They Just Held On

Villagers, mostly women, stood neck-deep in water for 17 days at a village in Khandwa district, Madhya Pradesh, to draw the attention of the bureaucracy-ridden governments, with absentee Ministers at Bhopal and Delhi, to the sufferings of the satyagrahis. The fertile land of the villagers had been devoured by the impoun-ded water at Omkareshwar dam which was raised to a new height to generate more power and draw more irrigation water. Neither did any Minister, nor a top bureaucrat think even for a minute how to provide rehabilitation to the oustees who have been sacrificed at the altar of development once again. Strange, the government has learnt no lesson. Development cannot take place by pushing the marginalised people to the extreme.

But according to the Narmada Control Authority Award—the Supreme Court has endorsed it—the oustees should be given land for land and the rehabilitation grant before they are uprooted. The period of warning is stipulated at six months. Even after their 17-day-long ordeal, the Madhya Pradesh Government came to concede only land for land but did not agree to the rehabilitation grant for which the oustees may have to go on agitation again. The three-Minister team appointed by the Madhya Pradesh Government is disputing even the smallest concession.
I hate to compare but the 100th space mission that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) undertook is a tremendous achievement but it cost hundreds of crores of rupees. Could not those who have been forcibly ousted from their homes and hearths be compensated for what they had lost? It would not have taken away anything from ISRO’s celebration; yet the villagers had to stand in water to voice their protest. This is the difference between India and Bharat, the urban areas and the countryside. And how long would it take to span the distance is the period yawning the elite and the general public.

But the question that arises is not that of class distinction alone but that of attitude towards a genuine demand. The Omkareshwar dam is part of the Narmada river project which primarily benefits Gujarat but both Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra are also junior partners and its beneficiaries. The whole project has been wrongly conceived, wrongly imple-mented and wrongly computed in terms of benefits.

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BIG dams, as the world has come to realise, are of little value. They destroy more and add less. The Tennessee Valley Authority in the US realised the futility of this and regretted what it had done to harness the Tennessee waters through a series of big dams. Generally speaking, small dams straddling over different places on a river bring more benefits and limit the scale of uprooting. The oustees of the Bhakra dam and, more so, of Pong dam on the Beas river in Punjab are yet to be rehabilitated fully.

Himanshu Thakkar of the South Asia Net-work on Dams, Rivers and People, who terms the happenings in the Narmada Valley as “the worst face of state terrorism”, argues that the Omkareshwar project is owned and operated by the Narmada Hydroelectric Development Corporation Limited in which the National Hydro Power Corporation Ltd—a Central Gov-ernment organisation—hold the majority 51 per cent stake. Although Union Power Minister Veerappa Moily has sent a fact-finding team to Omkareshwar apart from reviewing the situation, the steps are not enough to resolve the problems faced by the affected people.

“Not just the Power Ministry, the Water Resources Ministry is responsible because the projects are supposed to be operated under the directives of the Narmada Control Authority, which functions under the Ministry,” says Thakkar. “As far as the Environment Ministry is concerned, it gave clearances to the project under specific conditions, which are now being violated by increasing the water level without proper R&R. The Tribal Affairs Minister has not bothered to react to atrocities on tribal.”

Indeed, it is an important victory for the Jal Satyagrahis because the water level of the dam has been reduced to 189 metres. This shows how determined they are as satyagrahis despite many of them suffering from rotting skin and deteriorating health. The satyagrahis are not going to leave at that alone. They are filing a contempt petition against the government for having violated the assurances given by the Narmada Board and the Supreme Court.

The voice of the Jal Satyagrahis has already reached the whole country and there has been a widespread support for them. The media too has played its role in highlighting the inhuman atrocity committed on displaced people. All this, in fact, has forced the government to take a decision in favour of the displaced people. The satyagrahis have pledged that the site where they held the agitation will be converted into a Land Rights Site. There, it will be ensured that those who were displaced will get land for land and all other benefits of rehabilitation.

The author is a veteran journalist renowned not only in this country but also in our neighbouring states of Pakistan and Bangladesh where his columns are widely read. His website is HYPERLINK "http://www.kuldipnayar.com" www.kuldipnayar.com