Big dams are no longer a solution
The benefits of hydropower do not outweigh its other costs
The scientific imagination that put big dams at the centre of a national development paradigm belongs to a century long gone. The prevalent ideology around the world at the time when dams such as the Sardar Sarovar were envisioned have undergone a sea change in the decades it has taken to bring it to conclusion. The original thought behind building dams was the promise of hydropower. But this outlook was changing even in the 1950s. Jawaharlal Nehru himself, who famously called dams ‘temples of modern India’ in 1954, had changed his mind by 1958, observing that we suffered from “the disease of gigantism”. In a letter to chief ministers in 1957, he pointed out the need to balance development with the need to protect the environment.
Internationally, there have now been many attempts to do away with large projects that disrupt not just the lives and livelihoods of people, but also destroy the ecosystem. Over a 1,000 dams have been removed till date in the US. The Aswan Dam in Egypt has been blamed for the erosion of the Nile River delta, deterioration of agriculture in the area, and the increased incidents of parasitic diseases such as schistosomiasis.
The other major problem with such large projects is that of rehabilitation of displaced people. This is, of course, not counting the fact that the land that communities have occupied for centuries is not just something that can be measured in acres and rupees. The cost of history and memory that lies in ancestral land can never be reimbursed. India’s record of rehabilitating people displaced by such projects is abysmal. Around 50 million people have been displaced due to development projects. In spite of this massive number of affected people, there is a glaring lack of a formal policy of rehabilitation and resettlement. Given the terrible status of records of land titles, and the worse records of those who don’t own land such as landless labourers, it is almost always the case that many displaced people are never considered for rehabilitation. According to the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, many people displaced by the Bhakra project are yet to be rehabilitated at all.