Asia Times: Drought cheers Narmada dam supporters


	May 04, 2000	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Drought cheers Narmada dam supporters
By Ranjit Dev Raj

NEW DELHI - India's worst summer water shortage crisis this century has cheered backers of the huge Narmada dam scheme, even as independent experts argue that this is no answer to droughts.

Supporters of the long-disputed Sardar Sarovar project, including prominent Indian political leaders and some non-governmental groups in the arid western coastal state of Gujarat, claim that the delay in the scheme has worsened the crisis.

But others counter that the water scarcity that has hit some 50 million Indian peasants, most of them in Gujarat and the neighboring desert state of Rajasthan, could have been avoided even without giant dams. They point to simple, low-cost alternatives like rain water harvesting that can help meet the needs of every village in even the driest parts of India. ''I have consistently argued that there is no village in India that cannot meet its basic drinking and cooking needs through rainwater harvesting,'' says well-known green campaigner Anil Agarwal.

But Praful Goradia, a leading member of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), blames the stalled work on the Sardar Sarovar dam for worsening the crisis. In a weekend television debate that pitted him against prominent author-turned-Narmada dam critic Arundhati Roy, Goradia accused the anti-dam Save the Narmada Movement, better known by its Hindi acronym NBA, of not having national interests at heart. The BJP leader charged Roy with bringing ''God-forsaken ideas from the United States'' to India. He asked the NBA ''agitators from outside'' to leave Gujarat state alone.

Roy, in turn, cited Indian government statistics to show that the building of 537 dams in Gujarat in the past half century had failed to solve the water shortage. '' How is the 538th dam going to solve the problem?'' she wanted to know.

The television talk was one of several on the drought that has been front-page news for the past few weeks. Tens of thousands of people in Gujarat, Rajasthan, southern Andhra Pradesh and eastern coastal Orissa state have been forced to flee their water-starved hamlets along with livestock. Newspapers, magazines and television channels have carried pictures of dead livestock strewn across the parched land and columns of ''drought refugees'' fleeing their homes. In a nationally televised appeal, Prime Minister Vajpayee has urged Indians to donate liberally to tackle the crisis.

The drought has been a boost for supporters of the Sardar Sarovar. To be sited in Gujarat, the dam is to be the first of more than 30 giant dams proposed to be built across the Narmada River that flows westward across central India into the Arabian Sea.

Work on the over 140 meter-high dam has been on hold for the past six years under orders from India's apex court till it rules finally on a petition by the NBA. The NBA scored a big win seven years ago when its persistent campaign culminated in a World Bank pull-out from the scheme.

Narmada dam backers include a top Indian water expert and former member of the Indian government, Y K Alagh, who claims that the Sardar Sarovar could go a long way in solving Gujarat's annual water distress. According to Alagh, who has closely studied the Gujarat water problem, floods in the Narmada are usually followed by droughts in the arid Saurashtra region of Gujarat. Damming the river would make it easier to help recharge the ground water and avoid water scarcity in the dry months, he argues. Alagh has defended the Narmada scheme as India's most perfectly planned multi-purpose river project yet, that has won praise from the designers of the highly successful Mekong Valley Project in Southeast Asia.

Dam authorities say it will pipe drinking water to 40 million people living in the dry areas of Gujarat.

But the NBA and other critics allege that the scheme will not help peasants living in the arid regions of Gujarat and Rajasthan. Rather, it will pipe Narmada water to homes and factories in the big cities of Gujarat, they say.

Other independent experts too think that the answer to droughts is not large dams. They say that while the Sardar Sarovar may help reduce the water shortage, it is more important to encourage rain water harvesting. Calculations based on field studies by Agarwal's Center for Science and Environment show that even the driest Indian hamlet can collect enough rain water for all its needs. A meager 100mm of annual rainfall means 1 million liters of water falling to the ground. ''(This is) enough to meet drinking and cooking water needs of 182 people at a liberal 15 liters per day,'' says Agarwal. A survey by the center last year of drought-hit areas in Gujarat found that villages that practiced rainwater harvesting had no drinking water problem. ''On the other hand, neighboring villages were desperate for water and people here were planning to migrate,'' he adds in a published piece titled ''Catch the Rain''.

Even members of the Gujarat government which is aggressively campaigning for the Sardar Sarovar, admit the tremendous potential of rain water harvesting. Jainarayan Vyas, the Gujarat minister in charge of the Narmada project, told state lawmakers a few years ago that harvesting less than a third of rainwater would yield twice as much water as is expected from the Sardar Sarovar.

Critics of large schemes like the Sardar Sarovar also say that these often mean fewer government funds for smaller and more effective water schemes. According to Roy, the Gujarat government has spent 80 percent of its entire irrigation budget over the last 15 years on the Sardar Sarovar.

Money which could have been used to build smaller farm irrigation schemes that would have helped hundreds of thousands of poor peasants in the arid areas of Gujarat, she says.

(Inter Press Service)

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