilitate sanction of more funds for the Project unless all the social and environmental protective measures necessary for saving the land, livelihood and life of the people in the Narmada valley as well as in the command area are undertaken and completed.

What will MP gain out of Sardar Sarovar after ‘Jal Samadhi’ of 200,000 people?

While the Modi government. is creating its own political pressures and extracting money from the Centre by bringing Members of Parliament together, there is no one in Madhya Pradesh (save the people of Narmada Ghati) to expose the real costs and benefits to the State. It is plain truth that lakhs of people, prime agricultural land, temples, ghats and masjids with thickly populated communities of adivasis, farmers, fish workers etc would be given a ‘Jal Samadhi’ if the Centre’s nod to canal construction is taken ahead. These include thousands of adivasi families from Alirajpur and Badwani districts whose lands and houses are already submerged since 1990s and have not been given the land-based rehabilitation in Madhya Pradesh yet.

As far as ‘benefits’ to the state of MP go, the only benefit of power (56%) that was guaranteed (of whatever is generated) through the Narmada Tribunal Award (1979) is not received by the state, as yet. Maharashtra, which is in a similar situation of betrayal by Gujarat, has demanded compensation of Rs 18 billion. Why is MP, which is to suffer double the loss, silent? On the other hand, the state seems ready to pay Rs. 40 billion more, taking to about Rs 70 billion the Balance of Payment for no gain and all loss!

Adivasis challenge Modi’s ‘violence’ and Chauhan government’s silence

While even today there are 200,00 people residing and settled in the Sardar Sarovar reservoir area, there is only ‘rehabilitation’ replete with crude and rude corruption through various forms such as fake registries, corruption in house plot allotment, payment of compensation to ineligible, flawed back water levels etc. Though, through two major MP High Court orders of August 21, 2008 and November 12, 2009, a Judicial Commission of Inquiry under Justice Shravan Shankar Jha was constituted, the MP government has been displaying a very weak political will to combat corruption.

Having experienced submergence of his land, the only means of livelihood, Kishore Manglia from the Adivasi village of Kharya Bhadal in Badwani district angrily says: “Shivraj Singh Chauhan and Modi governments seem to be conspiring together to submerge our generations-old land and are doling it to these dams and companies. Where is our consent? What is our share in this game of numbers? We matter only when our votes are sought, but not once were we consulted when our home and hearths, gods and goddesses went under a watery grave! We will see how far the governments can go ahead with these unconstitutional moves, pushing the dam with corruption and atrocities. Give us land for land or we will not move”.

Sardar Sarovar benefits and costs in doldrums

Today, the entire cost-benefit scenario of SSP has gone haywire, with the costs having sky-rocketed from the original estimate of Rs 42 billion (1983) to Rs 64.06 billion (1988) and to Rs 450 billion and further up to Rs 700 billion (by 2012) as per expert appraisal of the Planning Commission (11th Plan). The new grant for SSP’s canals by the Centre, which is planned to be released till 2015 shockingly indicates that the cost of the project may shoot up to Rs. 800 billion. All this is a gross violation of the Investment clearance of the Planning Commission which should be deemed to have lapsed. With Rs 300 billion already spent, only 7% of the reservoir waters are used and just 70,000 hectares of land irrigated till today.

It is in this context that the Memorandum of Understanding between the Union of India (UoI) and Government of Gujarat (GoG) to grant Rs 110 billion to Gujarat becomes highly questionable as being absolutely against law and justice.. How can the Centre disagree wuth the critical comments by the highest constitutional auditory authority (Comptroller and Auditor General) on the gross mis-utilization and underutilization of crores of funds granted till now? The time has come for the Planning Commission to review the entire project, along with the MoEF and MSJE and put its foot down against any further work and not to financially assist such a devastative project.

MP has one last chance

The Chief Minister, who has time and again displayed his aversion to any dialogue on Narmada should be reminded that the Narmada cannot be saved from pollution, why even destruction, unless the political conspiracy of pushing these giant dams with thousands of kilometers long canal network in the region that is prosperous with best of agricultural and horticultural land with generations-old communities in the most unplanned, unscientific, illegal and inhuman way is stopped and a firm political will is shown to save Narmada and its people which is a treasure and a heritage, for this state much more than for Gujarat.

The Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh has one last chance before the dam is pushed to its full height, killing communities with 200,000 population. Will he utilize it to save the people of his state?

For further details please contact:

Ashish Mandloi
+91 7290-222464
Medha Patkar
+91 9423965153
Surbhan Bhilala
+ 9179148973