Response to the Final Report:

Narmada Bachao Andolan

B-13, Shivam Flats, Ellora Park, Baroda - 390 007

Press Note 20.11.2000

World Commission on Dams Report vindicates unjustifiability of large dams

The report of the World Commission on Dams is a step forward in the decades long struggle of the peoples' organizations questioning the social and environmental impacts and their justifiability on the basis of water and power delivery services as also economic benefits. It is, however, ironical that at the same time, people in the Narmada Valley, who have been at the forefront of the worldwide struggle, challenging not just the dams in the Narmada Valley but centralised, inequitous ecologically-destructive consumerist-oriented water and natural resource management as a development paradigm, Save Narmada Movement (Narmada Bachao Andolan - NBA) is compelled to fight unjustifiable, majority judgement by the Supreme Court of India allowing construction of Sardar Sarovar dam at the cost of people, especially the indigenous populations. The Report exposes the pro large dam bias in the judgment with a lopsided praise for the dams and beneficial and unsubstantiated premise that rehabilitation has brought higher standard of living for the project-affected, the oustees.

The WCD Report has clearly vindicated the issues that peoples' movements raised and struggled over, during the past half a century. Large dams are planned, pushed and are justified with no respect for peoples' rights to resources and development planning, no or little place for social and environmental impacts assessment in their decision-making.

The Report shows that:

• Large dams have forced 40-80 million people from their homes and lands, with impacts including extreme economic hardship, community disintegration, and an increase in mental and physical health problems. Indigenous, tribal, and peasant communities have been particularly hard hit. People living downstream of dams have also suffered from increased disease and the loss of natural resources upon which their livelihoods depended;
• As against benefits in terms of water and power services, the price, especially in social and environmental terms, paid by people in too many cases, is often unacceptable and unnecessary.
• The benefits of large dams, largely gone to the already well-off while poorer sectors of society have borne the costs, is unjustifiable.

The detailed assessment of economic performance of large dams is no doubt mixed and yet what is remarkable is that even within the planner s established framework of economic appraisal (leaving out social-environmental costs, risk analysis and post-facto evaluation), the performance on irrigation and drinking water supply is much poorer than the planned, less than 50% targets being achieved in a majority of cases, large percentage of dams fail to recover operation and maintenance costs. To quote from the Report (pg-42), Large irrigation dams in the WCD knowledge base have typically fallen short of physical targets, failed to recover their costs, and been less profitable in economic terms than expected. Also, the WCD knowledge base suggests a marked tendency towards schedule delays for large dam projects compared with the planned time to implementation. (pg-42)

The Report especially exposes and questions the flawed processes of decision-making on large dams which is devoid of granting rights to the Project Affected, assessing all options and without comprehensive social and environmental impact assessment. Stressing that options exist, it says Many of the non-dam options available today including demand-side management, supply efficiency and new supply options can improve or expand water and energy services and meet evolving development needs in all segments of society (pg-xxxi-xxxii). Decentralised, small-scale options (micro hydro, home-scale solar electric systems, wind and biomass systems) based on local renewable sources offer an important near-term, and possibly long-term, potential particularly in rural areas far away from centralised supply networks (pg-xxxii).

WCD s recommendations in a value-framework with equity, efficiency, participatory decision-making, sustainability and accountability goes a long way to a new decision-making process, not for dams but all options in water and energy sector.

WCD s main contribution thus is to assert the people s right to decision-making, through Prior Informed Consent in the case of tribal and indigenous communities and Demonstrable Public Acceptance in the case of other rural / urban communities to be affected by any water / power project. Its recommendation on option-assessment before the appropriate choice of technology, provides an unique space for non-conventional options which could be more equitable, sustainable and hence development effective.

Mr.Sanjay Suri, the correspondent of India Abroad News Service, one wonders, had a different report with him, while reporting that the WCD report boosts the Narmada project. At no point the report, in its 404 pages, say anything alike. The reporting is not only baseless, but an outcome of ignorance too.

The India Country Study on Large dams in India by five independent consultants done for the WCD brings out the reality of underestimated costs, not compensated, millions displaced but not rehabilitated, environmental impacts not mitigated and economic benefits overestimated (Please see a press note by South Asian Network on Dams, Rivers and People)

It is, therefore, shocking that the Apex Court of the largest democracy of the world has given a verdict which completely ignores the over-whelming evidence of large dams as unsustainable, unjust and destructive projects. The judgement has been summarily criticised and challenged by a wide cross-section of eminent people, writers, scientists, senior advocates and judges.

It is now known to be in violation of right to life, livelihood and other human rights enshrined in the Indian Constitution as well as the charters, convention and declarations of United Nations, such as ILO Convention 107, protecting the tribal communities, most of which are ratified by India. The judgment ridicules public interest litigation, a weapon in the hands of the common-people for self-defense and has full praise for big dams with no grounding into empirical facts and analysis of such projects as brought out by the World Commission on Dams. The judgement on Sardar Sarovar is particularly inhumane since the continued construction of the dam upto 90 mts itself will inundate homes and farms of more than 3,500 families, mostly tribal, in the coming monsoon while depending on the height reached by next June, the final height being 138 mts, the livelihood and life of hundreds of thousands, majority of them being socially disadvantaged tribal (indigenous) people, would be brutally destroyed. The people have no option but commitment and courage to fight this heinous crime against humanity, democracy and justice, on behalf of the struggles across the world.

This struggle is clearly towards empowering those who care for nature and people, and for human justice as against others who are willing to sacrifice nature and people at the altar of money- and market-based development. It is much more relevant in the context of globalisation-liberalisation where deprivation, unemployment, displacement of organised and unorganised both is on the fast track. It is indeed time to strengthen the alliances that have been formed in Seattle, Washington DC and Prague and challenge the interests at both national and international level. The WCD report may be a tool but not the ultimate weapon. It falls short of a courageous political analysis of the root causes of maldevelopment, inequity and injustice as well as the very development paradigm which justifies the building of large dams.

In the context of this Report, not only the people s movements, who question the viability of large dams on social, environmental and economic basis, but also all who are for a sustainable development and harmonious existence of human and nature, call for a moratorium on large dams; demand a review of the existing water policy, beyond an open, public debate on the report; and cry halt of any funding of large dams by any bi-multi lateral agencies, including World Bank.

The only hope for the future lies in the people asserting their rights and control over their resources and lives against appropriation by the ruling elites. It is towards this end that the struggles against large dams and for self-reliant reconstruction with natural and human resources have to go on in Narmada and other river valleys.

Medha Patkar

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Whatever Your Law Says......
Narmada Valley is Ours....
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