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Friday, Jul 02, 2004

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

HOW ABOUT RESETTLEMENT?

WHEN A TOWN with over 6,000 households is about to be submerged, the cruel reality of displacement and disruption caused by large dams comes home to most people. For while the imminent drowning of the town of Harsud in Madhya Pradesh, located on the banks of the Chhota Tawa River, a tributary of the Narmada, is making front page news, a tragedy has been unfolding over several years in the villages around Harsud. Thousands of families in these villages have been forced to move out as their lands disappeared under the waters of the Narmada. These are the unseen and unheard oustees of the Indira Sagar dam, one of the three large dams being constructed on the Narmada in Madhya Pradesh and upstream of the better-known Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) in Gujarat. But while the trials of the oustees of the Sardar Sarovar dam have caught the attention of the media thanks to the relentless campaign by the Narmada Bachao Andolan, the problems faced by the people affected by the Indira Sagar dam have gone virtually unnoticed. As a result, the public scrutiny of such projects and policies for resettlement, of the people likely to be uprooted by them, so essential to ensure justice for the most vulnerable, has been missing.

Away from the media spotlight, the Indira Sagar dam, which will eventually generate 1000 MW of power and irrigate 1,23,000 hectares of land, has climbed steadily higher. It stands today at a height of 245 metres and by the time it is completed in 2005, it will have submerged 248 settlements, including Harsud. Last year, between March and July, 8,000 families were forced to relocate. The oustees were given cash amounts that cannot buy them land that is equivalent to what they possessed, either in quantity or quality. Instead of being moved as village units, they were scattered over many different locations. And even where they were given land, it was rocky and uncultivable. Such resettlement flies in the face of the commitments made by the Madhya Pradesh Government. In line with the terms of the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal's award, the Government has assured that all families displaced by the SSP and the Indira Sagar will, after their relocation and resettlement, "improve, or at least regain, their previous standard of living within a reasonable time". Yet from reports about the people already forced to move out, it is evident that this promise has not materialised.

It is ironic that while every metre of the Sardar Sarovar dam is being fought over, with the Supreme Court allowing the dam authorities to construct only after it is satisfied that the resettlement and rehabilitation of oustees is complete, no such scrutiny has taken place in the case of the Indira Sagar dam. When completed, this Rs. 6,000-crore joint venture between the Madhya Pradesh Government and the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation will have submerged 40,332 hectares of forest land and 44,345 hectares of agricultural land and displaced 30,739 families. Chief Minister Uma Bharti speaks of the people of Harsud "sacrificing their all" for the larger good. But the people who are being forced to move can legitimately ask who really benefits from their sacrifice. They certainly do not. In 1989, Harsud was the place where over 40,000 people gathered to protest `destructive development'. Their focus was the environmental and social destruction caused by large dams. Fourteen years later they have fallen victims to the very pattern of development that they opposed.

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