The Hindu : Opinion / Interviews : "We have made a difference"

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Friday, Dec 16, 2005

Opinion

Opinion - Interviews

"We have made a difference"

Gargi Parsai

The Narmada Bachao Andolan is observing 20 years of its struggle for a "just development paradigm" using the Sardar Sarovar dam — that displaces half a million families in four States — as a symbol. In an interview, NBA leaderMedha Patkartalks about the struggles and the strengths of the movement. Excerpts:

Medha Patkar: "We have subsumed everything of ours in this struggle." — Photo: V.V. Krishnan.

After 20 years of struggle, what have been the achievements and the failures?

We are still surviving; still alert; still with the same commitment and non-compromising on the basic values and human rights. We have grown and expanded. The issues raised by the NBA have spread into many movements and networks through the National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM) and even beyond. After we made the World Bank withdraw from the Narmada project, the whole input into the World Commission on Dams has gone a long way because that report is now being used to review issues related to dams in various countries if not India.

But the major achievement is mass empowerment and that is not limited to the Narmada valley as can be seen from the response we are getting from the people to be affected by dams or river-linking. In Sardar Sarovar, despite the state's games of lure and scare, the people have not run away. We have not yet changed the paradigm which is our goal, but we have made a difference.

So much money has been put into the dam...

We've always being saying that although the phansi ka phanda tayyar hai [the hangman's noose is ready], the neck is still out and it is worth reviewing it even now. Despite having spent about Rs.20,000 crore and pushing 11,000 hectares of land for submergence, of which 6,000 hectares is already affected, the estimated benefits have not come true. There is also a mess as far as the equity of the benefits are concerned. The benefit-cost ratio — when the expenses so far are only 50 per cent of the total project cost officially estimated at Rs.40,000 crore — needs to be reviewed before anything more is put into the project.

What were the issues the Narmada project raised?

The process began with a dialogue between the activists and the people in the valley only to discover that people did not have the right to information and their riparian rights were also not recognised. This was at the end of 10 years of the [Narmada Water Disputes] Tribunal process. Even then people were neither told nor consulted. Our first issue was Right to Information as we put in the 36-point charter of demands in 1985-86, and we could compel the Government to give the information. We also asked about the impact assessment, including displacement as a social impact. The number of the displaced population was not estimated and the displacement in the upstream, downstream, the catchment, the command — the parts into which the valley gets divided with a big dam — was not even considered.

We questioned the planning and decision-making process, where the Adivasis and every community that is playing the role of an `investor' is treated like `affected,' denying them the primacy and priority they ought to have been given, having been called to give up their all.

We also focussed on the World Bank's role. By giving five per cent of the then project cost, the project actually became a fait accompli once the Bank came into the project. The Bank could neither ensure that its own policies were complied with nor that the indigenous laws were complied with. We could compel the World Bank to withdraw from the project and the valley. We also raised the issue of alternatives in micro hydel and wind and questioned the development paradigm.

The Bank now proposes to raise its loan component for the water sector from $200 million to $800 million per annum.

Now they are cheating really, because the government is playing the role of an agent. It is using the Land Acquisition Act of the British days to acquire land. It is also using laws, bringing in new notifications and gigantic projects as if it is a disease of giganticism — as Nehru called it three years after Bhakra-Nangal, which no one quotes him on. The government is hiding the direct impacts and the long-term repercussions from the people. Now they have included large dams and water supply in urban infrastructure. In this game the World Bank is really the main actor. The World Trade Organisation is just a platform.

Your detractors say that you've made it your business to struggle.

[Laughs] Business means profit and earning. We have subsumed everything of ours in this struggle. What we really like to assert is our right to struggle and there is a need to struggle because life is at stake. Because we have not lost our untiring commitment and zest, we can continue and that is what many people cannot understand.

Will you join politics? You almost took the plunge in the last elections.

I have always said I am in politics already. I look at electoral politics from close quarters and at a distance, both. I feel very much the need — and we have articulated it as NAPM — to intervene and challenge electoral politics. But I still don't feel that can be best done by entering electoral politics.

There have been allegations of foreign funding of the NBA.

Many people levelled this charge against us but none could face the defamation cases that we filed against them.

Ila Bhatt recently said the space for people's movements is shrinking.

Very true. The face of the state, its culture, and its relationship with the society is changing. When questions are raised, the state response is very callous, arrogant, and even brutal. It doesn't feel accountable to people as much as it feels to its investors and lenders.

What do you think of the plan to interlink rivers? What about water-scarce States like Tamil Nadu?

Management of land, water, and forest in the catchment of every small river and also harnessing the water in the small to large watershed in a river basin is the answer. When the National Democratic Alliance Government announced its policy in 2002, the main highlight was community control over water resources and I feel that is the key to equitable water management to prevent both drought and floods. ILR [interlinking rivers] will create unprecedented scale of displacement and will also destroy the river ecosystems. Howsoever they may claim that they are going to have the proper impact assessment and compensatory action plan, we have seen from Bhakra-Nangal to Narmada, in Nagarjunasagar, Ukai, Periyar, and every other project till Polavaram and Ken-Betwa link proposal in 2005 that there is huge gap between the promises and the practices.

ILR is bound to lead to privatisation, not just of water but rivers, because that huge investment [Rs.560,000 crore] will only come from foreign investors, the World Bank, the ADB, the multinationals and that is why these sectors have been opened. The WTO's Non-Agriculture Market Access in which water is treated as a commodity and also through the Urban Renewal Mission, which has privatisation as its main strategy. So water supply that comes from the rivers and catchments is also going to be in the hands of the corporate sector and the river- linking will clear the land for them.

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