CHRONICLE OF A CATASTROPHE
Pranjali Bandhu
Following the logic of high technology, the sluice gates of the Sardar Sarovar mega dam were closed in February last year, and further construction work started. The dam stands now at a height of 69 meters, despite stiff resistance for the past many years by Adivasi and non Adivasi farmers. This has meant a gradual submergence of villages and forest land in the reservoir. Within the last couple of years 19 villages of Gujarat and 10 villages from Dhule district in Maharashtra have come under the waters.
Manibeli, a major stronghold of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) and adivasi resistance, was the first village from Maharashtra to be submerged. “Jalsamarpan” has been the call of the NBA, and the Adivasi farmers refused to leave their homes and sources of livelihood. The Satyagrahis were forcibly evicted. Today Manibeli has a big contingent of armed police outnumbering the villagers. Though all the houses and fields in this village have been submerged, only a few have opted for resettlement. The villagers have retreated up the hills and are living under very difficult conditions. Now, the only way to reach this village is by ferry. Eight ferries are being used by officials, police and their families (for outings). Only two have been given to private contractors for the use of Adivasis, and these operate very irregularly. The government has also built a helipad there. No other outsiders, particularly NBA activists, are allowed in. Only the press, with special permission of the District Collector, is allowed in. Each project affected village in Maharashtra has a police camp. Most of the policemen spend their time in drinking, and cases of rape and molestation are on the rise. Entire Dhule district has been under Section 144 since the beginning of May 1994.
The Narmada river basin has been a home for 20 million people, a large proportion of which are tribals such as Bhils, Bhilalas, Tadvis, Nayakas, Vasavas and other sub groups. The government of India proposal to build over 3000 small, 135 medium and 30 large dams on this river, if implemented, would turn this riverine system into a series of artificial ponds, canals, reservoirs, the major ones of which would be the Sardar Sarovar in Gujarat and the Narmada Sagar in Madhya Pradesh. The completion of such a project would mean submergence of pristine green glowing land – 13,700 ha of forest land, an almost equal amount of rich cultivated land, and the ousting of over one million people, mostly tribals, making it the largest river basin population displacement to date.
What displacement and resettlement mean for these people is very evident when one visits some of the 300 odd resettlement sites already in existence in Gujarat. Since Gujarat is the State that stands to gain most from this project it also carries the major burden of rehabilitation. On paper the Resettlement and Rehabilitation (R&R) policy for the Project Affected Persons (PAP) of the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) of the Gujarat government is called the best in India and has been the result of a long struggle on the part of voluntary agencies and NBA. According to this package every family losing 25% or more of its holdings is entitled to receive 2 ha of land in the irrigable command area of the SSP. Areas for fuel wood and fodder cultivation have to be provided or arrangements for these have to be made. Every son who has completed 18 years in 1987 has to be treated as a separate family and given land. Also, the resettlement colonies in Gujarat are to be provided with basic amenities like a primary school for every 100 families, a community house, a dispensary, domestic and street lighting and a linkage to main roads.
In the first place, displacement and relocation have only in rare cases been voluntary. In most cases the Mukhiyas of the villages were ‘bought off’ by government authorities. In their turn, they ‘bought off’ others or took along villagers who were not willing to go against their authority. The tribals for the last many years have been under tremendous pressure to vacate their village lands and resettle. Continuous police action, harassment, atrocities, including rape of tribal women, beatings, arrests, and the threat and reality of submergence have forced them to leave their homes.
In Gadher, a family which lived in the largest house of the village had for years been trying, unsuccessfully, to get proper resettlement land. This family, like most of the Gujarat oustees, had no involvement with the NBA. On June 4 last year a party of officials and ‘middlemen’ (villagers paid by the government to assist resettlement) accompanied by fifty labourers and eleven trucks arrived at the family’s house. The head of the family was hit on the head by the middlemen. The rest of the family fled and the labourers demolished the house and took away household items and livestock.
The families living for the past few years in various resettlement sites in Gujarat are facing a number of problems. Some of them could not get physical possession of the land that was allotted to them, and previous landowners were still asserting their rights over the land. In many cases absentee landlords have sold their sharecroppers’ land leading to land disputes. In one of the resettlement sites visited (Panchwari) oustees have not been given pattas (title deeds to land) so far. Later the Nigam (municipality) or the Patels can lay claim to their lands. Sometimes the pattas are issued for a limited period of 20 years or so, making ownership insecure. In most resettlement colonies visited (Dharmapuri, Simamli, Lachras etc.) at least a quarter and sometimes half the people had yet to receive land. Often the land is stony, not irrigated, or it is not cultivable due to flooding. Sometimes the land given falls short of the stipulated five acres. Those who have been given non-irrigated land face extremely difficult conditions in the non monsoon seasons as they will not be able to grow anything. Those whose land got flooded during the monsoon had to sell their stores of timber brought from the forests in order to eat. The government is not providing food grains. Sometimes the fields are so far from the allotted houses that they have to walk for three hours to reach them. The land given to them is often degraded due to the overuse of fertilisers and repeated annual growth of soil-exhausting commercial trees like the Nilgiri eucalyptus.
The Adivasis feel they are living in jail. Their earlier way of life involved free movement in their surroundings, in the forests, which also provided additional resources for living. They grazed their cattle and goats there, obtained wood fuel from them. Now they have no grazing land, insufficient space and fodder for their live-stock, and hence there is a reduction in this wealth. They don’t have enough fuel to cook two square meals a day. There is no space for cremating their dead. Sometimes neighbouring villagers are hostile and engage in looting and harassing them. In such cases the police are hardly helpful; rather they connive in the looting. In general, they feel their sovereignty, their self-rule (ADIVASI RAJ) is over.
There is a reduction in the variety and nutritive value of their food. There is no space for their daily ablutions except in the vicinity of their huts. Drinking water already scarce gets polluted under such conditions. The once extremely clean tribals are forced to live under dirty conditions and fall prey to a number of diseases. Since no proper medical facilities are provided a good number of those relocated, mostly children and elderly people, die every year particularly during the monsoon season due to cholera, typhoid, diarrhoea, gastro-enteritis and malaria. Nutritional deficiency diseases like beri beri and scurvy are on the rise among children.
From spacious airy houses made with mud and using teakwood, often beautifully carved and painted, the tribals have been dumped into suffocating tin sheds, which are unbearably hot in summer and too cold in winter. Kitchen space is too small. These sheds do not fit up to any kind of architectural requirements. They are not raised from the ground and a lot of seepage is there in the monsoon. Such houses get surrounded by slush and stagnant water making them breeding grounds for diseases.
Why is the Gujarat government so hell bent on pushing ahead with this insane project even if it does not have adequate resources to complete it? A quick look at the way in which money has been spent so far should provide some of the answers. Out of the envisaged Rs. 25,000 crore required only 10% has been spent so far. (Fifty percent of this is from the World Bank loan given earlier). This has been used mainly for constructing housing colonies, roads, salaries, circuit houses, hotels, computers and other luxuries for government officials, engineers etc. There are also many scandals and scams in the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Ltd. that have come to light. Accessibility to so much money provides for corruption from top to bottom of the bureaucratic state machinery and related institutions and landed interests.
The tribal who gets only a part of his compensation money has to part with a cut of Rs 25 to 50 per Rs. 1000/1500 received. Rarely has he got the entire Rs. 4000 compensation money. A lot of the compensation money has gone to treating illnesses because doctors overcharge and medical facilities are at great distances. Much of the compensation money has also gone into the pockets of village level officials and ‘middlemen’ as bribes. Those who have clout in the government, like the Patels, have been able to sell their useless land to the government for settlement at Rs. 15000 to Rs. 20000 per acre. And the tribals of Akhrani tehsil in Maharashtra, which is also to come under submergence, have not got anything because “till today since 1947 the government has not issued ‘pattas’ to all of them.”
Forest contractors are waiting to cut down and sell valuable teak wood in forest areas yet to be inundated. For this purpose kuccha roads allowing trucks to penetrate to the forests of Narmada Valley in M.P. have been made. Unfortunately, there are some tribals in unaffected villages of the area who are willing to hire themselves out as labourers for cutting and transporting wood. Among the affected tribals in M.P. who had opted for resettlement many are coming back disgusted with the fraud of resettlement, “of being thrown into rubbish pits.” They are determined to remain in their homes and struggle it out, even if it means doing so for many generations, for they feel that if their lands are lost everything is lost.
Arundhiti, a leading NBA activist, says that rehabilitation in the sense of re-creation or even improvement of the life that the tribals were leading, is impossible. The state is playing a game when it talks of resettlement and rehabilitation. What is possible and is happening is displacement/eviction and relocation. The tribals one was able to talk to were very clear about why they are being asked to sacrifice their lands in the name of development. It is to provide the businessmen, contractors, politicians and bureaucrats with money for luxurious living. The dam and related projects are only incidental to this. This section of society does not have the capability, financial or otherwise, to complete the dam and the canal network. (Remember the Rajasthan Canal and innumerable other such white elephants scattered around the country.) The considerable damage to the ‘Stitling Basin of the dam due to the September 1994 rains, which has recently come to light, is only a grave pointer to the incompetence of the dam authorities.
At the most, the dam will allow generation of a certain amount of electricity for urban areas like Baroda and Ahmedabad and for factories. Already the inaugural stones for five sugar factories have been laid in the area. Irrigation would reach largely those lands which are already well irrigated and prosperous like Kheda, Baroda, Bharuch and Ahmedabad strip and would be used for cash crop cultivation like sugar cane. There is no money for drinking and irrigation water supply for drought prone areas in Kutch and Saurashtra. The Adivasis, rendered landless and homeless through the project, would join the ranks of cheap migrant labourers who can be sold as bonded labourers to contractors in Gujarat and elsewhere, having to live in slum like conditions.
With this kind of range of interests in the project there is no space to bother about flora and fauna that are going to be drowned, the tribal knowledge of forest wealth and its uses, their culture, the ancient archeological and anthropological treasures that might be lost. They don’t want to bother about the destruction of the habitat of the Hilsa and Tiger prawn in the downstream area which can live only conditions of a delicate balance of saline and fresh water in the estuary. The salinity ingress from the sea in the river and soil will destroy the livelihood of thousands of fisherfolk downstream. They are not bothered that this is a region of seismic faults and building such a mega dam can have untold repercussions. As an Adivasi woman put it: “Water and fire cannot be controlled. They will find their way to freedom. No man-made structures can stop them.”
Bawa Mahalia of Jalsindhi, the first village in Madhya Pradesh to face submergence in the coming monsoon, if the dam height is raised, says: “There is no compensation possible for the land, forest and river resources that we are going to lose. We would like to have motors for irrigation, electricity and schools in our own villages. If we have handpumps we can take water from the river and have a winter crop. If we have schools our children can learn.” It is not that Bawa and other tribals completely negate all the amenities and advantages that modern technology offers. They do want it, but to serve their needs, and not to be used for destroying them and their culture.
But then, they were never asked.
[ First published in Frontier, February 18, 1995]