The green movement in Loharinag Pala is saffron

Faith is serious business outside Ayodhya, too. It has successfully stalled a Rs 3,000-crore, 600-mw project of government-controlled power giant NTPC Ltd. Some 40 km downstream from Gangotri, where the Ganga originates, remnants of an abandoned construction site can been seen. It is chilly and windy on a small bridge that stands at an altitude of about 2,100 metre as a symbol of the hectic work that was once going on.

The mountain slope looks furious after devastating rains, while the Bhagirathi below is clean and in a hurry. NTPC wanted to build this barrage as part of a hydropower project at this site at Loharinag, a village where a Nag (snake god) temple stands witness to nature’s might. Stationary JCB forklifts are the lone signs of modernity in the area, whose only contact with the rest of the world is religious tourism.

 

On August 20, the project became the first to be scrapped midway on religious grounds. As the company is in line to get compensated for this, it is trying to avoid making headlines again, this time for an environment disaster that looms because, due to the unfinished work, the area might cave in.

NTPC has spent some Rs 600 crore on the project, besides tying itself to orders worth about Rs 2,000 crore. It had completed about 30 per cent of construction work — including 10-km excavation in the mountains for tunnelling and creating a desilting facility — when construction was stopped on July 20, 2009.

NTPC, along with contractors Hindustan Construction Corporation and Patel Engineering, is currently carrying out “stabilisation” work in order to ensure that the abandoned construction does not create a disaster. Mountains have natural streams running through them, so water drips continuously inside the tunnels, some of them half finished, constructed for cabling and ventilation, desilting, and to carry river water inside the mountains. Workers bail water out of the tunnels to ensure stability of the structure, for which NTPC pays about Rs 10 lakh a month to the two contractors. They have also been raising bills for another Rs 200 crore as “idling charges” since July 2009.

NTPC Project In-charge TN Srivastava says orders have yet to be issued to wind up. “It is a big upset for us. Our staff is stationed here away from their families, but the project has been stalled.”

The company has around 88 employees stationed here, down from 136 when project work was in full swing. Total employment at the project at that time was over 1,600, including those employed by contractors.

Around 925 employees from Uttrakhand had been employed at the project site, but most of them were on temporary jobs. It is this loss of jobs that Gajendra Singh Rana, a resident of Tehar village near the project’s planned power house at Pala, rues. “Nobody will come here if the Ganga is put into the tunnel. But whatever had to happen has happened. Work on the project should go on,” he says.

Rana, along with his extended family, had to give up around 16 nalla (3,200 square metre) land for the project in 2000 in return for about Rs 13 lakh. But he is no longer bitter about it. When the project was under construction, he was earning Rs 3,500 a month at a temporary job with NTPC. It worked well for him, since farming earned him less than Rs 1,000 a month.

He supplements his income with a tea stall on National Highway 108. The land on which the tea stall now stands belongs to NTPC. “We did not want to sell the land, but what is to be done? It was a government matter,” he says in a hushed tone. “Now, there is no land and no job.” His relatives, who do not have a stall like his, are back to “cutting grass”, he says, adding the project had given employment to about 40-50 people in Tehar and Sangli villages.

Residing in an ashram few km away from NTPC’s project office at Bhatwari is Priyadarshini Patel, head of Ganga Ahwan, who was part of the anti-dam protests. Her anger at the project is in contrast to the ashram’s serene wooded existence. “Why do you need more electricity? To light up the pubs and malls in big cities,” she says.

Patel was associated with GD Agarwal, former chairman, Central Pollution Control Board and professor and dean, IIT-Kanpur, who went on a fast unto death in June 2008, insisting that the natural flow of the river Bhagirathi between Uttarkashi and Gangotri should be maintained. Agarwal’s agitation got support from Vishwa Hindu Parishad president Ashok Singhal.

Later, in 2009, a section of sadhus during the famous Kumbh Mela in Haridwar also protested against the dams with the result that the BJP-ruled state government decided to scrap two of its projects at Bhairon Ghati that were to come up near Gangotri and Pala Maneri, downstream of Loharinag Pala, and wrote to the Centre recommending scrapping the NTPC project.

Patel agrees that the issue gathered steam only when it acquired a religious hue. “The issue is more spiritual and cultural. A beginning has been made (with the project being stopped on religious grounds) and there should be more such things,” she says. The “western education” inspired idea of modernity should not come in the way of people’s beliefs in symbols like the Ganga, Patel, barely in her early 40s, adds in flawless English.

Though the Ganga is regarded as a holy river by Hindus, she is not the main deity for the locals. In fact, in most of the stretch upstream of Rishikesh, the river passes through a deep gorge and is inaccessible by road. According to the findings of a high-level expert group formed under former power secretary P Abraham, the local populace does not use the river for bathing, except in Gangotri and Uttarkashi. When asked whether the river is worshipped by them, Rana says they use the Gangajal (water) in rituals and go to Gangotri on Makarsankrati. His village worships a local deity.

Sauratram Nautiyal, a member of the ruling BJP and vice-chairman, Chardham Vikas Parishad, a state government body maintaining the Gangotri, Yamunotri, Badrinath and Kedarnath shrines, is highly critical of Agarwal and Patel. “Ganga is our holy river, but the project is not anti-religious,” he says. The new states of Uttrakhand, Chattisgarh and Jharkhand were created for the development of backward regions. “There is no other industry in Uttrakhand and if hydropower projects do not come up, there will be no investment in the state,” he adds.

Agitations are not new to the region, which saw the construction of the 1,000 Mw Tehri hydel project, one of the largest reservoir-based power plants in Asia and holds water for a stretch of about 40 km. Its creation led to submergence of a large number of villages and a town. Ganesh, the driver of a vehicle hired by NTPC, belongs to a village in the Tehri district and blames the dam for making his area backward, since now it takes around four hours to reach his village. He does not see any such problem here and makes a point to add that the stopping of work has cost them some business.

As the “guard sahib” deputed at NTPC’s Bhatwari site office, VK Painuly, who belongs to nearby Uttarkashi, the first major town on the banks of Bhagirathi, puts it: “A lot of facilities come if a company has operations. Besides, people had an attachment with the project.” It seems Rs temples’ of modern India have turned into symbols of belief.