Cover feature

Have river, will dam

A surge of dam and reservoir building in India promises to impact on the livelihoods of millions. And as in the past, the affected people will be left to suffer, even as few will be studying alternative means of generating irrigation and power.

By : Shripad Dharmadhikary

bilash rai

Following a report by the World Commission on Dams in February 2001, the Indian government squarely rejected the Commission’s recommendations: “Having made impressive strides since independence in developing our water resources, India proposes to continue with its programme of dam construction to create another 200 billion cubic metres of storage.” This response adequately captures the current vision of the government of India: water-resources development has become virtually synonymous with building large-storage dams.

So what is wrong with that? Simply put, large dams are among the most expensive, iniquitous, socially disruptive and environmentally destructive means of extracting water and energy from nature. As the Commission (the WCD, a body created in 1998 by the World Bank and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature) itself says:

In too many cases an unacceptable and often unnecessary price has been paid to secure these benefits [of dams], especially in social and environmental terms, by people displaced, by communities downstream, by taxpayers and by the natural environment. Lack of equity in the distribution of benefits has called into question the value of many dams.

During the two decades prior to the WCD’s findings, similar issues had been raised continuously by a large number of people’s struggles and national and transnational networks, which worked to challenge the large dams that were being planned and built during the 1980s and 1990s. As this opposition grew, there was a corresponding slowdown in the pace of dam building all over the world. In India, too, dam construction fell sharply during this period, from a high of about 120 new dams per year during the 1970s, to 106 in the 1980s and less than 30 in the 1990s.

However, large-dam building is now making a strong comeback in India, as successive governments in New Delhi have embarked upon a concrete-pouring spree with a vengeance. The 20 years preceding the 10th Five Year Plan had seen the addition of 13,666 megawatts of hydropower capacity throughout India. Compare this to the 7886 MW of hydro capacity that have been added in just the five years of the Tenth Plan, which ends this year. In pushing the pace, however, government officials are blatantly ignoring the many lessons that have been learned over the past several decades, including those voiced by the WCD and the many popular struggles within India and the rest of Southasia. One important sign of this is the sharp increase in the pace of implementation of hydropower projects.

Much more ambitious dam building is in the offing. The new 50,000 MW Hydroelectric Initiative, launched in May 2003, proposes to build an installed capacity of 50,000 MW through 162 projects in 16 states by 2017, many of them privately built and owned. The Bharat Nirman programme proposes to create new irrigation systems in about 11 million hectares over the next five years alone. About half of this is expected to come from major- and medium-sized schemes, essentially involving large dams. The massive Inter Linking of Rivers programme, which plans to create 30 new connections between the country’s major rivers, is also likely to require the construction of around 150-200 large dams. (The International Commission on Large Dams defines a large dam as one 15 metres or higher. The Indian Ministry of Water Resources defines a project with more than 10,000 hectares of irrigation as a major project, between 2000-10,000 ha as a medium project and less than 2000 ha as a minor project.)

Unfortunately, India’s latest dam-building exercise is being carried out without any real assessment of the benefits and costs of dams previously built. As such, it has never been officially established whether or not these installations are indeed the optimal solutions for India’s water, food and energy needs, as New Delhi continues to hold. Nor, for that matter, has there really been an understanding of the huge and complex impacts that these dams will inevitably entail.

Displacement and uprootment
Submergence of homes and agricultural lands is one of the most recognised impacts of large dams. In 2000, the WCD estimated that collectively about 40 to 80 million people had been displaced by large dams worldwide, and that “many of them have not been resettled or received adequate compensation, if any.”

But displacement is not merely a physical event, nor even just an economic one. It is also a cultural, emotional and psychological phenomenon. A commonly overlooked point is that displacement begins the day it is announced that a dam is to be built and that particular areas are to be submerged. With this begins a period of uncertainty, with the lives of whole communities suddenly suspended. In many cases, the government stops all new developmental work in such areas. This phase of uncertainty can last for years, even decades, given the long gestation periods of dams. For example, the Sardar Sarovar project on the Narmada River will submerge a 10 km stretch of the state highway in Madhya Pradesh. As such, this road has not seen any maintenance for the past twenty years, since the project was first announced. There are other social consequences, as well. Eligible boys often find it difficult to get brides in such situations, as no one wants to marry their daughters into families that are likely to lose their homes, and likely to go through the trauma of shifting.

While displacement is not just about losing agricultural land and livelihoods, this is certainly one of the most serious impacts. As with the social element, a dam can affect livelihoods in myriad ways. The physical and ecological transformation of the riverine environment to a reservoir often leads to a collapse of fisheries and, in turn, the livelihoods of thousands of fisherpeople. It is sometimes argued that these livelihoods can be replaced with reservoir fisheries. Perhaps this is so, but there has been no assessment to indicate whether reservoir fisheries actually produce enough to replace the production and livelihoods of earlier riverine fishing. Furthermore, local fisherpeople are not traditionally equipped to handle reservoir fishing. Their boats, designed for shallow rivers, are often unsafe on a deep reservoir; their nets are no longer of the right type; and they are unfamiliar with the habits of the new fish species that take over the reservoir. All of this makes it difficult for local fisherpeople to carry on their traditional occupations. As such, it is often outsiders who come to dominate.

In the reservoir that is created, however, at least some fisheries can prevail, though its benefits mostly go to large outside contractors as the fishing rights are auctioned. It is the downstream areas that are by far the worst affected. The diminished water flow and its drastically changed pattern downstream tends to have a devastating impact on the fishing. The Sardar Sarovar project is the last dam on the Narmada, and all the water up to that point has already been allocated between different states. This is expected to disrupt the rich estuarine fisheries downstream, which support over 10,000 fishing families. These impacts are already beginning to be felt, with declining catches even though the dam is still only partially complete.

‘Rehabilitation’
In India, most large dams have disproportionately affected Adivasi populations. A study by the WCD of 34 large dams in India showed that more than 47 percent of the displaced were Scheduled Tribes, despite the fact that they make up just eight percent of the overall population. With New Delhi’s new 50,000 MW plan, a large number of ongoing and proposed dams are also in such areas.

Despite the fact that displacement generally results in the complete disintegration of a community, no project in India has even aimed for – let alone assured – resettlement on the basis of keeping the community intact. Instead, communities are broken up, and people are thrown into socially and culturally alien surroundings. They have to celebrate festivals alone; they do not find political representation due to their low numbers; and women are particularly affected. Of course, when a community is dispersed, it is not only their individual livelihoods that suffer, but also the livelihoods of those dependent on that community – the small-shop owner, the village carpenter, the cobbler. The displaced from these lesser known categories are estimated to run into the hundreds of thousands. Yet in India, they are not recognised as ‘affected people’: the rough estimates of the displaced do not include them, and there is no rehabilitation policy for them.

States in India have differing rehabilitation programmes; indeed, different projects within one state can have differing policies. Madhya Pradesh, for instance, has three different rehabilitation policies: for the Sardar Sarovar project, for the rest of the 29 large dams on the Narmada, and for all the other dams in the state. The first-ever ‘national’ rehabilitation policy was not announced until 2004, and it has serious limitations. It provides for a maximum of one hectare of land in lieu of land lost, and that too only if such land “is available”. (Many rehabilitation policies are replete with phrases like “if available” and “as far as possible” which offer convenient loopholes for project authorities.) Moreover, the new national policy is not even binding on any state or agency. The National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC), the largest central agency responsible for hydropower projects in India, maintains that the national policy does not apply to its projects, and is developing its own resettlement package. Like most other rehabilitation packages in the country, this one too does not recognise any category of affected people except those losing land. Agricultural land in compensation and preference in employment are, again, to be provided “depending on availability”.

If this is the situation with respect to rehabilitation policy, the implementation, of course, has been abysmal. Though official data is scant on what has happened to project-affected people over the years, information from various people’s movements and other sources shows that millions of Indians have been rendered destitute through dam-related displacement. Whatever the number, the WCD estimates that about 75 percent of people displaced by dams in India have not been rehabilitated or are impoverished. The experience of failure of resettlement in dam after dam in India has led to an incontrovertible conclusion: rehabilitation of such large numbers is simply impossible.

Furthermore, if oustees are to organise and protest their situation, they are vastly more likely to face state repression than to be heard with concern. Struggles all over the country – whether in the Narmada Valley in the west, or Tehri in the north, or Khuga in Manipur – have faced severe state repression, including police beating, filing of false cases, firings and deaths. According to New Delhi, the oustees of dams do not count – literally. In 1999, Arundhati Roy estimated that dams have displaced between 30-40 million people in India over the last 50 years. This resulted in a flurry of denials, questioning and even ridiculing of the figures Roy had presented. However, none who questioned these numbers was able to present any official estimate in response. Dam-building authorities who can tell precisely how much concrete has gone into building a dam claim to have no idea of how many people the dam displaces. Unfortunately, they are probably telling the truth. There is simply no tally of these individuals.

No debate
From 1997, the process of environmental clearance made a public hearing mandatory for all new dam construction, which suddenly offered a small but crucial window for people to voice their opinions. However, apart from the fact that the process has often been grossly subverted, the public hearing relates only to matters of environmental impact. As such, citizens cannot raise questions related to benefits, viability or desirability of a project. Now, following new notification in September 2006, even this small window has been virtually closed.

The environmental impacts of large dams are well known. Dams submerge forests, destroy habitats of important flora and fauna, cut off animal migration routes. Large dams have particularly grievous impacts downstream, as the water flow is drastically diminished. Large-scale canal irrigation from dams can result in waterlogging and salinisation of soil in the area, rendering infertile vast stretches – the very land that is supposed to be benefiting from the projects.

Nonetheless, the state of environmental assessment, monitoring and protection remains abysmal. Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) reports are now mandatory for large dams, as is environmental clearance. However, EIAs remain possibly the shoddiest documents prepared as a part of dam projects. Most such reports start with the basic assumption that the dam has to be built, and often include glowing tributes to the benefits of the project. Furthermore, many EIAs are done in haste, and often do not include year-round monitoring of baseline data. Vital facts are ignored, and impacts downplayed.

Technically, the EIA reports are supposed to be the basis on which the public hearings are conducted. Yet even this process has often been subverted. Many times, the EIA summary is not made available to the people, or the affected communities are not informed in time to attend the hearing. For example, the people affected by the 416 MW Pala Maneri and 600 MW Loharinag Pala projects in Uttaranchal had to boycott the public hearings for this reason, while the hearing in 1000 MW Karcham Wangtoo project in Himachal had to be twice postponed. There also tends there to be an unhealthy understanding between the administration and the project contractors to prevent those questioning the project from speaking, sometimes even resorting to hooliganism.

nba

Waters, frustrations rise: Gunjari, June 2007

Even after all of this, public opinion is still rarely reflected in the final recommendations. In case it does appear, it is often blatantly ignored by the Ministry of Environment. Significantly, there is no post-clearance monitoring worth the name, meaning that a project avoids all scrutiny once the ritual of the EIA exercise is over.

As of new EIA legislation passed in September 2006, even these flawed procedures and limited safeguards have been diluted. Most crucially, the public hearing is no longer mandatory. Authorities can now waive the hearing if, “owing to the local situation, it is not possible to conduct the public hearing”. The new notification also restricts participation in the hearing to “local people”, while other “persons having a plausible stake in the environmental impacts” can submit their opinions in writing. Since neither of these two is defined, these new semantics collectively give enormous scope to authorities to exclude people from the process, as well as exclude those who may have the expertise and skills to help the locals in the opposition to large dams.

Cumulative impact
The impacts of individual dams are dwarfed by the cumulative ramifications of the cascade of dams in any given river basin. Hypothetically, while a single dam may not greatly affect the amount of water that flows into a particular estuary, the construction of multiple dams can cause this quantity to fall sharply. Thus, apart from assessing the impact of individual dams, it is critical to assess the cumulative impact of all the dams in a basin – or, indeed, a region as a whole.

River-basin planning in India has for decades come to mean only how to maximise the number of dams that can be built on a river and its tributaries. In the current spree of dam building, that has not changed. So we have 30 large and 135 medium dams planned or built on the Narmada. The Kaveri, Godavari and Krishna rivers now boast 10, 11 and eight major projects respectively. At least 21 dams are currently planned or built in the Teesta basin in Sikkim; 22 in the Subansiri basin in Arunachal; and 28 in the Sutlej basin in Himachal. One way or another, these series of dams are altering beyond recognition almost all the big rivers in the country. In Madhya Pradesh, a long stretch of the Narmada, from Handia to Badwani, has been replaced by a series of large reservoirs. The Godavari and Krishna have already become closed basins – that is, there are years when no water flows down to the sea.

The total ramification of these dam projects is far greater that the sum of the impacts of the individual projects. This is particularly so in the case of dams being built in ecologically, culturally and socially sensitive areas – and this actually means practically all dams. Many of the new large dams in India are coming up in the hill states of Uttaranchal, Himachal and in the Northeast. Importantly, cultural factors, ignored with impunity in Indian dam building so far, may turn out to be crucial ones, especially in the Northeast. In New Delhi’s 50,000 MW initiative, 72 out of 162 projects will be in the Northeast; Arunachal Pradesh alone boasts 42.

The Northeast is inhabited by a large number of ethnic groups, each with a distinct identity, culture, language and even territory. Many of these populations are small. The total population of Arunachal, for instance, is about 1.1 million, out of which 400,000 are from outside the state. The local population of 700,000 is divided into 23 tribes, meaning that the populations of several of these groups is just a few thousand each. A dam project that displaces even a few thousand people thus has the potential to threaten the very existence of whole communities. Arunachalis are also in danger of being overwhelmed by outsiders. At the peak of activity, many of the proposed dam sites could be employing labourers running into many thousands.

Not so green
In addition to national ‘development’, India’s accelerated dam-building activity is also being justified in the name of tackling climate change. Large dams are supposed to be doing this not only by substituting (and, hence, cutting down) the use of fossil fuels, but also by ‘sequestering’ carbon in their reservoirs, which would act like carbon sinks. (The latter happens as phytoplankton take up carbon dioxide during the photosynthesis process. After dying, they sink to the bottom, thus sequestering, or trapping, the carbon at the bottom.)

But this argument for large dams is a flawed one on many counts, and the role of hydropower in mitigating climate change is far from a settled matter. If hydropower avoids the burning of fossil fuels, it is little reported that the reservoirs themselves release substantial amounts of greenhouse gases. These gases are formed by the decomposition of organic matter that was either submerged when the reservoir was created, or is continually washed into the reservoir. According to the WCD report, gross emissions from reservoirs could account for between 1 and 28 percent of the global-warming potential of greenhouse gases. Recent estimates by the South Asia Network for Dams, Rivers and People, based on findings by Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, suggest that large dams in India are responsible for an astounding 20 percent of the country’s total global-warming impact. The carbon-sequestering effect itself can be a limited, and in some cases a temporary, benefit; in certain cases, the greenhouse gas emissions from a reservoir could be more that its sequestering capacity.

On the other hand, there is little doubt that large hydro installations could increase vulnerability to climate change. Climate change is likely to affect river hydrology, with a greater occurrence of extreme events. This would be especially true for glacier-dependent rivers, as glacial melts are likely to be the first major impacts of global warming. Extreme events will affect the performance of dams (dropping power output due to droughts, for instance) and even threaten their safety. Moreover, because large dams inherently create more centralised water storages, the country’s total water security is made increasingly vulnerable, as this amounts to storing the water we need in one place rather than many.

Alternatives, alternatives
With the prevalent philosophy of ‘have river, will build dam’, New Delhi has never seriously explored other options, in order to establish that a dam would indeed be the most optimal solution. Nonetheless, alternatives to big dams do exist for delivering the necessary irrigation, energy and drinking-water supply.

For example, the Tarun Bharat Sangh (TBS), an organisation in the dry districts of Alwar, in Rajasthan, has shown how decentralised water harvesting can transform an arid area into one with rich agriculture. This work is important, as it is not limited to one or two villages but extends to a large area. Since 1985, the TBS has facilitated the building of over 5000 johads (small water-harvesting structures), and rejuvenated another 2500 old structures. This has led to dramatic improvement in water availability, increased food and milk production, and has succeeded in reviving five rivers that had been rendered dry. It is remarkable testimony to the fact that creating agricultural prosperity does not need large dams.

There are many alternative ways of obtaining power, too. In the Narmada Valley, when in 1999 the government of Madhya Pradesh set up a task force to study the dams and possible alternatives, the Narmada Bachao Andolan presented a report on how the energy sources available in just one village (including biomass) were sufficient to satisfy the energy needs of that village, and allow surplus to be exported. The state government nonetheless ruled out implementation of these recommendations.

One of the easiest and cheapest alternatives to new dam construction is to first make the full use of infrastructure already created, where money has been spent, and social and environmental costs already paid. According to the Ministry of Water Resources, the gap between the irrigation potential created and utilised in India was about 14 million hectares in 2004. This is equivalent to the cumulative promise of eight Sardar Sarovar projects. Bridging this gap would be the cheapest and fastest way to bring in new irrigation. The ministry also points out that 169 major and 219 medium projects have spilled over from the Ninth Plan, at a cost of about INR 1 trillion, with about 12.5 million hectares of irrigation potential locked in. Some of these projects have been ongoing for several decades. If priority is given to these, some of the new dams need not be built. Similarly, in the power sector, very high amounts of power are lost in transmission – more than 40 percent in many states. If these losses could be cut down, the power saved would be as good as the power generated. It is true that such measures, and other efficiency-improvement undertakings, may not obviate the need for new power projects, but they could certainly cut down significantly on the new projects needed.

But alternatives to dams really mean alternative approaches to water and energy-resource management. This means alternative approaches to decision-making, to make it a more inclusive process; alternative approaches to ensure more equitable distribution of benefits; alternative technologies, certainly, and alternative criteria for project selection that give equal weight to economic, financial, social and environmental aspects. Thus, the work of TBS in Rajasthan was made possible partly by the unique institution the local inhabitants evolved – that of the ‘river parliament’, where every village in the basin was represented, and which ultimately decided collectively on how to manage the area’s water.

What is often overlooked is that alternatives need to be assessed in the context of the real benefits of large dams, not based on claimed or perceived benefits. For example, the huge increase in food production in India since Independence and its ‘self-sufficiency’ has been widely attributed to large dams. But while irrigation has certainly played a big role in increasing food production, a significant portion of irrigation in India comes from groundwater. The WCD estimates that “at the most, 21.9 percent of total foodgrain production in 1993-94 may be due to the irrigation based on large dams.” A study of the Bhakra Nangal dam in which this author was involved found that the contribution of the project to Punjab’s agricultural production was around 11 percent, while about 43 percent of the state’s much-glorified agricultural production and prosperity was in fact based on the mining of groundwater.

The fact is that there has been hardly any assessment of the real benefits delivered by large dams, whether in irrigation or hydropower projects. No official post-facto assessment has been carried out on any major project in India. For new projects, the assessments of benefits often consist of assertions or flawed estimates, and the evaluations of impacts and social and environmental costs are – simply put – shoddy. Under such circumstances, to talk of alternatives is difficult, for alternatives are expected to match exaggerated benefits.

For example, a unique advantage claimed for reservoir-based hydropower projects is that they provide ‘peaking’ power (those times when demand suddenly spikes; say, in the early evening), which many other sources proposed as alternatives (solar power, for instance) cannot. To cater to this demand, the power source needs to be able to push up its generation quickly when the requirement shoots up, and bring it down the same way. Coal plants can take many hours to increase generation and come back down again, and thus are not considered suitable to meet peak needs. Hydropower, on the other hand, is considered ideal for this use, as it can be started immediately by simply opening the gates and letting the water flow. But there are neither studies nor official figures for how much peaking power hydro installations have really provided, and how much they have simply operated as ‘base load’ power stations. In the absence of this, the unique benefit of peaking power is at best an assertion.

In the final analysis, we have to confront the question: What price are we willing to pay for obtaining the benefits of water and energy from nature? After all, every method of generating energy, every means of extracting water, has an impact on the environment, and has a cost, financial and social. Alternatives have to be chosen to reflect equity – in the sharing of both costs and benefits. In both of these regards, large dams are found lacking. Lastly, since even the most benign option will have some impacts, we have to start thinking about potential limits to the demands we impose on nature.

Survival of the fittest
Even as evidence mounts against large dams, New Delhi is un-inclined to respond meaningfully. Perhaps this reluctance stems from the fact that part of the answer would be to stop building many of the proposed large dams, not to mention relinquishing some of its decision-making power to affected people, and claiming less direct control over the country’s water and energy resources. As such, no real answers have been offered, and the authorities have instead often chosen to bypass or ride roughshod over those who protest or propose alternatives. For example, no project and no government has yet accepted the basic principle that work on a dam should not proceed till proper resettlement is carried out. They are, after all, afraid that this may render the dam itself impossible. Even though the national rehabilitation policy of 2003 has as its very first objective to “minimise displacement and to identify non-displacing or least-displacing alternatives”, this has yet to be applied to any dam construction.

No project wants to take upon itself the responsibility of provision of livelihoods, after all. And even in the rare case where land in lieu of land lost is legally mandated – such as the Sardar Sarovar project – the state tries to bypass doing so. In the meanwhile, there is a concerted attempt underway to eliminate this provision, and to replace it with cash compensation. But experience from throughout the country has shown that cash compensation can rarely replace lost livelihoods.

Unlike what many believe, the critique of large dams does not say that nothing has been achieved by large dams. Irrigation has been created; hydropower has been generated. As of the end of June, India’s installed hydropower capacity was 30866 MW. As of March 2004, the irrigation potential created in India was 97.2 million ha, out of which 40 percent came from major and medium projects – mostly dams. The real question is, at what costs have these benefits come, and who has benefited? Unfortunately, apart from the huge social, environmental and financial costs, there has been gross inequity in the distribution of benefits. Moreover, as the WCD’s report on India concludes:

Even the distribution of benefits is not equitable. Irrigation benefits are mostly appropriated by farmers with large landholdings and, among them, by those who are at the head of the distribution system rather than at the tail reach. Electricity is also disproportionately accessed by the urban rich and the rich farmer, as opposed to the urban poor and the poor farmer … Consequently, dams have not only helped to maintain the current inequities in the Indian society but, in some ways, have exacerbated them.

As the Indian economy booms, the demand for water and energy is rising sharply. This is leading to the breakneck construction of hundreds of mines, power plants, dams and industrial complexes. The result is massive displacement, huge environmental destruction, cultural alienation and loss of livelihoods for lakhs of people. Reacting to the WCD’s report, Yogendra Prasad, then the chairman of the NHPC, said:

Much has been discussed about competing needs and competing interests and balancing both within and between. There is nothing unusual about this. Competing needs and interests are inherent conflicts of nature in any field, and the path of cooperation is always studded with compromises supporting the concept of survival of the fittest.

Survival of the fittest, or in other words, ‘might is right’, describes India’s current approach to dam building. The less fit – the poor, the Adivasis, the politically and economically weak – are being forced to pay the price of development. And the power of the fittest – the rich, the elite, the state machinery – is being used to extract this price, as has been the case in previous decades. We have learnt nothing.