Effects of the Narmada verdict

By Jai Sen

``THE GOVERNMENT wants us to flee like the rats as the submergence water rises, as they have done all these years in the other dams. We are not rats, we are human beings. We will resist the injustice and face the submergence imposed by the Government and the Supreme Court on the Narmada valley. This is a test of the democracy and human rights in India,'' declared Noorjibhai Padvi, Dedlibhai, Bawa Mahariya and hundreds of tribal, peasant villagers and activists while launching the Narmada Satyagraha against the dam and submergence due to the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) in village Domkhedi and Jalsindhi on July 5 on the banks of the swirling Narmada.

On October 18 last year (2000), a majority judgment of the Supreme Court ruled that construction of the Sardar Sarovar dam should go ahead. Although the ruling was most widely read in these terms - a go-ahead for the project, and hence a loss and setback to the petitioner, the Narmada Bachao Andolan, in its efforts to stop the project and have it reviewed - it had several other layers of meaning which in some senses were as serious and far-reaching as the most obvious one.

One of the most significant was that the ruling would tend to very substantially reduce the space for civil politics in the country; in other words, that arguably it would encourage and lead to greater intolerance and greater division in the country. Subsequent developments have shown that precisely what was predicted has taken shape. There have been a series of recent incidents in the country of repression and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force by the state, such as the firing on and killing by police of Adivasis at Dewas in Madhya Pradesh for the `heinous crime' of defending their traditional rights of access to the forests for house timber, or the similar firings against Adivasis at Kashipur in Orissa, at Koel Karo in Jharkhand, and most recently at Puntamba in Maharashtra.

And now we have a situation where no less than five former Chief Ministers of one State and the present Deputy Chief Minister of another have jointly petitioned the Union Government to ban the NBA, as being an organisation that is a danger to the nation. This follows six months of vicious public attacks in the media on the NBA, accusing it of everything up to sedition and treason - all for opposing and criticising a development project. These may seem mad and irrelevant charges at first, quite out of proportion - but when seen as being one more step in a chain of events we need to not flinch from recognising and reading this as a dangerous trend.

On the other hand, however, there is also a deathly silence in the media about this particular situation and more generally about the criminal injustice that is taking shape in the valley today. This is all the more important this year, when the raised dam wall and therefore much greater submergence has become a permanent reality; and where, given the Supreme Court's ruling the movement and the local villagers have their backs to the wall.

More than any year before this, there is this year the distinct possibility that we will hear about jal samadi taking place in the valley. We need to ask ourselves: why is it that the media is so uninterested in this situation, when just till last year this movement was widely seen as being one of the most significant civil movements for decades? Does this have anything to do with the ruling?

No less significant is the fact that there also seems to be a sharp drop in the number of outsiders going to the valley this year, to express solidarity with the movement and the villagers who are struggling for their most basic human rights. Taken together, these trends in the behaviour of civil society towards the movement have a deep message not just for the Narmada project and for the movements around the Sardar Sarovar dam, but for the polity of the country as a whole. They demand a moment's pause and reflection from all of us.

Despite all their promises under oath to the Supreme Court (and thereby to the people of the country), and despite the great hope and responsibility that the Court thereby placed on the administration, the State Governments responsible for these projects have absolutely cynically failed to resettle and rehabilitate the people affected. They are forcing the villagers to choose between fleeing their homes and drowning. In a very real sense, they are today fulfilling the vicious threat of a Gujarat politician during the 1980s, who said in regard to the Sardar Sarovar dam: ``When the waters rise, the tribals will either drown or they will be flushed out of their holes like rats''.

Just compare this statement, and the manner in which the Indian State is today behaving, with the intense and proud dignity that shines through in the words of the Adivasis, peasants, and activists who are now on satyagraha in the valley, as quoted at the beginning of this article. It is difficult to imagine more gross cynicism than this behaviour by the State, at least in a supposedly democratic country.

It goes without saying that the demand for a ban on the NBA and the vilification of its leaders constitute an extremely negative and dangerous development. At the most fundamental level, this outcome questioned and challenged a tenet that lies at the very heart of a democracy: the sovereignty of the people of the country, from which flow our fundamental freedoms to associate freely, to express ourselves freely, to question the state freely, and to live freely - and indeed, to establish the state itself. Whether the Supreme Court meant to do this or not, is not relevant; the historical fact is that it did so. This is of the most profound meaning.

The present Government at the Centre is extremely fragile and dependent for its survival on whatever support it can get from whatever sources on whatever grounds. Just as a spurious and purely political `approval' was given to the Sardar Sarovar Project by the Rajiv Gandhi Government back in 1987 after the Congress had fared disastrously in State elections - riding roughshod over strident objections from much of the administration - it is all too possible that the Vajpayee Government may well pay more heed than any self-respecting government should to such a rabid demand (for banning the NBA).

Is there any line of control between state and civil movements? It is difficult to say which is more important, and more depressing, and more dangerous: the cynical drowning of the people in the Narmada Valley by the Indian state, figuratively and/or literally, or this fascist `appeal' to a weak Government. It is probably also meaningless to even try to draw the distinction, since the two threads are so intertwined. Whichever it is, it is vital that all those concerned with issues of humanity, freedom, and democracy, pay full attention to what is unfolding in front of our eyes.

For let us also be clear: if those demanding a ban on the NBA win in their efforts, who will it be a victory for? It will be a victory, perhaps, for the builders, promoters, and financiers of big projects, and for the hidden interests behind them, for whom mammoth projects represent mammoth profits and therefore, by obvious logic, are good for the country; and it will also be a victory for the small-minded but unfortunately very sizeable section of chauvinist elements in the country who are intolerant of any other views and especially of those who are minorities or non- conformists. But it will be a profound loss for humanity, for freedom, and for democracy.

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