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.