[Reader-list] Sardar Sarovar Dam - A project of sorrows

[Rakesh Iyer]

Dear all

This is even more shameful than the earlier article I posted. After reading
such an article, I always wonder how strong are the people of India never
either to give vent to their anger through violent actions (by and large),
and also neither giving support to spirit of dictatorship which can solve
all these problems of theirs. Equally, it seems the Indian bureaucracy is so
cheap and damning that it seems strange nobody does to their officers and
officials, what Vedavati jee had in mind to the 'sickulars' of this nation.

Regards

Rakesh

Article:


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      *From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 31, Dated August 08, 2009*
 *CURRENT
AFFAIRS*   *special report *

*Old War, New Bodies*

*Dubious middlemen, farmers tricked into selling their land, dam oustees
sent to jail — it’s all part of the government’s rehabilitation
package. **TUSHA
MITTAL** captures the cascading madness in Narmada valley*

*STORY AT A GLANCE*- Gujarat, MP and Maharashtra governments want the dam to
go higher, but SC says every oustee should first be rehabilitated *•* *Two
lakh people affected by the dam. More than half without homes* *•* The MP
government says it has no land to give oustees, yet later claims to have
rehabilitated them *•* *MP asks oustees to find land themselves, triggering
massive scams • *Fake land is bought and sold by middlemen while oustees are
jailed for this *•* *Unaffected farmers are now being displaced by those
displaced by the dam•* Cash compensation ruins farmers used to
self-sustaining land-based economies
 [image: image]  Uprooted Medha Patkar with Sardar Sarovar dam oustees on
the Narmada  *Photo:* AP

TEN YEARS AFTER the waters submerged her fields, 65-year-old Ali Bai
continues to live on a half-submerged hilltop, under a broken bamboo roof.
On paper, she’s been rehabilitated. In reality, not only has she been
cheated of most of her compensation money, she could also face a potential
jail term. So could thousands of others trapped in a new sinister game being
played in the Narmada valley.

More than 20 years ago, the people of Narmada valley were asked to make a
sacrifice for the greater common good of the country. Eight lakh hectares of
irrigated land, drinking water for millions of people and 1,450MW of power:
for this, they were asked to look away as the waters drowned their huts,
their fields, their cattle, their schools, their hilltops. They were
promised fair compensation.

In the last 20 years, the debate around the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) has
become emblematic of the larger questions around the idea of development
itself – the fight over our resources, the conflict between people and
progress, the erosion of self-sustaining ways of life. In the last 20 years,
the SSP has also been touted as yet another ‘temple of modern India’ – a
gateway to the kind of developed society we want to become.

That is why it is significant that four years after it was scheduled to be
completed, none of those promises have been fulfilled. Only 72,000 hectares
have been irrigated, only 7 percent of the promised water is reaching the
thirsty millions — because only 30 percent of the canals have been
constructed — and only 30 percent of the promised power has been generated.
In the drought-prone region of Kutch that was touted as the *raison
d'être*of the project, people have filed cases in the Supreme Court
(SC) against
the dam because the promised waters haven’t come. The Planning Commission
cleared the Sardar Sarovar Project dam in 1988 at a cost of Rs 6,406 crores.
Today, Rs 45,000 crores have been spent and the figure could rise to 70,000
crores by 2012. That is why there is reason to be cautious of the new
promises the SSP dam authorities are rapidly and boldly making. The Madhya
Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra governments are furiously petitioning the
Narmada Control Authority for permission to take the dam to its final
sanctioned height of 138.68 metres from its present height of 122 metres.

OF THE two lakh people who live in the project’s submergence zone, Madhya
Pradesh has the largest number of oustees – almost 80 percent. Their
sacrifices for the greater common good of the country will never make them
martyrs. There will be no memorials or anniversary celebrations. And in
1999, the Madhya Pradesh government admitted to the SC that it has no land
to give them either.

The SSP is perhaps the only project in the country where the rehabilitation
of the displaced at each stage is a pre-condition for further construction.
No other dam has been as much in the public eye or received as much
international attention. No other people’s movement has managed what the
Narmada Bachao Andolan has – in 1993, the World Bank withdrew its funding
over human rights violations. For no other dam has the SC asked for proof
that the thousands displaced have been resettled before it gives further
clearances.

This is what makes a new scam in rehabilitation even more significant.
Desperate to meet pre-conditions and raise the dam higher, the Narmada
Valley Development Authority (NVDA) introduced a Special Rehabilitation
Package (SRP) worth Rs 300 crore in 2001. It gives oustees cash compensation
as long as they can prove they’ll buy land with it – a feat the government
couldn’t accomplish themselves.

Today, the SRP scheme has led to more chaos and displacement. While the
State defines only those whose lands are slated for submergence as “project
affected”, as one travels through the Nimad plains of Madhya Pradesh, it is
impossible to find a non-project affected family — farmers who were
unaffected by the dam have begun killing themselves, those displaced are
finding themselves in jail, those who have received compensation are being
asked to return it, while the ineligible and the deceased are paid crores in
compensation.

When 70-year-old Ganga Ram of Kawthi village realised he hadn’t received a
penny of the Rs 5.6 lakh given to his son who died two years ago, he
complained to the local authorities and threatened to go to higher if the
money wasn’t returned. Ganga Ram went missing the next day. Villagers tell
TEHELKA they saw his body floating in the Narmada river.

No one expects a government scheme to reach its target population without
money being embezzled along the way. What makes the corruption in the
rehabilitation of SSP oustees significant, perhaps, is the years of
turbulent history behind it. The Supreme Court issued orders in 2000, 2002,
and 2005 that all displaced people must be rehabilitated on lands they have
agreed to accept at least six months before submergence. Those losing more
than 25 percent of their land must be given land in return, a minimum of
five acres. In April 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself wrote to
the SC. He promised that the oustees would be rehabilitated in four months,
before the dam height reached 122 metres.

Dam authorities have testified to the SC that all required rehabilitation is
complete. Yet the irony is that people affected not only at the current dam
height of 122 metres, but since the dam was 90 metres high, are yet to
rehabilitated.

On paper, the villages of Nisarpur, Kharya Badal, and Bhavaria are empty —
everyone has moved to the rehabilitation site. But when TEHELKA visited the
villages, we found bustling courtyards, temples, children herding the goats.
“For the benefit of thousands, we can’t save your land,” officials in Bhopal
told Ram Das when he marched to the capital in protest a year ago. 17 acres
of his cotton and chilli had been razed to make rehabilitation plots for 200
families from Nisarpur. Today, those 17 acres lie empty with churned rubble.
The land with its soft black alluvial soil was ideal for cultivation, but
not for construction. The open drains, lack of water and large pot holes did
not help. All 200 families returned their house plots. Meanwhile, Das’ son
has quit engineering college because his once successful father is now a
landless labourer ‘for the benefit of thousands’.

Those who haven’t lost land to submergence or to nonfunctional
rehabilitation have lost it to canals being pushed through their fields. In
many cases, like Dinesh Bhai from Dharampuri, those fields were already
irrigated with tubewells. None of the 23,500 families who’ve lost land to
the Narmada Canal count as “project affected.” Now, there’s a new way to
lose your land and livelihood – without your knowledge, a cabal of middlemen
and government officials could transfer it to an SSP oustee, for the greater
common good.

THERE ARE no roads that lead to the adivasi hamlet of Kotbandhini. It is
only when you cross the Narmada on boat and trek up the Vindhya mountains to
meet Ali Bai on a green mountain summit, that you understand the
senselessness of what has happened in the Narmada valley, and the horror of
what is about to happen if the authorities get their way again. It is only
then that you understand how crude money can be, and how it is turning
self-sufficient land-based economies into midget replicas of a cash-driven
world: A villager sells off his goats to make room for a new motorcycle,
only to realize he can’t afford the petrol; a village suddenly has a large
number of bachelors because no one wants to marry their daughters to the new
prodigal alcoholics; a brother gets a bigger house and stops talking to his
poor family – the many crises of a monetary city life creeping into rural
communities.

The people of Kotbandhini were rehabilitated on lands in Gujarat. On
reaching there they found the same plot of land allotted to oustees from
another village in MP. They were forced to return. Those who stayed returned
two years later because the land was infertile. Yet, in affidavits to the SC
dam authorities say Kotbandhini has been successfully resettled.
 Ganga Ram hadn’t received any compensation and so complained to the local
officials. He went missing the next day

Rs 1,190 crores – that’s the rehabilitation budget of the MP government to
resettle 40,000 families affected by the SSP. Ali Bai doesn’t know how much
of it she has received; she cannot count. Teeth gone, gums loose, her voice
is loudest, clearest when she says ‘Heera Lal’, the name of the
*dalal*(broker) who took her to a big town to get her compensation of
Rs 5.6 lakh.
He left her with a few thousand.

In 1999, the MP government said to the SC that it has no land to give to
oustees. The SC replied that it should buy private land. Farmers have
written letters to the government willing to sell their land to the SSP
oustees at current land rates. The government refused because “land prices
were too high.” Suddenly, in 2000, the MP government wrote to the SC saying
it has created a land bank to rehabilitate the oustees. In reality, much of
this land was uncultivable, drawn from cattle grazing area or already
inhabited by adivasis. No surprise then that most farmers refused to accept
it. “Out of 4,304 projectaffected families, so far 4,044 have refused to
accept the allotted land and opted for the Special Rehabilitation Package
(SRP),” the NVDA wrote to the SC in a 2008 affidavit.

This is what the SRP is: Since the state government cannot find land, it
tells the oustees to find it themselves. Each oustee and a major son is
allowed a cash compensation of Rs 5.6 lakh in two instalments. After the
first, they must find five acres of land to purchase, pay an advance, and
produce a *“sauda chitti”* or land sale agreement before they are given the
rest.

The land rates are at least Rs 2 lakh per acre for non irrigated land, and
much more for irrigated land. How is an oustee expected to purchase five
acres in five lakhs? The scheme itself is unworkable. Desperate to get their
cash compensation, the oustees have fallen prey to a nexus of middlemen —
brokers, local land records officers and revenue officials — who say they
will help the oustees get their money for a broker fee.

And so fake land sale agreements are born: A fake seller, a fake photo, fake
witnesses, fake land that does not even exist being purchased on paper by
the oustee to get his due compensation. Except that all of it is not fake.
In many cases, the land that oustees show they are buying has been snatched
by the middlemen from real land owners whose fields and lives had until now
been unaffected by the SSP.

Land records show Chaggan Bhai sold his land to SSP oustees. “What?” he
said, his pink turban slipping off, when TEHELKA visited his village in
Kukshi. He hadn’t a clue his land had been transferred to someone else’s
name.
 A fake seller, a fake photo, fake witnesses. Fake land that does not exist
is bought by the oustees to get their compensation

It was Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) activists who first brought this scam to
light. From 2005 to 2007 they asked the MP government to look into the
matter but the government denied any fake records. In 2007, the Narmada
Control Authority, headed by a secretary of the water resources ministry,
asked the MP government to form a task force consisting of police and
revenue department officials, to inquire into fake registries. Suddenly, the
NVDA began transfering people. GS Bhagel, Vinay Kumar Dhoka and Ambaram
Patidar were all land acquisition officers who are now sub divisional
magistrates in the revenue department. As a result, the officers enquiring
into the charges were those at the helm during the corruption!

The government task force report admitted to 758 cases of fake registry, but
it only showed the oustees as the ones culpable. The government registered
230 FIRs and directed the NVDA to take action against them. Of those FIRs
four are against middlemen and two against government officials. The
remaining are the land buyers — those already displaced by the SSP,
witnesses, and sellers — like Sitaram Mal Singh of Kukshi, who owns only 12
acres but is registered as selling 15.

The NBA went to court against the government inquiry. Its own assesment is
that more than 2,000 registries are fake. When the Jabalpur High Court gave
an interim order in February 2008 to stop further arrests, 55 of the 230
charged were already in jail for “cheating and forgery of valuable
security”, punishable by upto 10 years or life imprisonment. Accepting the
government inquiry is one-sided, the high court appointed an independent
commission. Its report is due in two months.

When Alok Gulab from Semalda village reached NVDA for his compensation, a
resettlement officer called Mr Modi pointed to the *dalals *perched outside:
“Come through them.” The greater common good is not what he had in mind.

*WRITER’S EMAIL*
tusha at tehelka.com

 *From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 31, Dated August 08, 2009*


   *Related Stories*  •

*Old War, New Bodies<http://www.tehelka.com/story_main42.asp?filename=Ne080809old_war.asp>
*
 Dubious middlemen, farmers tricked into selling their land, dam oustees
sent to jail — it’s all part of the government’s rehabilitation package. *TUSHA
MITTAL* captures the cascading madness in Narmada valley
  •

*‘They Cheated Me Because I’m
Blind’<http://www.tehelka.com/story_main42.asp?filename=Ne080809they_cheated.asp>
*
 <http://www.tehelka.com/story_main42.asp?filename=Ne080809they_cheated.asp>
Hamir
was lucky enough to not lose his land to the submergence. But he lost his
land to those who claim to have rehabilitated Narmada oustees
  •

*‘Money Evaporates, Land
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 The dam drowned his fields and pastures. When he demanded land for land,
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  • *‘I Thought We Were Safe. I Was
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*
 <http://www.tehelka.com/story_main42.asp?filename=Ne080809i_thought.asp> Kamal
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*‘Dalals Were The Only Way To Get My
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*
 Madhya Pradesh has no land to rehabilitate the dam oustees. Instead, the
convoluted rules of the relief package create victims for conmen


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