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World Commission on Dams Report boosts NBA cause

by Vidyadhar Date, Times of India - 17 December 2000

World Commission on Dams report boosts NBA's cause

By Vidyadhar Date

The Times of India News Service

MUMBAI: Just when it looked like everything was on the downslide for the Narmada Bachao Andolan, the NGO has received a shot in the arm with the release of the World Commission on Dams report. The latter vindicates the NBA's stand that many of the big dams built in the past were unjustified--it also recommends that several currently under construction be abandoned.

The commission was headed by Prof Kader Asmal, South Africa's minister of education who is of Indian origin. Medha Patkar, NBA leader and a member of the commission, said that the report was a step forward in the decades-long struggle of people's organisations questioning the social and environmental impacts of big dams.

The report shows that large dams have forced 40 to 80 million people out of their homes and lands, causing them immense hardship. As against the benefits in terms of
water and power, the price paid by people in too many cases has been disproportionately high, says the report--the benefits have gone to the already well-off while poor sections have borne the costs.

The commission was set up by the World Bank and other agencies two years ago in an attempt to provide the most comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of dams ever undertaken and to seek some common ground among builders, governments and advocacy groups whose compelling interests have made dam-building an even more contentious enterprise.

The report says that many dams are failing to live upto expectations and, on the contrary, have worsened flooding and caused ecological havoc and social conflict. Dam construction has also contributed to the extinction of fresh water fish and is responsible for bird species vanishing from flood plains. Some dams, after being built, have proved to be futile: managers of the four-billion-dollar Xialolangdi dam on China's Yellow River, part-funded by the World Bank, reported last month that they could not find buyers for the electricity in China's newly liberalised market for power.

A special study on India's large dams conducted for the commission also concludes that big dams have had an adverse impact by displacing a large number of people and submerging large areas of forest and other lands. ``The Maharashtra government should now show greater awareness of the problems of the people affected in the state,'' said Medha Patkar. The government, she added, was not giving land rights to many adivasis in the affecte area and had not given the victims adequate land in compensation. Flaying the double-talk of political parties, Ms Patkar said that Congress politicians in Nandurbar district had expressed strong support to the
dam victims during the general elections but was doing little to help them now. ``The Congress committee had clearly said that the adivasis had suffered greatly in the last few years and a lot of corruption had taken place during their so-called rehabilitation programme,'' she remarked. ``So what are they doing about it now?''

Ms Patkar challenged the authorities to reveal rehabilitation programme for all the victims. ``If the government does not adequately rehabilitate all the affected people, it will be violating the Supreme Court judgement,'' she concluded.

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