Dams and the nation: independent India and the official appeal of big dams

• Anti-colonial response• Modernism and science• Self-sufficiency in food

production• Historical legacies

• Need for food • India has a population of more

than one billion and growing

• rainfall is highly seasonal

• Significant regional variability of rainfall

• Large population living at or below poverty line

• Need for power• Growing proportion living in

cities

• Rural electrification and agricultural uses

• No oil or gas resources

THE PRESENT SITUATION: POLARIZATION

• Significant local protest

• Court challenges

• International pressure

• Academic studies

• Contemporary India “one of the most active dam-building countries on earth”

• Multiple large projects currently underway

• Significant political will shown at state & national levels• World Bank pullout

The Narmada Project

• More than 30 major dams• Power and water to primarily benefit Gujarat • Displaced people and lands primarily in MP• Oustees disproportionately poor and powerless

• Ca. 1.5 million to be displaced• No environmental studies• No rehabilitation plan in place yet• More than 20 years in progress thus far

Protest against Narmada Project: Narmada Bachao Andolan

Forms of protest developed during independencemovement deployed against government-leddam projects in India

Bhakra Dam• Highest concrete gravity dam in Asia

• Hydroelectric

• Intensive production of HYV wheat and rice

• Industrialized production

• Punjab “breadbasket of India”

Often credited with making India self-sufficient in food

• Reservoirs were highly elaborated in Middle period southern India and Sri Lanka• Both large and small reservoirs

continue in use

• The impacts of older reservoirs were comparable to those of modern ones• Ecological effects

• Social effects

• Cultural logics of patronage and rule

The Peninsular Interior: Archaeology of an Agrarian

Landscape

• Contexts of patronage & construction• Elite financing

• Ritual associations

• Labor mobilization

• Histories of reservoirs on the landscape• Patterns of construction, maintenance,

and abandonment

• Siltation patterns, sediment inflow

• Regional Vegetation Histories• Patterns of hillside erosion and valley

floor siltation

• Integration of Agricultural facilities with settlements, road networks, markets, etc.

PROBLEMS WITH LARGE DAMS

• Environmental problems• Submergence of forests and

other ecosystems

• Siltation behind the dam• Loss of fertility downstream

• Loss of reservoir capacity

• Exacerbation of downstream erosion

• Blocked passage for migratory animals

• Micro environmental effects on climate

The Mahaseer is now threatened in many Indian rivers

• Environmental Problems

• Possible tectonic effects

• Water pollution• Algae blooms, pesticides

• Habitat for invasive plants

• Waterlogging of command area

• Salinization of command area• Decreases in agricultural

production

• Human Consequences• Inundation of land, villages, homes,

sacred places

• Displacement

• Unequal water distribution

• Exacerbates power differences

• Loss of rural employment

• Encouragement of commercial production

• Loss of subsistence independence

• Loss of local jobs

Bhakra-Nangal: Human Costs

• 50 years later, displaced people still not fully resettled• Only landed compensated

• Loss of soil fertility means crops cannot be grown without chemical fertilizers• Subsistence farming no

longer possible

• Rural indebtedness

• Farmer suicides

Breach in the Moolathara Dam near Chittur in Palakkad district of Kerala. (The Hindu, Nov. 11, 2009)

Alternatives?• Analysis of older dams and

reservoirs shows that many problems are intrinsic to these facilities

• Large dams have always been power-laden technologies, with unequal benefits and risks

• Smaller-scale facilities can work, but require significant attention to watershed protection and equal access

Cattle-power has been largely replaced by electric pumps

15th century canal still in use

Discussion

• Critiques of large dams and reservoirs• Problems of these kinds of facilities

are not unique

• Vision of Sustainable alternatives• Need more realistic sense of

“traditional” facilities

• Existing system as “facts on the ground”

• Specific cultural contexts matter for both the past and present• Cultural logics of reservoir patronage

in South Asia

• Dams as signs of modernity and progress, “big science”

Erosion near Bhadra reservoir

Colonial Reservoirs

• Pattern of failure and low productivity continued

• Rhetoric of a previous golden age when tanks all in use and in better repair

• Mosse: British saw problems as a failure of traditional village institutions, not as consequence of colonial disruptions of political relations

• Parallel to “new traditionalists”

• Same arguments used in Middle periods, logic of restoration

• Complex variety of arrangements for control and maintenance of reservoirs

British India: Emergence of the “Imperial Tank”

Destructive potential of reservoirs of interest from beginning

• Category of “protective” vs. “productive” works

• Imperial Tanks

• Breach may threaten railways

• Madras Presidency

• 5 in 1884-85

• 87 in 1989-99

• Reservoirs have always been power-laden technologies

Environmental and Human Costs of Reservoirs:

Old & New

• Modern dams and traditional tanks not different in kind• Faced many of the same

problems

• Transformed environments

• Associated with resource inequality

• High rates of failure

• Scalar differences do exist but old does not mean small

• Seasonality of supply probably more critical

Discussion & Prospects

• Romantic image of traditional irrigation detracts from legitimate critique of modern projects

• Long-term historical analysis can lay foundation for realistic assessment of the possibilities of tank regeneration programs

• Contemporary rhetoric on dam-building in India takes from both western and Indian tropes

SUBMITTED BY:-

• Name – Karan Singh Rawat

Abhishek Bhardwaj

Harshit Sharma

Class – X-C