India Briefing, 1989 by Marshall M. Bouton

Author:Marshall M. Bouton [Bouton, Marshall M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367153182
Google: 5-bYygEACAAJ
Goodreads: 48633463
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1989-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

Dams

Movements to protest large-scale dam projects have employed tactics similar to those described above. The first efforts to oppose the construction of a dam focused on the Silent Valley hydroelectric project in Kerala. This movement, organized in 1973 largely by ecologists who were concerned that tropical rain forests would be submerged as a result of the dam, fought a protracted battle to preserve a tiny strip of forest in the western ghats, at the southernmost tip of India. Opponents of the dam argued that it was in India's long-term interest to keep this "gene bank" intact, rather than destroy it to satisfy short-term electricity needs. They successfully countered the political and popular opinion in favor of the project by emphasizing that the rain forest was the source of rare strains of rice and other plants capable of withstanding disease and pests that eventually could help India to produce more food. Backed by Indira Gandhi, as well as international and national scientific opinion, the dam's opponents eventually managed to halt the project.

In recent years a groundswell of grassroots protest against the displacement of people by the construction of large-scale dams has emerged. For fifteen years, tribal peoples in Koel-Karo (Bihar) have resisted government attempts to erect a hydroelectric project. They were the first group in India to demand "land for land," or adequate compensation in return for eviction. They demanded to be compensated with not just an equivalent amount of land, but, more important, with land equal in quality to that taken away from them. In the past, "oustees" invariably were resettled on inhospitable terrain. For instance, those displaced by the Pong dam in the hills of Himachal Pradesh were relocated in the deserts of Rajasthan, and those from the central Indian plateau forests were sent to drought-prone land. But in Koel-Karo, the demand for adequate compensation forced the National Hydro-Electric Power Corporation to abandon its plans.

In a similar manner, tribals have successfully protested plans to put up two big dams at Bhopalpatnam and Inchampalli at the junction of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Andhra Pradesh, a prime teak region. In 1984, tribals organized a massive march from both banks of the Indravati River, a tributary of the Godavari, in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. The march was led by Baba Amte, a well-known Gandhian activist, as well as by tribal leaders from Bastar, India's largest tribal district. In an effort to coordinate environmental action nationwide, the group was joined by the Chipko leader, Sunderlal Bahuguna, and called a meeting in 1988 of activists from all over India as an "assertion of collective will against big dams." The meeting marked the beginning of a concerted effort to link previously scattered attempts at resistance.

By far the most heated and widespread protests against big dams have focused on a series of projects under construction on the Narmada River in central India. Financed by the World Bank, the projects include some 3,000 major and minor dams and are the largest irrigation and hydroelectric projects of their kind in the world.

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