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Literary Review
In the name of the nation
EARLY in his book, D'Souza narrates this exchange between himself and a villager:
Parvat Varma's boat has a neatly painted slogan on its prow. "Mera Bharat Mahan", it says. My English companion turned to ask me what it meant. After I explained, I looked up at Parvat, standing at my shoulder. "So Parvat, tell me," I said. "Is your Bharat mahan?"
Parvat stopped poling the boat and thought for a moment. Then he pointed to the two large piles of sand that lay beside us. "See the colour of that sand?" he asked. "It's like gold, isn't it? Is there any country in the world where I can get gold like this? Of course mera Bharat mahan hai!"
D'Souza continues, "It was one of those moments I experience every now and again, when something said simply overwhelms my cynicism about the country I live in. So I nodded weakly and tried to force down the sudden lump Parvat's ordinary faith produced in my throat."
As D'Souza goes on to explain, Parvat Varma's faith in the greatness of his country endures even though he has survived massive displacement engineered in the name of the nation. First, thanks to the Bargi dam, he lost his livelihood growing melons on the Narmada's riverbed. And now, the Maheshwar dam threatens to destroy his home and his work quarrying sand. In the struggle against large dams, Varma's words assert the ideal of a Bharat that belongs to those who know and love the land through their labour. The anti-dam protestors imagine a community that embraces the world's workers, the dispossessed and oppressed, wherever they are.
This idea of a community, at once local and global, sits oddly with the frame of the nation-state. Much of so-called national development has largely benefited the rich and powerful while people like Parvat Varma have suffered for their sake. Who constitutes the nation? What is development? How do we resolve complex and contentious technological, political and economic issues? How can the decision-making process be more just? How can governments be made more accountable? How do ordinary citizens, especially the poorest and most powerless, make their voices heard? These profound questions lie at the heart of the debate on large dams and invoke the very substance of democratic politics. Any thinking person should be concerned about these.
And yet, as is all too evident, public concern is fickle. The Narmada story does not make headlines even though the appalling tragedy of forced displacement and submergence continues. Since the Supreme Court judgement allowing construction of the Sardar Sarovar dam, the anti-dam movement is perceived as a lost cause, the residents of the Narmada valley a forgotten people. Dilip D'Souza sets himself the challenge of refreshing our memory and renewing our outrage about the issue. But while he addresses some very important issues, he is neither original nor insightful. For a far more eloquent statement on the politics of dams and development, readers should turn to Arundhati Roy's essay "The Greater Common Good". D'Souza writes as if Roy's essay did not exist, and neither does he draw upon more scholarly research-based collections such as Jean Dreze et al's The Dam and the Nation, and Toward Sustainable Development? edited by William Fisher, or the numerous independent studies available at the Narmada website (www.narmada.org). As a result, the book is often superficial and patchy. In a glaring omission, D'Souza does not even mention the work of the World Commission on Dams in addressing the issues of democratic decision-making around large dams, a process in which the Narmada Bachao Andolan and its supporters played a lead role. At times, he seems to simply be off the mark: for instance, he accepts at face value the claim that the Sardar Sarovar dam will produce electricity and also fails to probe the politics of power generation in the Maheshwar case. D'Souza sadly misses the opportunity to provide a comprehensive and incisive analysis of these issues.
Instead, D'Souza opts for the narrative strategy of posing as an "ordinary citizen" with an open mind, out to discover the truth about dams by comparing government documents with the situation on the ground. In his brief sketches of life in the Narmada valley and vignettes from the anti-dam struggle we glimpse the heroism of people on the edge of disaster. These passages light up the gloomy maze of government claims that obscures from view the injustice happening out there in the valley. The spurious details about the dam, all too willingly swallowed by people who hold life cheap, lead one to paraphrase Disraeli: there are three kinds of lies: lies, dam lies and statistics.
D'Souza shows the huge discrepancy between rehabilitation policy and practice and the systematic manipulation of government regulatory mechanisms. He discusses the shortcomings of the Supreme Court judgement and the judiciary's stifling of democratic speech and dissent. He argues that the process of decision-making should be more open to public scrutiny. In particular, alternatives to large dams should be considered more closely. Much of this discussion is sound and unexceptionable though, in espousing the Paranjape-Joy alternative model of building a lower dam and allocating water more equitably and using it sustainably, I think D'Souza is flogging a dead horse, and that too in the wrong race. The Paranjape-Joy alternative comes out of a utopian managerialist mind-set that, in many ways, runs counter to the idea of democratic politics.
Finally, D'Souza concludes by saying that the Narmada Bachao Andolan made a tactical mistake in taking a comprehensive stand against large dams. Instead, they should have focused on disproving the claims of dam proponents: "plans incomplete, clearances given hastily, if at all, figures fudged, progress wildly overstated". But D'Souza's own discussion shows that ordinary people can get stuck in the quagmire of claims and counter-claims, a terrain designed for endless bureaucratic wrangling and the politics of attrition. The Narmada debate is not a round-table among rational people who respect each other. It is about power, ideology and conflicting worldviews. And it is also about bad faith and cynical opportunism disguised as public interest and patriotism. The Andolan has brought the battle to its own turf and, through street protests and satyagraha, overcome the anaemia of our political imagination. These "weapons of the weak" are the primary resources that a social movement creates and mobilises to challenge powerful institutions and processes.
In February this year, I attended a Narmada rally in Delhi where a group of villagers around a microphone called out to Medha Patkar to come and address the crowd. Expecting a fiery speech, imagine my surprise and utter delight when Medha, the intense, grey-haired veteran of the struggle, launched into a song from the film "Lagaan". "O mitva, o mitva, tujhko kya dar hai re? Yeh dharti apni hai, apna ambar hai yeh. Aaja re... " (O friend, what are you afraid of? This earth is ours, the sky is ours. Come... ). The song's echoes resonate through this joyful struggle that embraces the elements and claims them for those who labour. It is this creative act of citizenship that kindles hope and inspires action beyond bureaucratic bounds.
The Narmada Dammed: An Inquiry into the Politics of Development, Dilip D'Souza, Penguin India, 2002, p.212. Rs 250.
AMITA BAVISKAR
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