Self-contradictions

Sir, - The article by Mr. A. Vaidyanathan ``The NBA, the court and the SSP'' (TheHindu, Nov. 22) takes a schizophrenic view of the issues raised by the NBA. The author not only seems unaware of some key facts, but allows some self-contradictions into his article.

The author contends that the NBA has narrowed its focus over the years. Does the author know that the public interest litigation filed by the NBA had demanded that the court address the issues of hydrology, cost-benefit, claims of benefits and environmental aspects in addition to resettlement and rehabilitation? If the Supreme Court decides to ignore every other issue except resettlement (which was also ignored in the final ruling), how is the NBA guilty of narrowing its focus?

While the author claims that large dams have contributed to increased production, he gives little evidence of the same. The only figure he cites is that of storage capacity. According to him our storage capacity from large dams has gone up from 18 billion cubic metres (BCM) to 200 BCM since Independence. Would the author care to explain why an 11-fold increase in storage capacity from large dams still contributes to only 10 per cent of India's food production (from the report of the World Commission on Dams released recently)? Does the author know that one of the long-standing demands of the NBA has been that we should concentrate on putting this gigantic storage capacity to optimal use instead of sinking our money in building even greater storage capacity?

The author further contends that the alternative proposal (the Paranjpe-Joy proposal whom he does not mention by name) to reduce the height of the dam was not given serious consideration by the NBA. Aside from the fact that the authors of the proposal have never complained about the lack of NBA's interest in their scheme, Mr. Vaidyanathan himself acknowledges that the NBA did suggest this alternative in its later submissions. The Supreme Court in its wisdom refused to consider this alternative. In fact, according to the majority ruling of the SC there is no resettlement problem and hence there is no need to consider any alternatives. Where is the question of pushing for alternatives when our governments and our judiciary refuse to even accept that there is a problem with the dam?

While one must be thankful to Mr. Vaidyanathan for bringing to light the serious fallacies inherent in the SC verdict, he seems content to let it all pass as an unfortunate outcome. The grave injustice inherent in this verdict seems to have eluded him. Instead he chooses to blame the NBA for crimes it did not commit.

Vinay Kumar,

Cambridge (Massachusetts, U.S.)

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