Dam insecurity

How a critically important South Asia-wide meeting on the future of large dams was scuttled because of the Government of Gujarat's influence over the Government of India.

In more ways than one, the episode that led to the cancellation of the first public hearing and other related events of the World Commission on Dams (WCD) that was to be held in India in September 1998, seems to mark a watershed in India´s, and possibly South Asia´s, experience with large water projects. This seems to be the beginning of the decline of the large dams era that started in the 1940s. What is WCD? The process of its formation started in Gland, Switzerland, in April 1997 when the World Bank called a meeting of the various ´stakeholders´ on the issue of large dams. The meeting itself was a result of the World Bank´s increasing anxiety about somehow managing the growing criticism against large dams in general and the Bank´s projects in particular. It also followed severe criticism of the Bank´s review of 50 large dams around the world, published a few months earlier. At that time, activists had suggested that if the Bank had been really interested in reviewing the performance of large dams, then it would have set up an independent commission on the subject.

The process that was thus started resulted in the formation of the 12-member WCD, chaired by South Africa´s Water Resources Minister Kader Asmal. The Commission´s make-up makes clear that it represents an exercise to give balanced representation to various interest groups. The large dam industry could be seen to be represented by Goran Lindahl, president and chief executive officer of Asea Brown Bovari. The same is true for Jan Veltrop, former chairman of the International Commission on Large Dams, as also Shen Guoyi, director-general of China´s Ministry of Water Resources, which is today in the process of building the world´s largest dam at Three Gorges. Then there´s Thayer Scudder, a well-known consultant of the World Bank who deals with the social impacts of large dams around the world. The celebrated critic of large dams from South Asia, Medha Patkar, represents the voice of those millions who have been adversely affected by dam and reservoir projects.

GOi says no
As the WCD geared up for its work, the commissioners collectively decided at their very first meeting that the Commission´s first public hearing would be held in South Asia. This was, after all, a region which had seen both the construction of large projects as well as, lately, significant activism against such projects. The public hearings were to be held in Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh, the central Indian state through which flows the Narmada, the river which has been at the centre of dam-building and anti-dam activism this past decade. The WCD had titled the public hearing, to be held with the permission of the New Delhi government on 21-22 September 1998, "Water and Energy in South Asia: Large Dams and Alternatives". Experts and activists from all over the Subcontinent had been invited to present submissions. These had come from the governments of Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, as well as from the state government of Madhya Pradesh. Well-known proponents of big dams such as CD. Thatte and Ramaswamy R. Iyer, both former secretaries for water resources of the Government of India, had also submitted their views. However, over half the submissions, largely critical of large dams, were from the affected people, people´s movements, and nongovernment organisations belonging to Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Initially, on 19 August,  India´s central government sent a letter welcoming the Commission to meet in India. Then, at the penultimate moment, on 10 September, the government wrote to the Commission stating that "we do not consider this to be an opportune time for the visit of the World Commission on Dams" as "the issue relating to Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) is coming up before the Hon´ble Supreme Court of India during this month."

Why this sudden volte facel Why the pretext of a Supreme Court hearing on one particular large dam out of the thousands of large dams and alternative projects being built or planned all over South Asia which were to be the subject of the public hearing? Some answers can be found in the events that occurred in the three weeks between the two letters of GOI, one welcoming, the other not-so-welcoming.

A systematic misinformation campaign was launched in Gujarat by the various political groupings in the state, led by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. The claim was that the WCD was part of an anti-SSP, anti-Gujarat, anti-India and anti-Third World conspiracy. One politician even suggested that some members of the Commission were agents of CIA. An all-party meeting resolved that the entry of the WCD into Gujarat would be fought at all costs. As the WCD secretary general had written to the Gujarat government, some of the members of the Commission were to visit the Sardar Sarovar Project as part of their field visit to the Narmada Valley. The secretary general had also written that members would like to hear the government´s position on the issue.

The chief minister of Gujarat then announced that the WCD members would be arrested if they came to his state. He wrote letters to the BJP chief ministers of the neighbouring states of Maharashtra and Rajasthan (but not to Madhya Pradesh, where the bjp is not in power) requesting them not to allow the Commission in when it comes for public hearings or field visits.

On 9 September, a delegation led by the chief minister of Gujarat and accompanied by the central ministers elected from the state, including the home minister and till recently BJP president, L.K. Advani, met Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. They asked him not to allow the WCD to come to India. The following day, on 10 September, GOI wrote its letter to the WCD

Upon receipt of the letter from New Delhi, the chairman of the Commission wrote to GOI, saying that the Commission would assure that there would be no mention of the Sardar Sarovar Project in the events connected with the Commission, as it understood well the sensitivities involved and would not like to seem to be interfering with the ongoing Supreme Court case regarding SSP. Taking this assurance into consideration, the Commission requested the GOI to reconsider its decision. On the night of 11 September, the government wrote back saying that its decision was not reviewable, at which point the WCD decided to cancel its field visits, postpone the public hearing, and shift the venue of the Commission´s public hearing. (It was later announced that the Commission would meet in Sri Lanka in December 1998.)

What is clear is that the central bjp leadership could not withstand the pressure mounted by its Gujarat counterpart, and decided therefore to take a decision that, besides being clearly undemocratic, has also embarrassed India internationally.

Reaching for the proverbial fig leaf, the National Planning Commission chief Jaswant Singh in his letter to the WCD pointed to the upcoming Supreme Court hearing on the Sardar Sarovar Project on the Narmada as the reason why permission for the visit was withheld. But the SSP case has been pending in the Supreme Court for over four years now, with both the Government of Gujarat and GOI as parties to the case. No special hearing of this case took place in September 1998.

The political game
There is no doubt that the precariously placed BJP Government of Gujarat was using the occasion of the WCD´s visit to get some political mileage and divert attention. The government, though it has a comfortable majority in the state assembly, was having a problem of credibility due to non-performance in several sectors. In particular, the government has been vulnerable because of the runaway rise in the prices of essential commodities, including vegetables and edible oil. The rising price of edible oil is a particularly volatile issue in the state, on the basis of which governments have fallen in the past.

However, more than anything else, it was clear that the state government was insecure about the Sardar Sarovar Project. Certain that any scrutiny would pronounce the project unfit, it did not want an independent evaluation of the project. Evidence of this insecurity was amply available. At the same time, even as the state government was busy abusing the wcd as a tool in the anti-SSP conspiracy, it was making sure that its case did not go unrepresented at the first ever public hearing of the Commission.

Thus, while the Gujarat government went about threatening to block the wcd, some of the people who clearly represent its position were making submissions to the Commission. These included people like C.C. Patel and Sanat Mehta, both former chairpersons of Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Limited, as well as B.G. Verghese and Vidhyutjoshi, both members of Gujarat government´s Narmada Planning Group. These individuals have worked in close coordination with the Gujarat government, and their submissions are said to substantially support the state government´s position. Thus, even while the Gujarat government was opposing the wcd, it was ensuring that its position did not go unrepresented.

In fact, how much importance the large dams lobby attaches to this exercise of the WCD was also clear from the fact that the International Commission on Irrigation Drainage (ICID), headed by former secretaries of GOI, Madhav Chitale and CD. Thatte, had reportedly mobilised some 20 submissions to the WCD from various South Asian organisations supporting large dams. They included submissions from the icid offices in India and Bangladesh.

The Gujarat government was one of the first to invite the WCD Chairman to visit Gujarat and see projects like the Sardar Sarovar Project. During the formation of the WCD, keen efforts were made by the World Bank and others to include members from South Asia considered favourable to large dams. The World Bank had also suggested to the wcd that submissions be invited from individuals known to support the concept of large dams like former journalist B.G. Verghese.

The saddest part of the whole episode is that it represents a black mark on India´s much-ballyhooed democracy. As Chairman Asmal said in his press statement announcing the postponement of the public hearing, "The Commission wanted to invoke the democratic traditions of India where public debate has been upheld as a fundamental principle of a free society." However, the Bjp leadership showed that they would go to any length to suppress debate on the large dam projects on which they feel their political future depends.

The Commission´s choice of South Asia as its first public hearing venue was because, in the words of Asmal, "the Subcontinent has had extensive experience with dams and the debates surrounding their planning and construction. Any Commission that does not make the effort to understand and learn from this experience would have little credibility in the eyes of the world." At the end of the episode, the WCD had concluded, rightly, that, "the turn of events in India showed the need for the Commission´s work because it highlighted the highly charged issues associated with dams".

Lessons for WCD
In part, the governments in Gujarat and the Centre were able to get away with their misinformation campaign and the subsequent decision to cancel the hearings because the Commission itself had failed in its task of public information. The WCD had not created awareness in the media, and hence among the public, about how the Commission had been formed, about its constitution and its mandate. This must be considered a serious miscalculation on the part of the WCD.

As it proceeds with its future work, including the upcoming December hearings, the Commission will have to understand that large dams are, above all, political projects. Any challenge to such projects is bound to lead to strong resistance from the established forces in society. And it will also have to proceed carefully, with the foreknowledge that public scrutiny of large water projects – as past instances of Sardar Sarovar in India, the Arun III in Nepal, the Flood Action Programme in Bangladesh and the Kalabagh project in Pakistan have shown – will, in all likelihood, not be very favourable to such projects.

The politicians, at least, have understood this point. The Commission, too, must come around to this understanding if it is to fulfill its mandate of evaluating the usefulness of large water projects, in South Asia and elsewhere.