Big Dams — The Narmada Project

BIG DAMS – THE NARMADA PROJECT (Chapter 8) Return to Unit List

Your textbook offers a brief introduction to the environmental and political issues surrounding the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada River, part of a larger project in which a series of major dams have been planned along the Narmada River and its tributaries in the states of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh (page 425, "Conflict over dams"). The Narmada project has attracted a considerable amount of international attention due to the unprecedented intensity of popular resistance, which culminated in the Indian supreme court's decision to turn down $450 million in loans to finance the project. Construction has nevertheless resumed and the project continues to be a lightning rod for debates over development, environmental degradation, and human rights both within India and internationally.

To learn more about the project and the issues driving the conflict over its continuation, visit first the official web page for the Sardar Sarovar Dam . Here you will find information on the current status of the project and descriptions of the benefits it hopes to provide. You can also find specific accounts of how the dam builders propose to resettle and rehabilitate the population affected by the valley inundation.

Perhaps not surprisingly, international opponents of the project have a much larger presence on the web than its supporters, since the Web has become one of the primary vehicles for spreading news and information outside of "official media" channels. A few of the key campaigns against the project can be found at:

One World's Narmada Campaign (based in the UK)
Friends of River Narmada (supported mostly by overseas Indians within the United States)
The International Rivers Network's South Asia Campaigns (based in the United States)

One of the most outspoken and well-known critics of the project has been the writer Arundhati Roy, known throughout the world for her novel The God of Small Things. Roy wrote an essay titled, "The Greater Common Good" which condemns the Narmada project as an outdated form of large-scale capital intensive development. Roy’s involvement protesting the dam led to her arrest in 2002. You can also read the transcript of an interview with Roy on the PBS program Wide Angle.

Roy, and the anti-dam campaign more broadly, have been criticized in India for both misrepresenting those impacted by the project and romanticizing indigenous resistance to the dam. Some have claimed that western environmentalists don’t want peasants to become modernized by the “big development” represented by large-scale projects like Sardar Sarovar. What is your reaction to her essay and/or interview?

Another powerful critique of the project came from writer Catherine Caufield in her book on the World Bank: Masters of Illusion. The first chapter of this book deals with the Narmada Project and the World Bank's involvement, and is available online.