Sreelatha Menon: Rescuing Narmada

The environment ministry recently asked the builder of a dam in Maheshwar to stop work as he went back on the promise to rehabilitate the affected

Does it take ten years to punish a lie when hundreds of people are victims of that lie? When the environment ministry ordered stoppage of work this Friday on the Maheshwar hydel project and the dam being built on the Narmada in Madhya Pradesh, it was doing precisely that.

The weapon it used was the Environment Protection Act, a law which is strong but unfortunately never finds anyone bold and concerned enough to wield it against the wrong-doers.

The wrong in this case was the fact that Indore-based S Kumars got environmental clearance for constructing a 400-Mw hydel project on the Narmada in Maheshwar on the condition that it would give a complete relief and rehabilitation plan for each of the 61 villages in the submergence area by December 2001 and implement the plan pari passu with the project.

Ten years went by but there was no rehabilitation plan, no implementation, as villagers watched with horror and helplessness water enter their fields and villages.

While activists of the Narmada Bachao Andolan went to court over this, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, who has been examining environmental clearance issues closely, shot off a letter to the Madhya Pradesh chief minister last year enquiring about the status of rehabilitation. The ministry sent a notice to S Kumars in February after the government’s reply that only one village had been given housing plots.

There was no talk of agricultural land.

The ministry issued a notice to the builders in February. After receiving a less than satisfactory reply last month, it ordered that the work be stopped altogether.

For once, the Environment Protection Act itself has got protection from the ministry, which has in the past looked the other way at countless instances of blatant violations of its provisions.

This project is part of a series of dams planned on the Narmada — 36 medium ones and 360 small ones. Of these, the biggest, the Indira Sagar dam and the Sardar Sarovar dam, are cases of similar blatant violation of commitments by those who promised rehabilitation of the people and development of the command area.

The environment ministry has been advised by its own panel to stop work on these projects. The only work to be done in Sardar Sarovar is erection of gates or just fixing of gates that have already been built. Activists, led by Medha Patkar, have been agitating outside the office of the Narmada Control Authority (NCA) for the last two weeks as they expect that NCA can meet any time now to give its go-ahead.

The only hindrance are approvals from the relief and rehabilitation committee and the environment sub-group. Both have refrained from doing so. The villagers in project areas may be about to lose their last chance of getting justice.

Recently, Ramesh said in an interview that he felt anguished about those affected by these dams. But what could one do about it, he asked. He says probably the project can be stopped, though not cancelled.

Medha Patkar says similar action is needed for canals that are part of the Sardar Sarovar project.

Ramesh is today being praised by villagers and activists. The only one sharing praise with him is the river itself, or Narmada Ma, for rivers in this country are goddesses. It is not so easy to play truant with them. It may just backfire.