NEW DELHI: "How much sacrifice of people's rights may ever be justified at the altar of constitutionally unprincipled and insincere `developmental' policy making," asked the former Vice-Chancellor of Delhi University, Upendra Baxi, at a Colloquium: A Critical Examination of the Shunglu Committee Report — Politics of Displacement and Resettlement in the Narmada Valley.

He said the Shunglu Oversight Group (OSG) should have fully taken into account the submissions made by the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) on the rehabilitation and resettlement of Narmada dam displaced families, but did not. "One hopes that all is not lost for the long-suffering project affected families and that the Supreme Court will find the NBA's critique of the Shunglu report helpful to do complete justice."

Mr. Baxi said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's endorsement of the Shunglu report raises the concern whether he applied "reasonable care" and "due diligence" in endorsing the OSG report. "The question then is: what are the `material' and `observations' contained in the report that lead the Prime Minister into arriving at the decision that it would not be appropriate to pass any direction or orders stopping the construction of the dam which is designed to serve larger public interest ... This, when the report admits that the offer of Government land for land did not meet the requirement of the affected families and suggests specific measures for `time-bound' upgradation of the poor and average sites."

Questioning the shift from land-for-land to cash compensation under the Special Relief Package, Mr. Baxi said the tyranny of statistics in the Shunglu report suggests that out of 4041 displaced families, only 1393 accepted the SRP. The reasons are also given. "The report says that this is because 17.9 per cent simply had no intimation concerning allotment of land; 94 per cent were not satisfied with the land bank offerings, 21.9 per cent opted for other reasons [a difficult category to decipher on the text of the report]. The Report prefers merely to highlight those who accepted the SRP at a clear and cruel cost to others who did not do so."

Flaws exposed

Describing the Shunglu report as a "Bible in which the NBA makes new discoveries every time it goes through it," NBA leader Medha Patkar exposed the various flaws in the report relating to the number of people displaced, number of people whose claims were ignored, the number of adult sons who are yet to be identified, the complete neglect of the tribal families and those on hillocks, those whose livelihoods would be hurt and the completely false demographic figures to buttress their findings. "Their purpose was only to justify the claims in the Government's Action Taken Report and have in the process overlooked several thousand families, taking forward the game of numbers."

She said the report of the Group of Ministers comprising Water Resources Minister Saifuddin Soz, Social Justice Minister Meira Kumar, Minister of State Prithviraj Chavan was much more "truthful" and reflected the best possible assessment of the ground reality in the shortest possible time. "Any allegation against them, including by the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, demanding their resignation in the wake of Shunglu report warrants strongest condemnation," she added.

While former Water Resources Secretary Ramaswamy Iyer said the Shunglu report was "thoroughly indefensible," Jawaharlal Nehru University professor Kamal Mitra Chenoy said its findings presented a contradictory picture.

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