DAM, AGAIN
T.G. Jacob
The Mullaperiyar dam is again in the news. This reinforced (thousands of tons of concrete and steel has gone in to it during the last few decades) dam of 119 years vintage has always been a sore point in the relations between the two States of Tamil Nadu and Kerala and the latest Supreme Court intervention allowing the effective water level to be raised is certain to become another gold mine for political opportunists of both the States. What is all this sabre rattling about in real terms?
For Kerala it is about losing 4000 acres of land to the dam water. For Tamil Nadu it is about irrigating thousands of acres of arid land and maintaining the irrigation levels in the rain shadow areas of three districts. Political parties and government in Kerala raise the fear of safety of the dam which if broken is said to be disastrous for three heavily populated districts including Ernakulam and Thrissur. Citing the seismic fault line running through the dam area (it belongs to Seismic zone III on par with metros like Delhi and Chennai) Kerala is demanding the decommissioning of the existing old dam and construction of a new ‘modern’ one in its place in the same area assuring status quo situation of water supply to Tamil Nadu farmers. This proposed resolution of the issue of safety of the dam is, to say the least, patently absurd, illogical.
Why it is patently absurd and illogical is simply because history of big dams proves above any doubt that big dams anywhere in the world are built-in with serious dangers. Decommissioning of big dams has occurred in countries like the United States, several European countries and South America. These included several ‘modern’ dams. Hence, decommissioning an old dam in a seismically unstable region and building a new one there itself is absurd and illogical. It can at best only make the area even more unstable. If the Mullaperiyar dam is to be decommissioned on safety grounds the same basis is valid for not constructing any new dam. Then, why this fixation on a new dam?
The answer lies in the existing economic dynamics of Kerala. It is an out-rightly consumerist economy and society fed by remittances from abroad, returns from a parasitic tourist economy, and real estate/contractors’ controlled speculative economy. One does not really need any statistical substantiation for this assertion because it is explicitly visual for even a casual observer. The government itself is the biggest contractor due to it being the one and only liquor contractor for the whole State, which is the biggest liquor consumer in the whole country. The highly regressive tax on liquor hitting the low income people the worst is the lifeline of state finances in this chronically indebted State. And, the parasitic tourism economy is universally elevated as the golden means for the advancement of the State and people. All these three important segments of the economy are mutually interacting in a highly complementary, interlocking fashion. A new dam will involve mega contracts with all their attendant kickbacks. It is attractive for the government, contractors and political parties. This is one aspect of a new dam.
Secondly, there is the question of 4000 acres of land around the existing dam water body. It is reported that there are resorts already existing in this land. In any case, the area is no doubt deemed highly suitable for expansion of tourism services. The hilly regions are earmarked for tourism expansion. The declaration of the entire Wayanad district, in the fascinating foothills of Western Ghats, as “tourism district” as early as 1991 is symptomatic of this policy. The tourism lobby is very powerful in the State and it is the sister lobby of the real estate lobby. In fact, they often merge into each other especially in the tourism enclaves where they cannot be differentiated at all. It is certainly in the interests of this lobby that the 4000 acres of scenic beauty is consolidated in its clutches, not sunk in water and becoming inaccessible to the hedonism industry.
If the Kerala government and political parties are really serious concerning the safety angle they ought to be more upfront and transparent which they are not at present. But if they are utilizing the safety angle as a bogey to further the vested interests of the tourism and contractors lobbies it is unalloyed duplicity, but nothing really surprising. Only very recently we witnessed the Church inciting the small peasantry in the Western Ghats areas to violence against the Gadgil committee report through propagating outright lies to protect the interests of big encroachers and the mining lobby. Invoking the safety angle of the dam easily fits in to this utilization pattern besides providing lucrative employment to lumpenised camp followers.
As expected there is widespread euphoria in Tamil Nadu. It will certainly take more time for them to recognize that any amount of water from Periyar is not going to save agriculture in the beneficent areas even in the not-so-long-run because the production processes employed and promoted are insatiably water guzzling and unsustainable in a multitude of ways. In the immediate future it will be possible to bring in more dry areas under cultivation and increase the productivity of existing cultivated areas. But as is evident from other areas the vicious trap of un-sustainability is bound to stare the peasantry in their faces sooner or later. As is often said, Kerala always appears to be a forerunner. The thousands of farmers who committed suicide in Wayanad due to unsustainable production processes are no doubt forerunners to their neighbours. In fact, media reports with increasing frequency do point at the emergence of this necrophilia trend in areas like Erode, Madurai and Theni. Utilizing the river waters issues for politicking for competitive one-upmanship and escape valve for Tamil parochialism dressed as nationalism has been the rule in Tamil Nadu ever since the States reorganization way back in 1956 with no qualitative change to-date. That is why it is not even curious that while the leadership of the CPI(M) in Kerala called for a shutdown against the Supreme Court judgment it’s counterpart in Tamil Nadu demanded immediate implementation of the same. Well, this is part of a broader game plan posing as a political question.
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(Published in Malayalam in Thejass Daily, 10 May, 2014)