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Everything's not right with dams

S. Gopikrishna Warrier

HAVE the decades of dam-building in the country yielded results, or has it been a disappointment? Participants at the stakeholders meeting, organised by the World Commission on Dams (WCD), discussed this question at Chennai recently.

There are very few fence-sitters when dams are being discussed. With the government joining the discussion officially, the Chennai meeting to discuss the draft India Country Study, prepared for the Commission, brought out the nuances of the dam debate th at has been going on for years.

``Small is beautiful, but big is bountiful,'' said the participant from the Central Water Commission. According to him, with the population set to grow to more than 1.3 billions in the next 25 years, the country should not close any option, be it intra-b asin or inter-basin transfer of water.

``Nature does not have equity,'' said the veteran engineer who worked on the commissioning of the Mettur reservoir. Water is dynamic and it flows away if not stored behind dams. The Indian subcontinent being totally dependent on the monsoons, only large dams can hold the necessary water, he said.

Wrong, said the environmental activist from Mumbai. Protecting the green cover on the catchment is the most cost-effective option for holding rainwater.

According to the chief of the rural development organisation from Madurai, the people at the grassroots do not have any choice in decisions relating to dams, so they cannot choose their cost-effective options. ``Should the Command Area Development Author ity or the farmers for whom irrigation water is meant get the priority in decision-making?'' he asked indignantly. In a bottoms-up approach (which starts from the grassroots) decision on dams come as a last resort.

The expert from the Indian Institute of Public Administration said that, most often, cost-benefit analysis does not try multiple options before the decision to build a dam is taken. The decision to build the dam is taken upfront and the cost-benefit anal ysis done next.

The economist from the Madras Institute of Development Studies said that even when there is only one option, the people must be given the choice of either having it or not having it.

According to the activist from Koyna, the dam hit the oustees twice. First, they were displaced by the dam and then the adjoining forests was declared a national park, making access to it very difficult.

The dam-displaced from Madhya Pradesh had a different story. The dam was built but there was no money for building the canals. So the reservoir came with no way to distribute the water.

The representative from the Kerala Shastra Sahitya Parishad said that history of rehabilitation showed most of the time the place that people are displaced to is not necessarily suitable for carrying out their profession: ``It is like moving fishermen to the hills.''

The history of upper catchment deforestation is linked to dam construction, said the other activist from Kerala. It is time that the concept of State's eminent domain over water resources be reviewed.

The economist from Pune said that dams transferred a public resource into private hands. While the money for building the dam came from public funds it transferred water through the aquifer into a private well, which the farmer uses to grow cash crops.

According to him, a series of micro-watershed projects in the periphery of Pune had the potential to meet the city's enhanced water requirements. ``Let us start thinking of it as a large versus large discussion, rather than the usual large versus small d iscussion. Watershed development has become the main paradigm of development.''

The environmental cost has to be included in the cost-benefit analysis, rather than having it considered ex post-facto, added the Pune economist who had carried out cost-benefit analysis for the Tehri and Narmada projects.

The farmer from Chittoor said that emphasis needs to be given to support dryland cultivation. Only this can take away the farmer's desire to cultivate cash crops with irrigation. As long as there is demand for this irrigation, policy-makers will push for dams.

One of the participants stated that often projects were announced by politicians even before various clearances were obtained to please the powerful lobbies in their area.

The Chennai meeting concluded with a general agreement that not everything is all right with dams, and serious rethinking is required, the criteria used for selection of dam projects are not fully satisfactory and need to be improved, the existing criter ia are not properly implemented.

World Commission on Dams

THE India Country Study is being prepared by Dr. Nirmal Sengupta of MIDS; Dr. Pranab Banerji and Dr. Shekhar Singh of the Indian Institute of Public Administration; Mr. Ramaswamy R. Iyer, former Secretary, Central Ministry of Water Resources; and Mr. R. Rangachari, formerly with the Central Water Commission.

After considering the various views, the country study will be finalised by March 20 and submitted to the WCD to form part of the knowledge pool from which the WCD could draw to prepare its report.

The WCD is scheduled to submit its final report by August 2000. It started its hearings from December 1998 at Colombo (the meeting was earlier scheduled to be held at Bhopal but was shifted to Colombo as New Delhi was opposed to the Commission).

The Commission was established as a follow-up of a meeting organised by the World Bank and the IUCN-The World Conservation Union at Gland, Switzerland, in April 1997.

It has as its chairperson, Prof. Kader Asmal, the South African Education Minister. The 12 Commissioners are drawn from various backgrounds, including dam managers, academics, environmental movements and non-Governmental organisations. Mr. L. C. Jain, fo rmer Planning Commission member, and Ms. Medha Patkar of the Narmada Bachao Andolan are the two commissioners from India.

An assortment of organisations fund the WCD, including conservation organisations, multilateral agencies, bilateral agencies, private sector foundations and multinational corporations.

G. W.