Dams; from temples of modern India to disease of gigantisms.
By Mohammed Zuhair E
Disenchantment over building dams is growing in India after a century of dams. Thousands of dams are constructed worldwide for wide purposes. Like other many western countries, India also witnessed a huge leap in dam construction in the last century. While somewhere build for single-purpose others were multi-purposes dams. The purposes include water control, food production, flood control, hydroelectricity generation and navigation. In India, the trend started in the early years of the 20th century during the colonial era. By then, the advent of British and rule of colonial powers, water control shifted from local and community managed to state-owned property and the water became now the state’s property.
The trend continued in the time of Jawaharlal Nehru and reached its peak from 1971 to 1980. During the 1980s thousands of small and big dams were built in India. They considered as a major development activity and initiated as an emerging trend of modernity and advantage of British rule. But by the end of the twentieth century and the start of a new century, the trend started declining. The temples of modern India became a disease of gigantism. They no longer considered icons of the modern development paradigm instead introduced as symbols of a development process that was anti-people and faulty.
Even it is true that dams helped to store river water, to transfer from the season of abundance to that of scarcity, from the surplus areas to water-short areas, to plan energy and build large scale hydropower generation, they were affected with negative impacts. We know that two-third of hydroelectric power is attributed to dams and they help to increase the production of food grains. In India that we have seen from the studies. The food production scaled up from 51 million tonnes in1951–52 to almost 200 million tonnes in 1996–97. Even it helps in energy generation and food production, the opposition and protests are growing day by day.
One of the major problems with these dams is that they are only benefited by some sections of the people and others are bearing the cost for what they are not serving. Many tribal and other local communities who live depending on the rivers and river banks are negatively affected. They are displaced and are not settled and rehabilitated. Their voices are unheard of and unknown. During these constructions, around 16 to 38 million people were displaced. By the displacement, they lost land, power, and livelihood opportunities. They were not compensated with the advocate and quality lands. Many families were scattered. The national policy on resettlement and rehabilitation was the solution and the hope for these underprivileged sections.
Another issue with dams is that they are constructed in ecological pristine areas or nearby national parks which are reserved for the conservation of animals like tiger, elephant, and others. After many decades of dam building, it has found that they have been disturbing nature, spilling danger to wildlife, causing in disappearing some species, affecting food change, spreading some kind of special diseases, polluting the water quality of the river, and causes floods as we experience in the state of Kerala in the last 2 years. The dams built for flood control now became the sources of the floods.
The growing disenchantment is also because of financial and economic reasons. The large dams are expensive. The fund is not available in the market and with the state. The donors and the funders are not interested in the dam projects since many of them failed to reach desired benefits. In the end, when the production cost and total cost were added there was no enough revenue for the state and the funding authorities. The hard work and time spent on the project were a mere waste for many of them. Also, the investments which can generate high levels of income other than these are available in the markets. With a growing number of dams and other development initiatives the corruption also boomed. Corruption became villain. The dams introduced as a project for corruption in the mindset of the commons.
The Environment Impact Assessment and the pari passu clearance are always done in favor of dam funders. The processes and the works that should be done before the dam implementation was risky. They have to deal with and go through multiple times through different state and Central offices. Their decisions and permissions were crucial. This makes the builders more disenchanted and kept them away from doing this business.
So the dam-building has positive impacts as well as negative impacts. The problems, oppositions and protests on dam construction is growing day by day. In one hand we have the development and the ecological and social problems in other hands. It is herculean task to go hand in hand. So what we can do is to conduct a study thoroughly and carefully through the research. The EIA (Environment Impact Assessment) is a good solution put forth for this purpose. If the ESI is done before the implementation of a dam project many problems could be solved.
