India, a developing hero or displacing villain?

Development is change, and change is the essence of life. There cannot be economic prosperity without development.

Projects such as dams, factories, infrastructure, mining and others over the last six decades have led India to become a top-10 industrialised country, and the eighth largest economy.

An important factor in development is sustainability.

Sustainable development is a balancing act between present and future needs, or providing economic growth along with environmental protection. India achieved remarkable growth in infrastructure sector, and has the world’s fourth largest railway network after USA, Russia and China. Indian Railways also has the fourth largest number of employees, and has met the sustainable concept to a huge extent.

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru said, “Dams are the modern temples of India.” Dams helped India become self-sufficient in food production — while we faced food deficit and depended on import and donation before the ’60s, we now have a surplus.

But despite possessing several water resources, we are far behind China in constructing dams relative to our population. Around 45 per cent of world’s dams are in China. India, howev- er, faces a concentrated opposition on big, multipurpose dams that provide irrigation and help produce cheap power.

Nearly 70 per cent of Godavari water goes waste while people suffer from water crisis in this part of the state. So it is pertinent to mention the recent SC order asking the government to expedite river-linking projects.

But the government must bring all related departments under a single umbrella to avoid delays and inter-state disputes, which escalate cost, like in case of the Narmada Project.

The government must also look for alternatives. Gujarat followed an innovative path by covering irrigation channels with solar panels, thus reducing evaporation of water and produced power to meet local needs. Displacement and resettlement have been serious challenges for all developing countries, including India. Development projects in the last six decades resulted in eviction of nearly 50 million people, mostly tribals and rural populace, from their land.

The government recently brought a policy on resettlement and rehabilitation but there must be a strong mechanism to implement it. Finally, India needs a planned development, and needs to strike a balance between rural and urban areas.

Development brings economic prosperity Development for whom, for what, to where?

While laying foundation stone to Nagarjunasagar Dam in the early 1950s, Jawaharlal Nehru asked a tribal of his response. The excited tribal told Nehru that a lamp was being kindled in the dark lives of the region’s poor people, which he jotted down enthusiastically.

Over five decades on, when poor people were asked again about their reaction to the dam, a tribal woman lamented that the state was compelling them to kiss the lamp that burns their lips and stifles the voice.

This contrast explains the development model practised by India.

No major irrigation dam, be it Hirakud or Narmada, benefited all the people in the area.

The story gets worse in case of mining. It is tragedy for tribals that they live on huge prosperity beneath their soil but the rulers always stormed their life in the name of development. About 40 per cent of Indians affected by different projects are tribals.

It is estimated that the worth of bauxite deposits in Odisha is `140 lakh crores, double the country’s GDP. So is the case with Chattisgarh. But if this bauxite was used only to manufacture aluminum vessels for cooking, make toys for children and manufacture commercial aircraft with an emphasis on labour-intensive technology, India would have had a more robust economy.

Unlike mining or dam construc- tion earlier, where large manpower was used, thanks to technological development, it is highly capital-intensive now. As children, we were taken by school to the Nagarjunasagar construction site and saw thousands and thousands of people working there.

Today, thousands of crores are invested to generate only a few hundred jobs. This model displaces people, but does not know what to do with them. These are people whom Madunuri Bharati calls “surplus human beings”.

Yet another volcano we are sitting on is rural agricultural sector.

In the name of development, the share of agriculture to the GDP has come down from two-third in the early fifties to a mere 15 per cent now. Imagine 600 million people living on 15 per cent of GDP, while the corporate houses command 22 per cent of GDP!

It is time the civil society, particularly the self-seeking middle class, pauses and rethinks the fundamentals of development.

Development for whom? Development for what? Development to where?

These questions are crucial because these are the questions the tribal and peasant struggles and the Maoist upsurge are raising.