II
6. The Greater Common Good
First published in Outlook and Frontline , June 4, 1999.
If you are to suffer, you should suffer in the interest of the country . . .
—Jawaharlal Nehru, speaking to villagers who were to be
displaced by the Hirakud dam, 1948 1
I stood on a hill and laughed out loud.
I had crossed the Narmada by boat from Jalsindhi and climbed the headland on the opposite bank, from where I could see, ranged across the crowns of low bald hills, the Adivasi hamlets of Sikka, Surung, Neemgavan, and Domkhedi. I could see their airy, fragile homes. I could see their fields and the forests behind them. I could see little children with littler goats scuttling across the landscape like motorized peanuts. I knew I was looking at a civilization older than Hinduism, slated— sanctioned (by the highest court in the land)—to be drowned this monsoon [1999], when the waters of the Sardar Sarovar reservoir will rise to submerge it.
Why did I laugh?
Because I suddenly remembered the tender concern with which the Supreme Court judges in Delhi (before vacating the legal stay on further construction of the Sardar Sarovar dam) had inquired whether Adivasi children in the resettlement colonies would have children’s parks to play in. The lawyers representing the government had hastened to assure them that indeed they would, and what’s more, that there were seesaws and slides and swings in every park. I looked up at the endless sky and down at the river rushing past, and for a brief, brief moment the absurdity of it all reversed my rage and I laughed. I meant no disrespect.
Let me say at the outset that I’m not a city-basher. I’ve done my time in a village. I’ve had firsthand experience of the isolation, the inequity, and the potential savagery of it. I’m not an antidevelopment junkie, nor a proselytizer for the eternal upholding of custom and tradition. What I am , however, is curious. Curiosity took me to the Narmada valley. Instinct told me that this was the big one. The one in which the battle lines were clearly drawn, the warring armies massed along them. The one in which it would be possible to wade through the congealed morass of hope, anger, information, disinformation, political artifice, engineering ambition, disingenuous socialism, radical activism, bureaucratic subterfuge, misinformed emotionalism, and, of course, the pervasive, invariably dubious, politics of International Aid.
Instinct led me to set aside Joyce and Nabokov, to postpone reading Don DeLillo’s big book and substitute for it reports on drainage and irrigation, with journals and books and documentary films about dams and why they’re built and what they do.
My first tentative questions revealed that few people know what is really going on in the Narmada valley. Those who know, know a lot. Most know nothing at all. And yet almost everyone has a passionate opinion. Nobody’s neutral. I realized very quickly that I was straying into mined territory.
In India over the last ten years the fight against the Sardar Sarovar dam has come to represent far more than the fight for one river. This has been its strength as well as its weakness. Some years ago it became a debate that captured the popular imagination. That’s what raised the stakes and changed the complexion of the battle. From being a fight over the fate of a river valley it began to raise doubts about an entire political system. What is at issue now is the very nature of our democracy. Who owns this land? Who owns its rivers? Its forests? Its fish? These are huge questions. They are being taken hugely seriously by the State. They are being answered in one voice by every institution at its command—the army, the police, the bureaucracy, the courts. And not just answered, but answered unambiguously, in bitter, brutal ways.
For the people of the valley, the fact that the stakes were raised to this degree has meant that their most effective weapon— specific facts about
6. The Greater Common Good
First published in Outlook and Frontline , June 4, 1999.
If you are to suffer, you should suffer in the interest of the country . . .
—Jawaharlal Nehru, speaking to villagers who were to be
displaced by the Hirakud dam, 1948 1
I stood on a hill and laughed out loud.
I had crossed the Narmada by boat from Jalsindhi and climbed the headland on the opposite bank, from where I could see, ranged across the crowns of low bald hills, the Adivasi hamlets of Sikka, Surung, Neemgavan, and Domkhedi. I could see their airy, fragile homes. I could see their fields and the forests behind them. I could see little children with littler goats scuttling across the landscape like motorized peanuts. I knew I was looking at a civilization older than Hinduism, slated— sanctioned (by the highest court in the land)—to be drowned this monsoon [1999], when the waters of the Sardar Sarovar reservoir will rise to submerge it.
Why did I laugh?
Because I suddenly remembered the tender concern with which the Supreme Court judges in Delhi (before vacating the legal stay on further construction of the Sardar Sarovar dam) had inquired whether Adivasi children in the resettlement colonies would have children’s parks to play in. The lawyers representing the government had hastened to assure them that indeed they would, and what’s more, that there were seesaws and slides and swings in every park. I looked up at the endless sky and down at the river rushing past, and for a brief, brief moment the absurdity of it all reversed my rage and I laughed. I meant no disrespect.
Let me say at the outset that I’m not a city-basher. I’ve done my time in a village. I’ve had firsthand experience of the isolation, the inequity, and the potential savagery of it. I’m not an antidevelopment junkie, nor a proselytizer for the eternal upholding of custom and tradition. What I am , however, is curious. Curiosity took me to the Narmada valley. Instinct told me that this was the big one. The one in which the battle lines were clearly drawn, the warring armies massed along them. The one in which it would be possible to wade through the congealed morass of hope, anger, information, disinformation, political artifice, engineering ambition, disingenuous socialism, radical activism, bureaucratic subterfuge, misinformed emotionalism, and, of course, the pervasive, invariably dubious, politics of International Aid.
Instinct led me to set aside Joyce and Nabokov, to postpone reading Don DeLillo’s big book and substitute for it reports on drainage and irrigation, with journals and books and documentary films about dams and why they’re built and what they do.
My first tentative questions revealed that few people know what is really going on in the Narmada valley. Those who know, know a lot. Most know nothing at all. And yet almost everyone has a passionate opinion. Nobody’s neutral. I realized very quickly that I was straying into mined territory.
In India over the last ten years the fight against the Sardar Sarovar dam has come to represent far more than the fight for one river. This has been its strength as well as its weakness. Some years ago it became a debate that captured the popular imagination. That’s what raised the stakes and changed the complexion of the battle. From being a fight over the fate of a river valley it began to raise doubts about an entire political system. What is at issue now is the very nature of our democracy. Who owns this land? Who owns its rivers? Its forests? Its fish? These are huge questions. They are being taken hugely seriously by the State. They are being answered in one voice by every institution at its command—the army, the police, the bureaucracy, the courts. And not just answered, but answered unambiguously, in bitter, brutal ways.
For the people of the valley, the fact that the stakes were raised to this degree has meant that their most effective weapon— specific facts about
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