[Reader-list] Wide Angle Transcript : Arundhati Roy discusses discusses India's dams

[Harsh Kapoor]

Wide Angle on PBS
Programme Transcript  for 'The Dammed', broadcast on September 18, 2003

Arundhati Roy discusses the Sardar Sarovar dam with host Mishal Husain.


Mishal Husain: Arundhati Roy, welcome to WIDE ANGLE.
Arundhati Roy: Thank you.

Mishal Husain: Now you've come to be very much 
identified with the issues that we've seen in the 
film. Why was it that you chose to get involved?
Arundhati Roy: Because I think that the story of 
the Narmada Valley is the story of modern India 
-- and not just modern India, but the story of 
the powerful against the powerless and the whole 
world, really. And it isn't a story that works 
itself into the conventional divisions of the 
left and the right and the working class and the 
bourgeoisie and so on. It's a story that somehow 
is so complex that it involves the river, the 
ecology, the caste system in India, the class 
system, too. [ItÕs] sort of a peg, or a keyhole, 
to use to open a very big lock, you know? I 
thought this was that story. And in 1999, when 
the Supreme Court lifted its stay on the 
construction of the dam after six and a half 
years, that decision was what pushed me into the 
valley. Because suddenly it appeared that this 
fight that we thought had been won -- the Bank 
had been pushed out, [which was] unprecedented in 
the history of the bank, and the six year stay 
given by the Supreme Court seemed to point in the 
direction of a victory -- and, suddenly, it was 
all reversed.

Mishal Husain: The history of dams in India is a 
very long one. I mean, this is a well-established 
way that India's pursued development.
Arundhati Roy: Absolutely. Dams are the temples 
of secular India and almost worshipped. I keep 
saying they are huge, wet cement flags that wave 
in our minds. They're the symbol of nationalism 
to many. And if there were an Olympics in dams, 
India would have a bronze. It's the third largest 
dam builder in the world; and perhaps the most 
committed because we have built 3,300 dams in the 
50 years after independence. And today another 
650 [are] under construction. Forty percent of 
all the big dams being built in the world are 
being built in India. And so there's this, until 
recently, unshaken faith in these completely 
obsolete things. But hopefully, the faith has 
been shaken a little. I don't know.

Mishal Husain: But they've been a source of pride 
for successive Indian governments-- a symbol of 
achievement?
Arundhati Roy: Well, certainly it started off 
that way. I think it would be unfair to say that 
in the late '40s and '50s, when Nehru was the 
champion of big dams, that it was a cynical 
enterprise because they really believed that 
these were going to be the solution to the 
famines and hunger in India. But the point is 
that 50 years down the line, they have proved 
otherwise. We have 3,300 big dams, but the 
drought prone and flood prone areas in the 
country have actually increased. And from being a 
dream, they've become a very cynical corrupt 
enterprise; a way of letting governments lay 
their hands on huge sums of money; a way of 
centralizing resources; a way of snatching rivers 
away from the poor and giving them to the rich. 
And so in a sense they've become monuments to 
corruption.

Mishal Husain: But, obviously, there have been 
benefits because successive governments don't 
build over 3,000 dams unless at least some of the 
benefits are tangible.
Arundhati Roy: You can argue that about anything. 
Colonialism didn't have benefits. Surely, it did. 
The issue is not that they don't have benefits. 
The issue is: who does it benefit and how 
sustainable are those benefits? And you see when 
a dam is built, forgetting about the issue of 
displacement, even ecologically, it takes many 
years for the destruction to set in. So in a 
place like Punjab, which was the cradle of the 
Green Revolution and really the heart, the rice 
bowl of India, today all those lands are getting 
waterlogged, salinized. They don't know what to 
do with the salt water. And that destruction, 
once it sets in, can't be reversed.

Mishal Husain: Let's just talk for a moment about 
the area that we saw in the film, the Narmada 
Valley, an area you now know quite well. Describe 
to us what it's like from your perspective.
Arundhati Roy: You mean aesthetically? Well, I 
guess, if you go soon after the monsoon, it's 
beautiful. It's like Scotland... misty and green 
and lush and idyllic in some way. And in the 
plains, perhaps the richest soil in Asia, where 
every kind of crop can grow. And so when you're 
there, you keep thinking the ideal had all been 
flooded, and you keep thinking of all that under 
water: all that life, all that culture, 
uninterrupted civilizations from, I don't know, 
the Paleolithic Age or something. All those 
temples, everything just gone, and for what? The 
argument is always posited as though you can 
either have irrigation and electricity because of 
dams or you can go back to the Stone Age, whereas 
that isn't what the NBA is saying. [They are] 
simply saying that there are better, more 
efficient, more sustainable ways of irrigation 
and producing electricity than these big dams.

Mishal Husain: But what would you say to the 
argument that everyone has to start somewhere and 
the government is trying to do something 
pro-actively to meet these really pressing needs 
that India has? I mean, water is such a precious 
resource and India's demand for it is going to 
double in the next 20 years or so.
Arundhati Roy: Precisely. And that's why the dams 
are the wrong thing. Just take the case of the 
Sardar Sarovar Dam. You know, of course it's been 
projected as the solution to the problem of 
Gujarat drought regions of Kutch and Sarashtra. 
If you actually look at the government's own 
plans, it's going to irrigate 1.6 percent of 
Kutch's agricultural land and 9 percent of 
Sarastra. The rest of it is going to already 
water rich areas where the big farmers grow sugar 
and so on. And what it has done over the years? 
This huge project? It has soaked up almost 
Gujarat's entire irrigation budget. And with that 
amount of money, using more local water 
harvesting schemes, you could have brought water 
to every single drought prone village in Gujarat.

Mishal Husain: Do you think exactly the same 
potential benefits could have been met in other 
ways?
Arundhati Roy: Not exactly the same. Ten times 
more. And the question is never asked about why 
are those areas drought prone? Why are they 
becoming increasingly more drought prone? Because 
of this completely random exploitation of ground 
water or because of the destruction of the 
mangrove forest as an ingress of salt water from 
the sea. There's no question asked about why 
environmentally destructive projects have been 
allowed to proceed. And you take the case of 
Gujarat. I think it has the second largest number 
of big dams in India, and still it's drought 
prone.

Mishal Husain: Why then would the Indian 
government spend all of this money? After all, 
India is bearing the entire cost of this huge 
project alone after international donors pulled 
out. Why would it spend all this money if the 
benefits are as questionable as you say they are?
Arundhati Roy: Because for one, a potential dam 
is more important politically than an actual dam. 
So when the Sardar Sarovar is coming up, in the 
election campaigns in Gujarat --of course until 
this Hindu fundamentalism became the chief issue 
-- the benefits of this dam are trumpeted. It's 
complete propaganda. But theyÕre told, it can 
serve you breakfast in bed, it will solve your 
daughter's wedding. The campaign makes it sound 
like some magical thing. Eventually when the dam 
is built, as the Bargi Dam was built, the 
benefits are never what they say they are. So a 
lot of it has to do with propaganda and people's 
unquestioning belief in big dams, which have 
never been questioned before. Why are they so 
terrified of the argument? They don't let it be 
made. The World Commission of Dams was threatened 
with arrest when it was going into Gujarat 
because they don't want to question it. They 
don't want to say maybe there's a different way 
of doing it.

Mishal Husain: But these are tried and tested. I 
mean, for instance, the United States is water 
sufficient largely because of some dams over the 
years. The Hoover Dam is the most notable 
example. I mean, these are tried and tested ways 
that countries have become sufficient in water. 
This particular project might be flawed, but are 
you against the principle of dams, per se?
Arundhati Roy: Yes, I am, actually, after much 
thought. And in America, if you ask Bruce 
Babbitt, they're blowing up big dams. They're 
decommissioning them. In California, there are 
huge problems because of dams. I'm against big 
dams, per se, because I think that they are 
economically unfeasible. They're ecologically 
unsustainable. And they're hugely undemocratic. 
And even if you look at America and look at 
India, they're two very different kinds of 
countries, you know? Of course when they built 
big dams in America, they dunked the American 
Indian into reservoirs. In India, you're talking 
about a kind of model of development that has 
displaced between 35 and 50 million people. On 
what basis can it be justified? WeÕre been 
talking about what big dams have done for India. 
In fact, there's not a single study done by the 
government that says that big dams are the reason 
that India is now food self-sufficient.

Mishal Husain: No, but the government and-- there 
are other analyses that have been produced -- is 
that this particular dam will displace about 
250,000 people. Now obviously that's a huge 
number, but the potential benefits will reach 40 
million. Somewhere that arithmetic also works.
Arundhati Roy: It doesn't, does it? I mean, isn't 
that a flawed argument when, firstly, the number 
of people it's going to displace is 400,000 
because there's a very clever way in which they 
decide who is officially counted as project 
affected and who is not. And then if you posit 
the fact that it's going to benefit 40 million, 
first of all, if you read the essay I've written, 
you'll see how arbitrary that figure has been 
arrived at --A. B -- who are those 40 million 
people? It's absolutely untrue that this is going 
to be the case. But secondly, the assumption is 
that either you displace these 400,000 people and 
you bring water to 40 million or nothing. But 
what we're saying is that there are more 
sustainable ways of bringing water to those 40 
million people.

Mishal Husain: How would you do it? How would you meet India's water needs?
Arundhati Roy: If you go to Gujarat today, you'll 
see that in Gujarat, there are villages who now 
know that this rhetoric about the Sardar Sarovar 
and Narmada water's coming is simply untrue. And 
you see the fantastic ways in which local water 
harvesting schemes have really been producing two 
and three crops a year in areas which we've been 
told are drought prone.

Mishal Husain: Can that really keep up with the 
projected increased demands? There's the fact 
that the demand for water is going to double in 
India in 20 years.
Arundhati Roy: Well, today India produces, I 
think, 50 times more electricity than it did in 
1947. So this is marked as a symbol of progress. 
But 65 percent of rural households don't have 
electricity. So by saying that the demand is 
going to double, so therefore we need to produce 
more and more electricity, or because the demand 
for water is going to double, we need to build 
more and more big dams -- doesn't address the 
issue of how do you use properly the projects 
that have already been done. How do you minimize 
transmission and distribution? How do you 
conserve the kinds of uses of water that you 
already have? None of this is being addressed. 
And often, you have one reason to justify these 
projects and then the benefits go to somebody 
else altogether, either the sugar farmers or to 
the big cities. Whereas when you actually make 
the projection for why you need this project, the 
reasons you give are something else altogether.

Mishal Husain: One of the things we saw in the 
film were some of the drought stricken villages 
in Gujarat which are completely dependent on 
water arriving by tanker, which sometimes happens 
and sometimes doesn't. Now wouldn't life in those 
villages be transformed by even a limited water 
supply from a project like Narmada? In Kutch, 
when some of the water from the Narmada Valley 
started to rise, people were celebrating.
Arundhati Roy: They were celebrating. And the 
point is that if you look at that particular 
thing, people ask me, "So, you said the water 
would never go to Kutch, but it has gone to 
Kutch." If a particular government decides to 
make a political point of something, you can take 
red wine by pipe to Kutch if you like, but is 
that sustainable? Make a huge project like this 
and then when the dam is empty and the hype that 
it's supposed to be at where water would reach 
Kutch if you like, but is that sustainable? If 
they do it for one month or two months, make it 
to the papers and then forget about it, that's a 
kind of charade that was carried out this year by 
the Modi government. But the point is what are 
you going to do with the rest of the 99.4 percent 
of agricultural land in Kutch? Water from the 
Narmada is not going to go there.

Mishal Husain: But they're going to do something ...
Arundhati Roy: No. What I'm saying is that you 
need to have sustainable local schemes. If you 
look at what was happening-- not this year 
because there's a huge monsoon this year, but 
last year and the year before, you have, say, 
three villages next to each other which are 
drought prone; one village where there's been 
local people getting together, using their 
initiative to do a rainwater harvesting scheme. 
And in that village, life is completely different 
from the next one and the next one, which are 
waiting for the government to do something for 
them.

Mishal Husain: But can schemes like that really 
cope with the very extreme conditions that exist 
in so many parts of India, where people are 
alternatively in different seasons coping with 
drought and then with flooding? That's something 
that a dam could address. That kind of control.
Arundhati Roy: No. That's something that, in 
fact, dams and embankments have made worse. If 
you look at a state like Bihar, you know, where 
traditionally the Gunga overflows during the 
monsoon and it floods huge areas. And then the 
water comes back and you have these plains of 
silt which are temporarily cultivated by farmers. 
So the government decided that oh, we need to 
prevent this flooding. And so they're going to 
build embankments along the river. And those 
embankments have created hell for people because 
what happens is that the water floods over, but 
it can't come back in because of the embankments. 
So the flood is permanent, you know, and the 
bottom of the river bed rises because the silt 
can't go out. It's only the water that goes out. 
So the floods are not even fertile. The silt is 
very fertile. And so you have these mass areas 
where people are just marooned all the year 
round. So the point is that you must try 
something. If it doesn't work, then be flexible 
enough to change instead of just pushing 
something that has created so much pain, that is 
so degrading to the environment. I mean, if you 
look at what is happening in the Punjab now, it's 
shocking. It's shocking.

Mishal Husain: Let's just talk for a moment about 
displacement, something that's a key issue of 
what's happening in the Narmada Valley. Something 
that Luharia and his family are facing. It's 
heartbreaking to see people leaving their homes 
which they've lived in for centuries. But if you 
face reality, this is something which is not 
unique to the developing world. It happens in the 
West all the time when roads are built. there has 
been genocide.
Mishal Husain: But there's always a price for progress.
Arundhati Roy: Well, but it's negotiable, you 
know? You're not saying that because Luharia has 
to move his hut from here to there, we mustn't 
have the dam. That's only one of the arguments. 
And you're not talking about one or two people. 
You're not talking about even 400,000 people. 
YouÕre talking about 35 million people. So you're 
talking about a kind of internal displacement 
that is on a massive scale. And therefore, you 
must look at alternatives.

Mishal Husain: Isn't this a reality, something 
that one just has to face in the world that we 
live in?
Arundhati Roy: Yes, but what kind of an argument 
is that? That's like you can say, oh, but for 
years in the history of the world,

Mishal Husain: If the compensation scheme, if the 
resettlement was better, would you feel 
differently about the dam and the displacement?
Arundhati Roy: Well, as I've said on many a time, 
displacement as far as I'm concerned is only one 
of the issues. Even if all the displaced people 
were given air-conditioned houses in the poshest 
colony in Delhi, I would still say the dams are 
inherently flawed and a very bad idea because of 
what they do to the ecosystem, the fact that they 
slowly made the command area completely 
unsustainable. So when I was telling you why I 
got interested in them, it was because of this -- 
not just one issue. You see the displacement has 
become a political issue because it's a motive 
issue. But the fact is that this is a very, very 
bad idea for 100 different reasons.

Mishal Husain: But on the human level, when one 
looks at the human cost versus the human benefits 
and one looks at the numbers, as we've done, if 
the deal that was being offered to Luharia and 
other people in his community was better, would 
you feel a little less against the dam?
Arundhati Roy: I don't know how to answer that 
because, you know, as I said, it's not something 
that I think is a good idea. The middle class in 
India often ask this question to you 
theoretically and you say, "But you know, the 
point is that it hasn't happened. It isn't 
possible. There isn't the land. This community 
cannot be resettled as a community." So what can 
I say to that? Theoretically, if everybody had 
been resettled as a community and if everything 
was perfect, and there was a God in heaven, 
everything would be okay. But they are playful 
questions, because ultimately like yesterday, you 
know, someone was asking me, "But you know, 
colonialism wasn't entirely bad." Of course there 
are benefits. There are, you know. But at the 
end, you balance things up and you decide whether 
to say yes or no and you decide which side you're 
on. And as far as I'm concerned, I don't think 
that big dams are a good idea at all, not even 
for the demands of a developing country because I 
think they destroy rivers in ways which 
eventually are totally unsustainable for a 
growing population like this.

Mishal Husain: Do you think that Luharia's 
community, the Adivasis community, is easier to 
displace, easier to move around, or to play 
around with their lives?
Arundhati Roy: Of course. Traditionally the 
Adivasis have been pushed, pushed, pushed, 
pushed, pushed until they found their places up 
in the hills. And they are the poorest and the 
poorest are the most vulnerable always at all 
times. put it crudely. And they are fishermen, 
sand miners and people who don't really count as 
project affected because they don't have land. 
But they depend on the river for their 
livelihoods. So, in actual fact, of the 400,000 
people who have been displaced, I think 57 
percent are Dalits and Adivasis who are the 
poorest communities in India. And on the other 
side of the dam, the people who are displaced by 
the canals, the fishermen and so on, don't count 
as project affected at all. Many of them are also 
fisher folk an

Mishal Husain: Who are the people who are most 
affected by the building of the dam?
Arundhati Roy: Do you mean the Sardar Sarovar?

Mishal Husain: Yes, in the Narmada Valley.
Arundhati Roy: Well, the hilly parts that have 
been submerged, inhabited by Adivasis 
communities. And in the plains, it is more upper 
crust farmers, big farmers actually. And also 
Dalits who are known as the untouchable castes to 
d Adivasis who have been pushed out of forests to 
make wildlife sanctuaries and so on.

Mishal Husain: So, both of these groups, would 
traditionally be those who are not that well 
represented in India?
Arundhati Roy: Yes, the Adivasis and Dalits who 
are traditionally the victims of big dams are a 
very powerless and poor community.

Mishal Husain: Would you say that-- that makes it easier to displace them?
Arundhati Roy: Of course it does. I mean they are 
the easiest to push around. So, as I keep saying, 
it's almost as if you have an expense account. 
Somebody else pays the bills. And so it's much 
easier justify. And in India, the fact is that 
there are no sort of vertical social bolts that 
connect Adivasis and Dalits to, let's say, the 
communities that will be deciding to make or 
design projects like this. So, there's no social 
connection. They just slough off into the sea. It 
doesn't really matter. You don't really know 
them. They don't have names or faces or anything.

Mishal Husain: And yet the government would say 
it's very committed to resettling them. They're 
being offered compensation. They're being offered 
land elsewhere. Do you not accept any of those 
arguments?
Arundhati Roy: Well, you'll have to go and see 
the re-settlement colonies. You have to see the 
fact that when the Supreme Court gave its final 
judgment in 2000, the Madhya Pradesh government 
itself said that it had no land to give. Not a 
single acre of agricultural land has been given 
to a displaced person in Madhya Pradesh where 80 
percent of the displaced people are. And it's 
against the decision of the Narmada tribunal that 
you should give cash compensation. It's illegal, 
because the deal is land for land. And here you 
have an affidavit by the Madhya Pradesh 
government in court saying we have no land. It 
was a decision by the tribunal that communities 
should be resettled as communities. Nineteen of 
the villages in Gujarat have been scattered in 
175 locations.

Mishal Husain: What would you consider then a 
fair deal for the Adivasi, for Luharia's 
community?
Arundhati Roy: Well, it's interesting that in 
November 2000 the World Commission in Dansk came 
out with a report which suggested a set of 
guidelines for the building of dams which 
included policies on re-settlement, land for 
land, consulting affected people and so on. And I 
said, look, what if we were to say that let's 
take these guidelines and let's implement them in 
projects that are half-finished, in projects that 
have been finished. Let's just say resettle those 
who have already been displaced before you start 
building another dam. Wouldn't you think that was 
a reasonable proposition? It was shouted down as 
being absurd and radical and all over on this 
learning curve. So, we're always on a learning 
curve. And it's already a theoretical question, 
what will be the fair deal. Do you think if 
resettlement were possible, it would be good? The 
fact is that if resettlement is possible, then 
why not resettle the millions of people who've 
already been displaced before we move ahead? 
Let's try it. Let's implement that much before we 
move on. But, no, it's always this theoretical 
question, which is painful after a while to even 
begin to answer, because it just hasn't worked. 
It hasn't worked for years, and people have been 
destroyed by it. So at least let's put that right 
before we start the next thing.

Mishal Husain: What would you say to the argument 
that India doesn't have the luxury of being a 
welfare state. It's a developing country. And 
that the government has to make choices which are 
very hard and are painful.
Arundhati Roy: Okay, tell me something. Supposing 
theoretically you have a project which is 
supposed to benefit 40 million people and is only 
displacing 400,000 people. Why is it so hard, if 
really you're gonna benefit 40 million to 
accommodation these 400,000? Why? Why is it 
difficult? Mathematically, it should be so easy, 
should it not? You just could just say instead of 
40 million, you are benefiting 40 million and 
400,000. Why is it? Because it's not true. It 
doesn't happen like that. Take the case of the 
Bargi Dam. You know? They built it. Ten years ago 
it was ready. It irrigates 5 percent of the land 
they said it would irrigate. It displaced -- 
instead of 70,000 people -- 114,000 who were just 
driven from their homes. It cost, I think, ten 
times more than it said it would. Each of one of 
these projects according to the World Commission 
on Dams costs almost double what they say it will 
cost, and even then the costs are not really 
factored in. You know. So, it's a sort of 
industry that's based on half-truths and lies and 
broken promises and it just motors ahead.

Mishal Husain: Well, what do you think the future 
holds for Luharia? At the end of the film, we see 
him moving his house to a higher point in his 
village. Do you think he's going to be forced to 
give up eventually?
Arundhati Roy: Well, look, the villages that have 
been submerged ahead of Jalsindhi like Manubali 
and all these places, people have been forced to 
give up. People have been slowly ground down and 
broken. People do live in the slums in Jabalpur 
and Punjab and Delhi now. And so, today, to me, 
the debate in all this connects up to a very much 
bigger question in the world which is that here 
you have a movement, 15 years of the most 
spectacular non-violent resistance movement in a 
country like India. The NBA has used every single 
democratic institution it could. It has put 
forward the most reasoned, moderate arguments 
that you can find, and it's been just thrown 
aside like garbage, even by an institution like 
the Supreme Court of India, even in the face of 
evidence that you cannot argue with. So, I keep 
saying this that if we don't respect 
non-violence, then violence becomes the only 
option for people. If governments do not show 
themselves to respect reasoned, non-violent 
resistance then by default they respect violence.

Mishal Husain: But don't you have to respect the 
rule of law? I mean this is something the Supreme 
Court, the highest court in India, has now ruled 
upon?
Arundhati Roy: I don't accept that kind of 
institutional rule of law unquestioning. That's 
another story of course. But what is Luharia 
going to do? What is Luharia and the other 
millions like him going to do or think or say? In 
a democracy you must have the ability to keep 
questioning. And when that stops and when you 
come up against a wall, then societies break up. 
Societies dissolve into things. It's not that 
everybody's going to rise up in some kind of 
noble insurrection. But already in India around 
the Narmada Valley, insurgents have taken over 
masses of land. The government can't go in. All 
over Bihar, all over Madhya Pradesh. This is what 
is happening, because you don't respect the 
dignity of the ordinary citizen. At the end of 
the day supposing we keep on talking about is it 
all right for 400,000 people to pay for the 
benefit of 40 million. You tell me. If the 
government today were to say, "Okay, we're going 
to freeze the bank accounts of 400,000 of India's 
richest industrialists and richest people and 
take that money and re-distribute it to the 
poor," what will happen? There'd be, "Oh, 
democracy has broken down." "This is you know a 
terrible thing." "Anarchy--" So, it's all about 
who's being pushed around.

Mishal Husain: The dam is clearly a reality. It's 
height is growing all the time. How do you face 
failure? You're part of a movement which 
ultimately has failed.
Arundhati Roy: Absolutely. It's a terrible, 
terrible question that one has to ask oneself all 
the time. And as I say, the big, deep question is 
it's not just that the dam is going up, but it's 
the failure of non-violence that bothers me. It's 
the failure of being able to use that as a weapon 
that bothers me and disturbs me, because I don't 
know what to think then. I don't know what to 
say. What do you say to Luharia? What do you say 
to people who have struggled for 15 years? And it 
is a failure that we must accept, and it is a 
failure that we must think deeply about. And this 
is not to say that the movement hasn't had 
successes -- which is that it has questioned and 
shaken the foundation of the belief in this 
religion of big dams. People are asking 
questions, which is a big thing, because they 
were pristine before. They are not now. Remember 
that there are 3000 dams being built on the 
Narmada -- we're talking about one of them. The 
next dam up, the Mihishwa Dam, which was also a 
struggle by the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) the 
first privatized dam in India, construction has 
stopped, because of a movement which took a 
different shape and a different form. And so far 
construction on that dam has stopped. So it's not 
all kind of unmitigated defeat. But certainly, it 
throws up big questions on the nature of 
resistance, on the nature of democracy, on the 
role that institutions in democracies play, on 
the role that the media plays and in the ways in 
which questions and the debate is posited in the 
mainstream.

Mishal Husain: How do you feel about the fact 
though that in India your arguments haven't met 
with as much support as they have in parts of the 
West? That somehow you haven't managed to 
convince many Indians. People say that your 
arguments are emotional, and that they don't 
accept the pressing needs and the challenges that 
India has to face.
Arundhati Roy: Well, my arguments are emotional, 
but those emotions are based on fact. And I 
refuse to accept that there's a sort of duality 
between fact and emotion. If we were to lose the 
ability to be emotional, if we were to lose the 
ability to be angry, to be outraged, we would be 
robots. And I refuse that. And partly, the reason 
that they say the arguments are emotional is 
because they don't want to face the facts. And 
there isn't a single fact about big dams, about 
irrigation efficiencies, about salinization, 
drainage, displacement, any technical argument 
that isn't in the argument that the MBA has made 
or that I have made. So our emotions and our 
outrage are based on an unrelenting collection of 
facts and technology and politics. Obviously, 
it's easier for the West to accept this argument 
than for India, because in India it comes up 
right up against the establishment, right up 
against the powers that want this. So, obviously, 
you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure 
that one out. And the fact is that it has 
questioned the basis of development. And today, 
forgetting just the Narmada issue, dispossession 
is taking place on a barbaric scale, because the 
major priorities I think in government are the 
privatization of electricity and water. And so 
the name of that debate is suddenly going to 
leap-frog into the center of a big movement 
that's taking place all across India in a very, 
very serious way.

Mishal Husain: Do you think that development is something then that's optional?
Arundhati Roy: I don't understand.

Mishal Husain: Do you think that these villages 
basically should be left as they are and that 
development and progress in the way that we 
understand it, whether it's schools or hospitals 
or better housing or whatever is something that 
isn't necessarily a good thing?
Arundhati Roy: No, no. I think -- You know what? 
Again, I think this is a kind of spin that often 
the government wants to put on people who are 
protesting a particular type of development to 
say, "Oh, you're anti-development, or you're 
neo-Ludites." Of course, that's not the case. The 
case is development for whom? Who pays? Who 
profits and where do you begin? Everybody can't 
have the life of a normal, average American 
person in India, they can't. So, it's about 
egalitarianism. It's about sharing things more 
equally. It's about access to natural resources. 
It's about those things. About the model of 
development. I'd say quite simply if I were asked 
to put my position on the table that what we're 
fighting for is to decrease or eliminate the 
distance between those that make decisions and 
those that have to suffer them. Because 
eventually it doesn't matter how beautiful the 
language is in your resettlement policy. The fact 
is that the more beautiful it is the more sure we 
are that it's not going to be implemented. So how 
do you reduce that distance between the powerful 
and the powerless?

Mishal Husain: But don't the people in the 
drought-stricken villages, some of which we saw, 
have an equal right to their way of life being 
preserved in those villages which now have no 
water as Luharia does to his way of living?
Arundhati Roy: Yes, they do. And so they should 
be fighting the processes that create that 
drought in their villages, which is contractors 
clear-felling mangrove forests which is the 
chaotic exploitation of ground water. The fact 
that there are rivers so much closer to Kutch and 
Sarashtra than the Narmada and their waters have 
been dammed and taken elsewhere. So Luharia must 
pay the price for that? And the other thing is 
you take a state like Rajasthan, it is a desert 
state. It is a state which has a civilization 
that has been used to living in that ecology. 
Suddenly you take the India/Gandhi Canal there 
and say, "Now, you can grow rice." You're 
destroying something there, and then saying, you 
have an equal right to grow rice in Rajasthan as 
the people in Kerala have to go grow rice there. 
Is that true? We have learned to live within our 
ecologies and within our eco-systems. So it's not 
just that the Indian government built big dams, 
but also destroyed traditional water-housing 
systems.

Mishal Husain: But in that way, you sound as if 
you are anti-development and that you want the 
status quo in all these places to remain?
Arundhati Roy: No, I don't. But I'm just saying 
that when it comes to the poorest people, when it 
comes to Luharia, you're prepared to say that 
Luharia must pay the price for people in Kutch to 
have water. But you're not prepared to say that 
Bilash should give up all his money and 
distribute it for water-housing systems in Kutch 
or that Reliance should clean its bank account 
and distribute it to the drought-prone areas in 
Sarashtra...

Mishal Husain: The big industrialists.
Arundhati Roy: Yes, you're not prepared to say 
that. But when it comes to the poorest people, 
yes, of course, they must pay the price for the 
greater common good, you know?

Mishal Husain: Some of the critics of the 
movement that you're a part of have said that 
activists like yourself have forgotten the famine 
that India suffered in the 40s and the problems 
that India had in food security and that dams are 
a way to safeguard India's future and to make 
sure that it never suffers like that again.
Arundhati Roy: Well, you know, I would buy that 
argument, if I could find a single study that 
supported it. And I would have thought that given 
that it was such a controversial subject and 
there's been such a big movement, there will be 
something to back that up. But in fact, there 
isn't a study that tells you that it is indeed 
big dams that have made India food 
self-sufficient. How much of that food comes from 
the mechanical exploitation of ground water, use 
of hybrid seeds, of chemical fertilizers? The 
only study that I know of was done by someone 
called Himanshu Patkar and presented to the World 
Commission on Dams. And it worked out that 12 
percent of India's food grain production came 
from irrigation from big dams -- and 90 percent 
of the beg dams in India are irrigation dams. And 
oddly enough, the Ministry of Food and Civil 
Supply says that 10 percent of India's stock of 
food grain is eaten every year by rats, which is 
a non-statistic. So, the point is if this were 
not true or if this were contested, I would 
imagine that it's the government's responsibility 
to at least make that case. And even still, we're 
still talking about the fact that there are other 
alternative forms of irrigation. Like, say, in 
the Punjab, there was a canal system put in by 
the British well before the Bakra Dam was built. 
And you don't know what the Bakra contributed and 
what those canals contributed and of course the 
fact that the whole lot is water-logged or 
getting water-logged now.

Mishal Husain: If we look at the reality of this 
situation of Luharia and his community, clearly 
there are big issues with the quality of lands 
that they would receive in compensation. What do 
you think of cash compensation? Is that something 
that you think could be adequate?
Arundhati Roy: Well, look, the issue of land for 
land is something that even the Narmada Water 
Disputes Tribunal specified in its rehabilitation 
policy -- that you must give them land for land. 
Now the point is if you're not going to give them 
land for land, then the government is trying to 
distribute cash to some people, especially in 
order to break the movement, to some and not to 
others and so on. And obviously now if the choice 
is between giving nothing and getting cash, it's 
better to get cash. But it isn't right. It isn't 
fair. And especially in the case of the Adivasi 
community, we must remember that the Adivasis, 
it's not like the women own the land. So, what 
happens is that the cash compensation is given to 
the men. The women are left with nothing. These 
are not communities that live in a market 
economy. Within a year, that money is drunk away 
in some squatter settlement in the edge of some 
big city. And it's over. So, is that a fair deal? 
I don't know. Maybe it's better to drink yourself 
into oblivion for a year than not. I don't know.

Mishal Husain: But the government's argument 
would be if that money is going to be misspent, 
that's not the government's fault.
Arundhati Roy: Yes, it isn't. But you know the 
point is that it is the government's policy to 
give land for land primarily is because this is 
not a community that traditionally deals with 
money. And on what basis are you giving that 
money to the men or to the head of the family? 
It's a way of destroying a community. Now, the 
government can argue what it wants. They know 
that this is the way and this is what will 
happen. So, for us to sit and discuss whether 
it's fair or not is irrelevant in a way. I mean 
presumably it's better that they get some money 
than they just get kicked out with nothing at 
all. But you know it's illegal. The point is that 
the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal is on power 
par with the Supreme Court, and it is illegal, 
what is being done.

Mishal Husain: Now, you rose to fame as a writer 
of fiction, as a novelist. And today, you speak 
out on a range of political issues. How does that 
balance feel to you? The difference between being 
an artist and now in effect being a political 
figure?
Arundhati Roy: Oh, precarious and difficult. I've 
often said that the fiction dances out of me, and 
the political writing is wrenched out by what I 
think is a world in turmoil right now and a world 
where something in me seeks to intervene urgently 
and the noise in my head doesn't stop. But I hope 
that it won't be a permanent condition.

Mishal Husain: Clearly, you have immense power 
when you choose to become involved with issues 
and in terms of the attention they then receive. 
Are there responsibilities that go along with 
that?
Arundhati Roy: Well, I guess the responsibility 
is to know what you're doing. The responsibility 
is to understand that I'm not an actress or a 
football star that's endorsing a cause. I'm a 
player. I'm making the argument. And I better 
know it -- otherwise it would be damaging, if I 
didn't. If I was going there as a bleeding heart 
endorsing some cause that I didn't fully 
understand, I could do more harm than good. So, I 
suppose that is a kind of responsibility. And 
beyond that, does art have a responsibility, an 
inherent responsibility. But part of it is to 
remain a free-thinker, to remain somebody who 
says what they believe in and who's prepared to 
conceded a point if you think that it should be 
conceded and to stick to your guns if you think 
you should do that.

Mishal Husain: And why this cause?
Arundhati Roy: Which one?

Mishal Husain: This Narmada cause.
Arundhati Roy: Like I said, I think it is the key 
to understanding the modern world in all its 
complexity. So I think to me it-- it formed the 
bedrock of understanding much of the tumultuous 
politics of the world today.

Mishal Husain: Someone say that you have a 
slightly romanticized vision of the issue, of 
keeping all of that intact.
Arundhati Roy: The one thing that I can't be 
accused of is having a romanticized notion of 
village life. Because I grew up in a village and 
I'm fully aware of the brutality of village life 
in India. I dreamed of escaping. I prayed every 
day that I wouldn't be stuck there. So that I am 
in no doubt about. And you know, if I have 
romanticized anything it's the anonymity of a big 
city. For an Indian woman certainly it provides 
shelter. No, I have nothing against romance. I 
believe that we must hold on to the right to 
dream and to be romantic. But an Indian village 
is not something that I would romanticize that 
easily.

Mishal Husain: Is it not possible then that the 
next generation, say Luharia's children, might 
have a better life if they do end up in an urban 
area.
Arundhati Roy: They might. They might not. But 
that has nothing to do with putting a gun to his 
head and saying, "We're going to drown you." 
Nobody drowned me out of my village. There's a 
difference between forced displacement and 
migration.

Mishal Husain: Are you going to stay involved 
with the cause of the Narmada Valley?
Arundhati Roy: I don't look at these things as 
something as huge as this as a cause. For me, 
it's a kind of politics. It's a way of seeing the 
world. And when I go to the valley, I often say, 
look, it's not my land or my farm that's being 
drowned. But if a farmer has land, a writer has a 
world view, and that's what's being submerged. 
So, it's not a cause or a badge that I wear on my 
coat. Obviously, it's a kind of politics. It's a 
kind of way of seeing. And you know it was a way 
of seeing that evolved from long ago and will 
continue to evolve and mature, I hope, as one 
goes on. So it's not like you pick this cause up 
and then chuck it and pick another one and then 
chuck it. It's not like that. It informs 
everything that one does and the way one thinks. 
And it informs everything about me.

Mishal Husain: Arundhati, thanks very much for joining us.
Arundhati Roy: You're welcome.