Commentary/ Dilip D'souza

Lies, lies everywhere...

I was startled, I must admit. "Our nation lost another Rs 20 million today!" the half-page advertisement screamed on March 31, 1997. My God! How? Where?

It reminded me of another advertisement that had startled me similarly less than three weeks earlier, on March 12. That one used a full page and two-inch high letters to remind me: "THIS SUMMER, WHEN YOU HAVE A COMFORTABLE COOL BATH... THOUSANDS DESPERATELY WAIT IN VAIN FOR DRINKING WATER." How horrible! Where? Why?

These startling episodes have been occurring with a metronomic regularity over the last few months. That's because the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Limited, the people building the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada river in Gujarat, have suddenly decided to jolt us into wakefulness with these ads. Why, you probably want to know. That's simple: it's because the Supreme Court has, since January of 1995, ordered construction on the dam to be stopped while it hears a comprehensive case about the project. This annoys too many powerful interests for the SSNNL to sit quiet. So it is trying to mobilise public opinion in its favour.

Never mind, of course, that this is a crude attempt to bulldoze the Supreme Court: some of the advertisements appeared on the day of a hearing or a day earlier. Never mind, naturally, that the ads are filled with misleading and untruthful information, all presented in a manner calculated to tug at your heartstrings. Purse-strings too, at least as far as that Rs 20 million is concerned.

The court ordered SSNNL to publish an apology for putting out these ads. Which it did. In a small space tucked away on an inside page of The Times of India a month ago.

So a little truth -- just a little, because one article cannot hope to set right everything all the ads say -- might do everyone, including the SSNNL, some good.

Take, for example, the ad that appeared on January 7, 1997. Just coincidentally, that was a date the court had fixed for hearing the case.

This advertisement said, and you will excuse me for quoting it at length: "World Bank has cautioned: The people who were classified as facing food scarcity averaged 2.8 million in 1960s and now they are 12.8 million. They do not hold public meetings now, but in the year 2020 if you took away their dam, you may be sure, they would be out on the streets." It goes on: "World Bank has asserted: If the waters of Narmada river continue to flow to the sea unused, there appears to be NO ALTERNATIVE to escalating human deprivation. Particularly in the dry areas of Gujarat. The project has potential to feed as many as 20 million people. Provide domestic and industrial water for about 30 million, employ about 1 million and provide very valuable peak electric power of 1450 MW. The ratio of beneficiaries to affected persons is better than 100:1. The project will have greater impact on poverty than alternatives."

And all these World Bank cautions and assertions, where do they come from? "World Bank Report dated 17-12-1990", says the ad. Ah, you think, so even the World Bank says all these things!

But what report is this? Who authored it? Where is it? Which WB report is likely to make the bald assertion that an average of 12.8 million people are "facing food scarcity" without saying who these people are, where they live, what time period is used to calculate this average, what precisely "facing food scarcity" means? These questions alone raise suspicions about the ad, but the suspicions only begin there.

Of course, there was one report no ad chose to mention. It was written by Bradford Morse and two others, a WB-appointed independent commission that conducted a detailed review of the Sardar Sarovar Project in 1991-92. They released their report in mid-1992. Here are a few things it says:

* "We think the Sardar Sarovar projects as they stand are flawed."

* "We have found discrepancies in the basic hydrological data... (T)here is good reason to believe the projects will not perform as planned."

* "Important assumptions upon which the projects are based are now questionable or are known to be unfounded... As a result, benefits tend to be overstated while social and environmental costs are frequently understated. Assertions have been substituted for analysis."

* "Despite the stated priority of delivery of drinking water, there were no plans available for review."

* "The cursory treatment of the (drinking water) issue ... appears to be out of keeping with the stated priority."

* "The Sardar Sarovar projects are likely to perpetuate many of the features that the WB has documented as diminishing the performance of the agricultural sector in India in the past."

So much for World Bank reports.

But what about all those people who will not have drinking water this summer? That ad really does put you through the wringer, no question about it: "(T)he millions in Saurashtra and Kutch and North Gujarat who desperately need drinking water... Men without water, cattle without fodder. Wither away. Living with bare minimum of water... Sardar Sarovar, the only ray of hope for these unfortunate millions. For water to reach their parched throats. For irrigation to bring in prosperity... Let the nation stand together and care for these unfortunate brethren."

Wrenching and sad, right? Saddest of all is our unfortunate brethren have been fed the lie that the Sardar Sarovar is their "only ray of hope."

A letter from N Suryanarayanan, commissioner in the Government of India's ministry of water resources, shows how faint that ray really is. On December 2, 1992, Suryanarayanan wrote to Medha Patkar of the Narmada Bachao Andolan: "The SSP as envisaged now will reduce substantially the distress due to drought in Kutch, Saurashtra and North Gujarat by, say, 2025 AD."

Those poor men without water. Withering away. Living with bare minimum of water. They will have to continue doing so, if they wait for Sardar Sarovar water, till "say, 2025 AD."

Gujarat's 1.79 million hectares will be irrigated by Sardar Sarovar water. Thirtyseven thousand hectares of these are in Kutch: just 2 per cent. Of six Saurashtra districts, three -- Junagadh, Jamnagar, Amreli -- will not get any water. Two others -- Rajkot and Bhavnagar -- will get similar amounts to Kutch. Only 9.24 per cent of Saurashtra's cultivable area will get water from the dam. (All figures given by the Gujarat government to the so-called five member group, set up to review the project in 1993.

And this dam is being held up as the great hope of Kutch and Saurashtra!

So where will all the water from the Narmada go? Ahmedabad will have 330,000 hectares irrigated. Baroda: 340.000. Banaskantha: 313,000. Kheda: 116,000. Why all this water to these areas, none of which have major water problems anyway? Here's a clue: In Kheda and Baroda, 13 new sugar factories have been granted licenses and some have started coming up. Sugarcane, the raw material for sugar, needs water in enormous quantities. And sugar is the province of many politically powerful men.

"The myth of drought," Jashbhai Patel wrote in the Economic & Political Weekly in July 1994, "has been invented to serve the industrial belt between Baroda and Ahmedabad ... (and) rich farmers who are mostly found in this region."

The real truth about Sardar Sarovar is that Gujarat would best serve its thirsty people by looking past the dam to the state's most abundant source of water: rainfall. Gujarat averages over 50 cm of rain annually. Jashbhai Patel points out that 50 cm is "considered fairly good by the standards of meteorological science."

In fact, estimates show rain brings Gujarat eight times the amount of water the Narmada can supply. Simple rainwater harvesting and watershed management schemes -- already demonstrated by NGOs in the area -- will bring relief to Saurashtra and Kutch within a year or two. If Gujarat gets going now with such schemes, that will happen before the year 2000, not in "say, 2025 AD."

There are other ideas that have been ignored. One is to dig large tanks in areas that get more than 50 cm of rain. Dam-builders don't like the idea of such tanks because they do not involve massive engineering contracts. But among other benefits, tanks would recharge groundwater and help farmers. Another is a major effort to reforest the hills of Saurashtra (and elsewhere), so that the rainwater doesn't run off as it does today.

Besides, such ideas can be put together with the dam as it stands today. A Pune engineer, Suhas Paranjape, offered a detailed plan two years ago that sets out new priorities on the use and distribution of water in Gujarat. It will increase Kutch's water share to 10 per cent, Saurashtra's to 32 per cent, north Gujarat's to 36 per cent -- all without changing Gujarat's share of the water from the Narmada. His plan will stop the dam at 300 feet (not much higher than it is now), coupling it with a system of barrages and surface and groundwater storage (recharged by rainwater). He estimated the cost of his plan at under Rs 120 billion.

Compare that to what the Gujarat government itself, in its February 1996 bond issue prospectus, says the project will cost: Rs 180 billion. (Other estimates are far higher).

Instead of these alternatives, Gujarat's planners have spread the myth that the Sardar Sarovar dam is the "only ray of hope" for the state.

Our nation may have lost Rs 20 million today, but the folly of building that dam will lose us tens of thousands of millions more. You might even justify that if the dam were to put an end to suffering in Gujarat immediately.

The tragedy is that the dam is almost designed to prolong the suffering.

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