Sanjay Negi's thoughts on Current Affairs and Information Technology Directions.

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Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Medha Patkar and Saving the Narmada

Medha Patkar and other activists have been voicing their concerns regarding rehabilitation of people affected by the Narmada Project. In their view rehabilitation has not been just and therefore the project needs to be halted.What are the real issues here?

Well, dams store rain water which otherwise would have flowed down to the sea and this stored water can be used the year round to support more food production which in turn can support higher standards of living or overall growth in human population. In addition the water would also produce some electricity which would also contribute to growth. So why should Medha Patkar complain?

It is essentially a distribution issue. The people who would benefit from the stored water and electricity production would be different prom the people who would be displaced by the submerging of their lands in the river valleys.So the solution should be simple enough, plough back some of the enormous riches generated by these projects to the oustees to make their lives more meaningful than before.

Not so simple. People living tribal lives at the edge of subsistence cannot be catapulted suddenly to a somewhat contemporary daily routine without adequate preparation. If we take a nomadic family from their pastures and try to get them to lead a settled agrarian existence, they would first have to learn the skills of ploughing, sowing, weeding, harvesting and storing.

We face this paradox in all our big projects. When land is acquired for town and colony development, the villagers are given some compensation, but essentially we are appropriating the only means of making a living they know i.e. tilling the soil and living off the produce, and then we even prohibit them from making commercial use of their village residences as there is a conflict of interest with the developers' planned shopping complexes and malls.

So on the one hand through these development projects, we are improving the use of nature's resources thereby increasing society's over all wealth which should support more human population at a higher living standard, and on the other we are pushing marginal human settlements possibly below the level of subsistence existence. Is there no way out?

Today's competitive nature of human social organization on a global scale makes rapid development a fait accomplii. It is not beyond the means of our resources to give a few tribals a soft landing. All it requires is wisdom, commitment and persistence. Medha Patkar needs to understand that lowering the height of the Narmada Dams is not the solution, in fact raising the height even more may afford a better way out.
More water stored would mean more wealth available to mount an effort to softland more tribals into a relatively more modern way of life.

For this to happen Medha Patkar and her well intentioned friends must realize that the earlier ways of social organization have to make way for the new. Just as hunting gave way to agriculture which was replaced by industry which is making way for services and the post modern economy, there is no way that any one country can have sections of its populations clinging to a tribal existence. In the developed world 95% population lives in cities and we keep harping on our wonderful idyllic countryside and its rural romaticized life.

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