It is once again Narendra Modi — and his playground is the same state of Gujarat. This time the story is not that of Muslims' carnage — 5,000 Muslim families do not return to their homes at night even today — but that of the suffering inflicted on the farmers. Both reflect, however, the same bent of mind: I am the ruler and the plebeians do not count.
I was in Ahmedabad a few days ago when I found the farmers wailing for water which the Sardar Sarovar had caught nearly three years ago when the Narmada river was harnessed. But the Modi government did not build the canals to carry water to the famished fields. The result is that only nine percent of water has been used in the last three years, three percent a year.
Strange, the same Gujarat saw unanimity on the building of the dam which Medha Patkar, a human rights activist, firmly opposed. "It is our Kashmir," the Gujaratis would say when any question about the dam was posed. The same Gujaratis say today that the question is not about the dam, but the use of water. Even after spending some Rs 40,000 crore-the original estimate was Rs 800 crore — only 30 percent of canals have been built out of 60,000 kilometres-long networks.
People of Guajrat are so worked up that they appointed a people's commission, under the chairmanship of a retired High Court judge, to find out the reality on the ground instead of depending on Modi's propaganda. The commission heard nearly 3,000 farmers and went through a ream of affidavits. After eight months of their travel, the commission members came to the woeful conclusion that the farmers had been "cheated and betrayed" because the water had not reached them. The commission found it to its horror that the 40 percent of water had been diverted to industry which was not to get even a drop from the project meant to benefit farmers.
At a public function a few days ago in Ahmedabad, where many Gujarat's leading lights like ex-foreign minister Madhavsinh Solanki, former head of the Narmada project, Sanat Mehta and a Gandhian Gautam Thakkar were present, the negligence of the Modi government was highlighted and the state was squarely attacked for not using the Narmada water. The speakers were once the staunch supporters of the dam.
They still are in a way. But they wondered whether it was worth reopening the dam issue when the water was available at the reservoir and did not reach the farmers who had been waiting for it for decades.
Punjab and Haryana did not face this situation. When the Bhakra dam was being raised, the people's organizations for utilization of water were constituted to take water to their fields. Canals were cemented to avoid seepage. The Modi government did little in this respect, although it made such a promise when the project was announced.
One undertaking given was that a special channel would be constructed to reach drinking water from the reservoir to the parched throats in Saurashtra and Rajkot. Some pipelines have been laid but the expense of water drawn is exorbitantly high. The Maharashtra government is not getting its share of electricity under the agreement and is therefore dragging its feet on the allotment of land to the oustees.
The most important part of the people's consent on the dam was the resettlement of the oustees. According to the Narmada Tribunal Award, they would be given land for land and rehabilitated six months before their land was submerged. Gujarat took the responsibility of implementing the award on itself and promised to give land if Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, the other beneficiaries, failed to resettle the uprooted. But Gujarat has very little land to give. In fact, the state has not been able to requisition fully the land needed for building canals.
It can still be said that Gujarat has done part of its job as far as rehabilitating some of the oustees. But the other two states have practically raised their hands. Madhya Pradesh is the worst. No amount of pressure has worked on it. An indefinite jeevan adhikar yatra (right to life protest journey) started this week. It saw more than 2,000 adivasis, farmers, fish workers, labourers, potters and other Sardar Sarovar project affected persons from the Narmada Valley assembling at Rajghat at Delhi last Sunday.
The participants at the yatra challenged the unjust political moves to push the giant dam ahead despite the failure of the rehabilitation of the oustees and also in the face of "gross environmental non-compliance and unprecedented corruption, causing forced and illegal displacement of the 200,000 population in the valley."
The biggest defaulter is the central government which has allocated Rs 11,000 crore even in the current budget for the building of canals. New Delhi has not been able to convince Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh to make the Narmada Tribunal Award good. Former Water Resources Minister Saifuddin Soz was dropped from the cabinet because he had given an honest report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after Medha Patkar's fast unto death. The report admitted that the claims of Madhya Pradesh, where Soz personally went, were bogus and that practically no rehabilitation work had been undertaken. Still the Prime Minister went along with the raising of the dam's height. This meant pounding of more water and uprooting of more adivasis.
Gujarat's pride, as Modi has projected the Sardar Saravar project, has been definitely damaged if not destroyed. When the farmers have got only 10 percent of water, they cannot think of holding their head high. These very people celebrated every slab of the dam's height. They admit that there was no hurry in uprooting the villagers from their homes if the government was not ready with the canals to use the reservoir water. The Tata Institute of Social Sciences had said in its report that the height of the dam need not be raised when the present quantum of water remained mostly unutilised. Still Modi is at it.
(The writer is a senior Indian journalist. He was also an administrative officer, diplomat and Rajya Sabha member)
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