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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | No logic behind dam mania -Himanshu Thakkar

No logic behind dam mania -Himanshu Thakkar

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published Published on Oct 27, 2017   modified Modified on Oct 27, 2017
-CivilSocietyOnline.com

Vikas Gando Thayo Chhe" which means ‘development has gone mad’ is a super hit song these days in Gujarat. In the just concluded garba festival, this song was hugely popular throughout Gujarat. The song became popular even before Prime Minister Narendra Modi celebrated his birthday on 7 September by declaring completion of an incomplete Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP), heaping totally unnecessary, unjustified and unjust displacement on 40,000 families in the Narmada valley and killing the largest westward-flowing river of India. So much for the river rejuvenation claims his government has been making since May 2014. As if to complete the process, another dam has been started on the Narmada, a few kilometres downstream of the Sardar Sarovar Dam at Garudeshwar, without any Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).

Downstream of the Sardar Sarovar Dam, 150 km of the Narmada river has been killed since no fresh water is flowing downstream in the non-monsoon months and this year even in the monsoon months. That stretch of river and the people on its banks are suffering salinity ingress, pollution, lack of freshwater, groundwater salinity, impact on fisheries and even on agriculture. Now, in the name of stopping that salinity ingress, the Prime Minister is to lay the foundation stone for yet another dam on the Narmada, the Bhadbhut Dam, to cost another Rs 4,000 crore. No wonder, the dam is hugely and publicly being opposed by the people of Gujarat, including over 10,000 fisherfolk families. Possibly it was this madness the people of Gujarat were celebrating this Navratri!

Days before the SSP function, in removing Uma Bharti as Union Water Resources Minister in early September and replacing her with Nitin Gadkari, the PM showed another sign of the dam fundamentalism of his government. The media almost unanimously declared Bharti a failure in the Water Resources Ministry. Her almost regular, weekly statements that the Ken-Betwa work would start soon could not be realised, nor was the Ganga in any better state than what she had inherited as minister.

Can we expect our rivers to be in any better shape or the state of our water resources to improve under the new minister? In his home state, Maharashtra, when a Rs 70,000-crore irrigation scam was exposed, the media had raised many questions about Gadkari writing to the UPA government, asking for release of money for contractors involved in corruption-ridden projects. It was interesting that after taking over the portfolio, Gadkari’s first stop was Maharashtra, to offer the chief minister Rs 55,000 crore for the same corruption-ridden irrigation projects in three years, claiming to increase the area irrigated in the state from the current 18.8 percent to 40 percent in two years — very unconvincing, to put it charitably.

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CivilSocietyOnline.com, October, 2017, http://www.civilsocietyonline.com/column/water-watch/no-logic-behind-dam-mania/#.WfDO-efRGXs.twitter?t=1&cn=ZmxleGlibGVfcmVjc18y&refsrc=email&iid=2bb


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