Author: Madhu Purnima Kishwar
Publication: Outlook
Date: May 3, 2006
URL: http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20060503&fname=madhu&sid=1&pn=1
NBA defines itself mainly through negative
agendas - anti-dam, anti-liberalisation, anti-globalisation, anti-WTO, anti
this, anti that. The alternative development paradigm Medha Patkar claims
to represent has not yet offered any practical and positive worldview or agenda
for action.
The spectacular success of Medha Patkar's
Narmada Bachao Andolan in making her opposition to the Narmada Dam Project
an international cause célèbre and the courage and perseverance
she has shown in pursuing this issue are indeed admirable. However, an honest
and nuanced account of this movement is yet to be written. It is worth a serious
study because the tactics and strategies adopted by the NBA movement has many
important lessons to teach -- both positive and negative -- for all of us
engaged in battles on behalf of the poor and marginalized groups of our society.
I am no expert on the economic viability of
big or small dams.
Therefore, I cannot pass a definitive verdict
on the Sardar Sarovar Dam Project. My gut feeling, however, is that mega projects
that cause mega displacements tend to be politician- and contractor-friendly
rather than people friendly. Moreover, our government (no matter which party
is in power) has a shameless record of habitually cheating people of their
rights, responding to their genuine grievances with callousness and even brutality,
robbing the poor of their pitiful resources and transferring them to the rich
and powerful and facilitating outright loot and corruption in the guise of
development projects. I also believe that our netas and babus are not enthusiastic
about low-cost, eco-friendly options for water harvesting and power generation
because they cannot siphon off as much money from them as they can through
mega projects. I myself played an active role for a long period in the campaign
against building the Tehri Dam, which I believe to be far more ecologically
dangerous than the Narmada Dam.
I share many of the misgivings of those opposing the Narmada Dam. Yet, I prefer
that the merits and demerits of each such project be evaluated in a non partisan
manner through a public audit by genuine experts, rather than adopting a permanent
oppositionist position as a matter of ideology.
Despite my reservations regarding mega-projects,
I am forced to conclude that the mountains of propaganda material generated
by the NBA, including the melodramatic tracts written by Arundhati Roy, are
not fully trustworthy. More importantly, the strategy and tactics adopted
by the NBA have also often put their objectivity and ethical credentials in
doubt.
Consider this:
Though NBA never tires of pointing to the
real and imagined failures of Relief & Rehabilitation (R&R) as the
main reason for their opposition to the Narmada Dam, it has actually worked
tirelessly to obstruct many legitimate R&R projects. Medha Patkar had
started her career in 1984 with an Ahmedabad based organization called SETU
which assigned her the job of assisting Vasudha Dhargamwar of MARG to survey
the affected villages to assess the information available to these people
regarding the impact of the Narmada Project, and their rights as oustees.
This exercise was meant to help ensure that people got a fair and just rehabilitation
package. But by 1987, Patkar had developed extensive contacts of her own in
the project area, and unilaterally parted company with a whole coalition of
NGOs sincerely working there for R&R to proclaim: "Bandh Nahin Banega,
Koi Nahin Hatega [The Dam Won't Be Made. Nobody Would Move]". Thereafter,
she is alleged to have made it so difficult for Vasudha Dhargamwar to carry
on with the work they had started by carrying on a negative campaign against
those willing to work on R&R as a fall back plan that MARG and SETU had
to withdraw from the area.
Her stand became even more uncompromising
when, under pressure from the World Bank, the Gujarat government agreed to
give a generous R&R package.
Far from welcoming it and joining hands with
those who began working to ensure that the government's promise of R&R
was translated into concrete action, she declared that the NBA would not accept
any kind of R&R package because NBA was opposed to obstructing the "natural"
flow of rivers. Even the name of the movement, "Narmada Bachao Andolan",
indicates that the NBA is more obsessed with "saving" the river
from human beings than protecting the interests of poor farmers.
Thereafter she began a sustained campaign
by the NBA against all those who were acting as watchdogs to ensure proper
rehabilitation.
They were dubbed as anti-poor, anti-tribal,
pro-kulaks and hostages to corporate interests. NBA activists were instructed
to prevent the entry not just of government officials, but also of independent
NGOs into villages for collecting honest, updated data regarding families
requiring resettlement. They physically obstructed those who tried to provide
accurate information about the R&R package to prevent people from making
an informed choice. They even got tribals to take a sacred oath, with water
of the holy Narmada in hand, that they would choose death to relocation.
However, it did not take long for many of
their local followers to realize that NBA was denying them the right to an
informed choice. Therefore, despite the "sacred" oath NBA administered
to them, most of the tribal villages began quietly voting with their feet
and accepted the unprecedented R&R package of 5 acres per adult son and
Rs.45,000 to each family for building a new house, free transportation of
their household goods, including the timber frame of their house, plus truckloads
of additional wood from their villages.
The R&R process in Maharashtra and Gujarat
is almost complete.
All said and done, the R&R package offered to Narmada Dam oustees is by
all accounts better than anything we have witnessed so far in part because
several Gandhians and NGOs in Gujarat did a fairly good job of playing watchdogs,
insisting that the government must give the land of their choice to oustees
even if it meant purchasing it from private owners. That is one of the reasons
that in recent years oustees who have settled in Gujarat and even Maharashtra
have not been seen seeking the help of NBA.
Most of the new villages for oustees have
been provided with better schools and primary health facilities and better
connectivity with urban centers than they ever had before. This is not to
suggest that the rehabilitation package is flawless. According to Prof. Ghanshyam
Shah of the Surat based Centre for Social Studies, who has closely followed
the R&R in Gujarat, while 80 percent of oustees in Gujarat have been given
a fair deal, about 20 percent have not received their full due. All this because
of sustained pressure rather than due to an innate desire of the Gujarat government
to give a fair economic deal. Activists of Arch Vahini who played a vital
role in this were so worn out in the process that they withdrew from the Resettlement
and Land purchasing Committee after resettling villagers from 19 uprooted
villages spread over 155 Gujarat villages. Maharashtra government too played
a lot of mischief with the awards, and the Madhya Pradesh government has also
done all it could to wriggle out of its commitments. The Monitoring and Evaluation
Committee of the Project as well as the Supreme Court have at various times
expressed dissatisfaction at the veracity of their Action Taken Reports and
forced the state governments to improve their performance.
However, those in the know have numerous sad
but true stories of how, even in this part of the rehabilitation effort, NBA
activists put all manner of hurdles in the way of those working for R&R,
including the use of outright violence.
More than 200 criminal cases have been filed
in Madhya Pradesh against NBA activists for engaging in violent attacks. As
per news reports, as recently as April 6, NBA activists were reported to have
beaten up and torn the clothes of government officials who visited Bajrikheda
for survey work. One would have dismissed this reported instance as an example
of the repressive policy of the state government -- except for the fact that
it is not just government officials who have alleged obstructionist attacks
by the NBA; honest NGOs working for R&R narrate similar accounts. The
Indian Express of May 1, 2006 also reported how when they tracked down some
of the families in Madhya Pradesh whose case the NBA took to the Supreme Court,
they found these families had actually bought land of their choice with the
settlement money provided by the government but the NBA activists were pressuring
them not to move from their original villages so that they could continue
to argue in the Court that R&R was incomplete.
Such tactics are not new. They date back to
the early days of NBA. This is how Ambrish of Arch-Vahini describes one among
many reported episodes of NBA's techniques: When a large majority of tribals
from Manibeli wanted to move to the new land sites offered to them in Gujarat,
the minority who were still aligned to NBA declared they would not let those
who wanted to move take their dismantled houses with them. Since tribal
homes are built with a lot of valuable timber, no one who was ready to accept
the government offer was willing to let the minority NBA activists take forcible
possession of their houses. Government functionaries sent to assist in helping
those willing to relocate to carry their belongings and construction material
were stoned and prevented from entering the village. Finally, those keen to
move sought the intervention of Arch-Vahini of Gujarat, since it had worked
for long years to pressure the Gujarat government to implement honestly its
promises of R&R. When Arch-Vahini personnel were also attacked, the entire
operation had to be carried out under police protection.
However, the NBA successfully manipulated
the media coverage of this event to project an image that Manibeli was razed
to the ground by police action and goons acting on behalf of the Gujarat government
to forcibly oust the poor tribals from their village.
Another method used by NBA to obstruct R&R
was to demand that, since tribals are forest dwellers, they should be given
forestland for resettlement. For years the Ministry of Environment resisted
the idea because the new environment laws are against allowing new settlements
in forest areas. However, when, under World Bank pressure, the government
of Maharashtra was persuaded to make forest land available for oustees, the
NBA decided to create a big furore by reversing its stand without explanation.
They objected to this deal on the plea that this would destroy the already
depleted forest cover in Maharashtra, proving yet again that for NBA keeping
the "movement" alive has become more important than protecting the
rights of vulnerable citizens.
Maneka Gandhi, who is an ideologically compulsive
supporter of the NBA, gave the following account from a whole repertoire of
stories about Medha Patkar\'s obstructionist strategies with regard to R&R.
In the year 2001, when Maneka Gandhi was appointed minster for social welfare,
she approached Medha Patkar and asked for a list of the project affected families
in Madhya Pradesh so that she could help in providing a comprehensive plan
of action for rehabilitation. When she found that the NBA had never prepared
a list of those requiring rehabilitation, she offered to get that job done
by sending the most honest among her officers to do a survey.
However, she requested Patkar not to let this
be known publicly, so that the survey could be kept a quiet affair since her
own party bosses were not keen on such an exercise. However, as soon as the
team reached Bhopal, Medha Patkar gave a press conference denouncing the survey
team and dissociating NBA from it. As soon as BJP leaders got to know of it,
Prime Minister Vajpayee ordered Maneka Gandhi to recall the survey team. As
a junior minister in the cabinet, she had no choice but to comply. That was
yet another opportunity sabotaged for preparing an accurate list of people
requiring rehabilitation.
Today, despite the obstructionist tactics
of the NBA, Gujarat and Maharashtra have almost completed the R&R process.
Madhya Pradesh is the only state that has
not fulfilled its entire commitment. However, most of the 35,000 families
whose cause NBA is currently espousing with a view to stopping work on the
Dam are not tribals, though they are paraded as adivasis. Tribal lands were
submerged long ago; the adivasis have mostly been settled despite NBA obstructions.
The present day "oustees" are mostly from Patel and other Patidar
castes. There are serious differences between the government's estimates of
families requiring total relocation and that of the NBA. How do we know what
is the accurate ground reality when all along NBA activists have steadfastly
opposed the entry of government officials and even independent NGOs to carry
out an accurate updated assessment?
Even those who disagree with NBA's methods
cannot deny that by building a sustained and relentless campaign on the issue
of rehabilitation, at the national and international level, making Narmada
Dam an international cause célèbre and tirelessly drawing attention
to the many real and imagined bunglings, it has undoubtedly played an important
role in forcing the government to offer a decent R&R package.
While determined interventions by the Supreme Court and the ground level work
by Arch-Vahini and other concerned citizens doesn't ever get due acknowledgement,
even the NBA's detractors admit that pressure from the World Bank after NBA
lobbied hard to get them to withdraw from the project played a significant
role in ensuring a fair deal for the displaced.
However, by their mixing untruths, half-truths
and overstatements and their consistent obstructionist attitude towards R&R
while cynically using the issue to stall the dam construction by defaming
those who took up the task seriously, NBA has compromised its own credibility
and ended up being an extremely divisive movement. It often gave the impression
that keeping alive the movement became an end in itself and the oustees were
being used as mere instruments toward this end.
The NBA has also harmed itself by making light
of the drinking water needs of Gujarat and making it seem as if the dam was
going to cater only to the urban elite. It was this total lack of acknowledgement,
this total lack of compassion for those deprived of water that would make
anyone feel, if not demonized, at least dismissed and totally blanked out
of the picture. It is this rigid and inflexible stand, with no compassion
shown or alternative offered for drinking water needs of the people of Gujarat
who saw the dam as the only panacea on offer, that made this into a 'us versus
them' divisive battle.
So on one hand you had Medha Patkar's rigid
stand against the dam, with no viable alternative on offer, and, on the other,
you had Modi standing absolutely firm in support of the dam promising water
and development - just as Chiman Bhai Patel of the Congress had at one time.
Medha Patkar, one could conclude, has made no small contribution in polarising
the society, deepening the divide, thus helping Modi get people to forget
his part in the killing of thousands, enabling him to reinforce his image
as a symbol of Gujarati pride.
The high profile international campaign by
NBA also easily lends itself to the fears and phobias being cultivated by
their leaders that there is an international conspiracy to halt Gujarat's
march towards a prosperous future. It is a combination of all this which evoked
and aroused chauvinistic feelings which in turn were exploited by Gujarati
politicians-both from the Congress and BJP-allowing them to get away with
their own quota of lies and half-truths regarding the potential costs and
benefits of the dam.
While the NBA has been successful in winning
support for its cause among large sections of national and international NGOs,
the Gujarat government has been eminently successful in convincing the people
of the state, cutting across almost all divides, that the Sardar Sarovar Project
is their lifeline and answer to all their problems with regard to water and
power needs.
Gujaratis are so charged on this issue that they are willing to overlook all
the lapses, including evidence of corruption and lies being peddled by their
government. For example, so far only 10 percent of the available water from
the dam is reaching Gujarat because the network of canals required to transport
the full load has not yet materialized. Gujarat has stretched its budgetary
resources to such a limit that it does not even have the money to build the
required canal network. And yet, it insists on raising the height of the dam.
In the process, the state has almost bankrupted itself by sinking more and
more money in the ever-escalating costs of this project, justifying it as
a matter of Gujarati swabhiman.
Another important reason for NBA losing a
lot of goodwill it had initially garnered is that it appears to have made
a religion out of opposing all kinds of development projects without examining
the merits of each case. NBA defines itself mainly through negative agendas
- anti-dam, anti-liberalisation, anti-globalisation, anti-WTO, anti this,
anti that. The alternative development paradigm Medha Patkar claims to represent
has not yet offered any practical and positive worldview or agenda for action.
That is why even those of us who have serious misgivings about the Sarkari
Paradigm of Development feel sceptical of the Patkar-Roy Politics of Non-Development.
They have made the single theme of obstructionism into high ideology. One
expects a more constructive approach in politics from those who claim to draw
inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi.
Madhu Purnima Kishwar is Senior Fellow at
the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, founder editor of Manushi,
and author, most recently, of Deepening Democracy: Challenges Of Governance
And Globalisation In India
