November 26, 2002	Tuesday	Ramazan 20, 1423

NEW DELHI: “The dam will serve you breakfast in bed, get your daughter married, and cure your jaundice.” With these words, renowned Indian author Arundhati Roy effectively describes the pathetic faith that India’s water resources establishment have in large dams.

According to the report of the World Commission on Dams, India has the largest number of large dams under construction in the world. One of the most talked about topics on water resources in the country today is linking up rivers across the country. This mindless proposal, which has been floating around for decades, is gaining ascendancy as sites available for building large dams are exhausted.

Even the World Bank, which in recent years had wisely shown some reluctance to funding large dams, has given new hope to India’s large dam lobby through the Bank’s new proposed Water Resources Sector Strategy, soon to come to the Bank Board for approval.

The serious problems facing the poorest in the country as a result of India’s misguided large dam agenda are growing increasingly clear to all concerned.

Ever since India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru called large dams “the temples of modern India” in early 50s, all kinds of arguments have been used to push for more of them. One name that the dam lobby is bound to throw at you if you dare question the wisdom of building dams is the Bhakra Nangal, a dam in western Punjab state inaugurated in 1963. It is asserted that Bhakra helped transform India from a food-deficit state in 1950s to one with a food surplus.

This claim was not put to the test until two years ago when the India Country Study and the Study on Irrigation Options in India conducted for the World Commission on Dams both reached the conclusion — practically unchallenged to date — that the gross contribution from land irrigated by large dams is about 10 per cent of India’s current foodgrains production.

The net contribution after deduction of production loss due to various impacts would be much less.

Moreover, this 10 per cent is the total contribution of India’s 3600 odd dams — the contribution from Bhakra alone would be minuscule.

Nobody today would dare claim that big dams have provided food security to India’s poor — particularly when India’s foodgrains storage exceeds 60 metric tons and food exports have reached record levels (mainly for use as cattle feed in developed countries) at the same time as malnutrition and starvation deaths are reported daily from around the country.

Research by many, including Nobel economist Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze, have shown that the reason for the absence of large scale famines in India today, as compared with Bihar in 1943 or elsewhere in 19th century, is not increased production — due to large dams or otherwise — but other factors related to governance, adversarial politics, and public advocacy institutes.

The following facts, drawn mostly from representatives of India’s dam establishment and not from its critics, give some insight into Bhakra’s real performance:

* A senior member of the Planning Commission and former water resources minister recently said that Bhakra is silting up so fast that the actual useful remaining life of the project may be less than 40 years.

* All concerned agree that over eight million hectares of the canal-irrigated land in India is practically useless because of water logging and salinization in canal commands.

* Environmental destruction in the submerged area and immediate upstream and downstream regions is so severe that the Himachal Pradesh Pollution Control Board has filed criminal charges against Bhakra Management Board for destroying the Balh Valley in the Mandi district.

* The chief minister of the state of Himachal Pradesh continues to announce even today that plans are being drawn up for the rehabilitation of people displaced by the project almost half a century ago.

Even today the water resources establishment is not ready to ask in any transparent or accountable way what is the most cost-effective, sustainable, and rapid option for satisfying the needs of the people. Even today there is no credible, independent, and comprehensive assessment of any of the thousands of dams built over the years.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.

(The writer is a hydrological engineer and leading campaigner against big dams)