The Sardar Sarovar Dam

Presented By:

Vidya Hanchate 10Mohammed Shahnoor Khan 20Kunal Malode 30Talhah Patel 40Sudhir Singh 50SUDARSHAN KHEDEKAR

60

To: Prof. Bharat nadkarni

The Narmada Dam in India

Narmada River in India

Narmada means ‘ever-delightful’, one of the holiest rivers in the country of India

“they say that even the site of the river will cleanse all of your sins”

The Narmada River

The Narmada river

• It is the largest westward flowing river in India.

The Narmada river – The people

• It is home to over a million people, mainly tribal people, Adivasi (original dwellers) whose grandparents lived on and farmed the land.

• Local farmers, wage laborers, craftspeople and fishermen live along the river and rely on it for their livelihood.

Why the Narmada Dam?

Currently in India:• 1/5 of pop. (200 million people) are without safe

drinking water• 2/3 of pop. (600 million people) lack basic

sanitation• 2/5 of pop. (350 million people) live below the

poverty line• With rain being sporadic because of rainy

seasons and variations between different parts of the country, the idea of storing river water in reservoirs behind dams seemed to be a great solution

The Narmada Dam Project• The first of the dams to be built is the Sardar

Sarovar. It is considered to be one of the most important dams in the project and the biggest water development project in India

• According to the government, the Sardar Sarovar Dam will do the following:• Provide safe drinking water to 30 million people• Irrigate 4.8 million hectares of land• Produce 550 megawatts of power• Provide 1,300 cubic-meters of water per year for

municipal and industrial purposes• Provide a drainage system to carry away

floodwaters• It will also take the land of 320,000 people

The Narmada Dam Project

The Sardar Sarovar Dam• Initial Budget(1986-87) Rs 6,400 cr

• Investors are the World Bank until 1993 (when they withdrew), Gov. of Gujarat (state where the Sardar Sarovar dam is located) and S.Kumars (India’s leading textile companies)

• Expenditure so far Rs 14,000 cr

• Projected Total cost Rs 24,000 cr

• Cost of main canal Rs 4,000 cr

• Villages submerged 14

• Families displaced 4,600

• Irrigation for 1.91 million hectares

• Drinking water for 8,200 villages, 135 towns

Other facts……

• It will displace 180,000 people more than projected and affect 700,000 livelihoods

• 3,200 dams to be built along 1,200km Narmada river.• Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan

were likely to benefit from this project.• Opponents says the DAM will displace 200,000 people and

damage ecology.• It is estimated that the project would be fully complete by

2025.

Proponents • Indian Government supports the building of

dams.

• The World Bank supported the Sardar Sarovar Dam Project and loaned India $450 million. They withdrew from the project after an independent review confirmed social and environmental impacts were increasing.

• Supreme court gave stay order & directed the states to complete rehabilitation process.

• In 2000, Supreme court gave the final verdict of completion of construction according to its original scale.

Opponents

• Dalits and Adivasi (indigenous people). In

accordance to their caste system they are often

referred to as ‘untouchables’. Many of these people are

uneducated and very few can read and write.

• Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), Save the

Narmada Movement. The movement started in 1986

when the World Bank lent India $450 million for the

Sardar project. It was started by a social worker

named Medha Patkar. She is the representative for

the NBA movement.

FASTING FOR FIVE DAYS

DHARNA

Opponents• Baba Amte; a social worker whose work with

leprosy has earned him much respect in the country among the tribal people and government officials.

• Arundhati Roy; Booker Prize-winning author supporter of the ‘Save the Narmada Movement’; wrote a book about the Dams in India called ‘The Greater Common Good’.

“Nobody builds Big Dams to provide drinking water to rural people. Nobody can afford to.”

“There's a lot of money in poverty .” - Arundhati Roy

Their principal ground of opposition

• Non fulfillment of basic environmental

conditions

• Insufficient plans & studies

• Local inhabitants not being taken into

confidence

• Insufficient compensation

Admirable POINTS TO THE ENVIRONMENTAL

1. Overwhelmed low rainfall, unreliable monsoon, long dry season

2. Difficulties also overcame by irrigation

• The reservoirs would, therefore, offer tremendous opportunities for fisheries development which would ultimately benefit the fishermen socially and economically in the respective areas.

3. Create new ecosystems

e.g. Reservoirs can be build and used economically

Large water bodies shall be created as a result of various dams being constructed on the river Narmada & its tributaries.

Spoilage TO THE ENVIRONMENT

1. Flooded and destroyed good lands and vegetation

2. Drowning trees

3. Reservoirs may silt up quickly …

4. Salinisation

Soils may become saline in desert areas i.e. No new farming would be sustainable

Of the total area to be irrigated by Sardar Sarovar, only 40% is classified as "suitable" and "very suitable" for irrigation. The remaining 60%, had more or less severe problems related to high salt content in the soil impacting the flora and fauna and the groundwater making the water not suitable for drinking.

5. Threat to aquatic habitat – Barriers for fish

passage, water quality is affected because of

change in land use. It can also affect aquatic life.

6. Water logging – Excess water in the soil can

render the soil useless. This could affect 40% of

the area to be irrigated.

‘Save the Narmada Movement’

• Established in 1989• Sept 1989 - 60,000 people rally against

destructive development• Jan 1990 – 5,000 people marched on the

Narmada Valley Development authority offices forcing them to close

• March 1990 – 10,000 protesters blocked the highway from Bombay for two days

• May 1990 – 2,000 people staged a sit-in outside the prime ministers house in Delhi

“Save the Narmada Movement”

• Christmas Day 1990 – Long March – 3,000 people walked 100km, which took a week to the dam site and 6 others went on a hunger strike demanding the government suspend work on the dam and hold an independent review. It lasted 22 days until they broke fast – this made Narmada an international issue.

• Jan 1991 – The World Bank commissions independent review

Why did the World Bank withdraw the loan?

• It was a protest by the NBA called 'satyagraha' that caught the World Banks attention.

• They sent in an independent review team headed by Hugh Body, a British anthropologist and Donald Gamble, a Canadian environmental engineer.

• However, India has already received $250 million from the World Bank and is “legally obligated towards the Bank to carry out its obligations under the loan agreement.”

PROMISES OF Resettlement• While the pictures of the new

settlements look like an improvement, they are deceiving.

• The resettlement agency showed the same town to tribal people who were considering being relocated.

• For those that resign to move, will be taken to a completely different town with no amenities promised, if there are any houses available at all

• The other option is to take a cash payment for what their land is worth, which oftentimes is not enough to buy other property and goes to food for survival

Old school

New school

FAILURE OF Resettlement plan

• Not enough resettlement sites have been set up

for the amount of people already displaced.

• The sites that have been set up have no

electricity, no water, no farming, and no fruit or

trees.

So where do the people go?

• They move to the outskirts

of the city where they try to

get work as laborers and live

on less than $1 a day

• They go back to their old town

by the river and hope that their

houses have not been destroyed

by police

What about the people with no water?

• Millions of people are affected by water shortages in Gujarat.

• Twenty years ago people relied on wells, but the wells are now dry.

• Agribusiness and industry are drilling ever deeper tube wells to find water, which is causing the water level to decrease by about 4ft every year.

• Currently, the town of Gujarat, is dependant on emergency water supplies from the government

A PICTURE USED ON THE DAM BUILDERS WEBSITE

But…..

….if the water is so scarce why is there a water park in Gujarat where people are dying of thirst?

A WATER THEME PARK'S DISCOTHEQUE.

The village of Raj Samadhiyala is also in the drought region and yet it is self-sufficient in water because they are using simple water saving and collecting techniques to recharge the groundwater level and their wells.

Utilizing Resources

Current status of the Dam• The Spillway of Sardar

Sarovar Dam is raised upto its crest level of 121.92 m

• Construction of Irrigation Bye Pass Tunnel [IBPT] is almost completed.

• Preconstruction activities of Garudeshwar weir has been taken up.

• Protests are a regular occurrence and they will continue to do so until the dam is stopped.

Our idea as a manager (recommendation)

• To form a core committee & sub committees for direct

dialogue between local villagers and govt. agencies

• To implement a comprehensive compensation scheme

• To set into motion a full scale PR campaign:

– To garner support at national & international level

– To propagate the achievements till date

– To make local villagers fully aware of their

contribution in nation’s development

How can we learn more

www.narmada.org www.spannerfilms.com

www.dams.orgwww.irn.org

References/BibliographyArticles, Books, Case Studies

• Caufield, Catherine (1996) Masters of illusion: The world Bank & Poverty of Nations. New York, Henry Holt.

• Hails, Dr. Chris (2004).UNEP Workshop on Financing Dams and Sustainable Development, WWF International London, 21-22 April 2004

• Jain, Sonu (2004). Can Gujarat quench the great thirst? The Indian Express. March 14

• Pottinger, Lori (2001) Dammed if you do. The Ecologist. Feb

• Rangachari, R., Sengupta, N., Iyer, R.R., Banerji, P., and Singh, S. (2000). Large Dams: India’s Experience, a WCD case study prepared a an input to the World Commission on Dams, Capetown, www.dams.org

Thank you