Date: 26 Nov 1997 11:49:06 GMT
From: sayan bhattacharyya <bhattach-AT-skynet.eecs.umich.edu>
Subject: Narmada: reply to Mr Ferguson was Re: Against Nature


Philip Ferguson  <plf13-AT-csc.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
>
>Green thinking has become so prevalent since the late eighties that even
>major international funding bodies have adopted green policies
>wholesale.
>In 1989, the World Bank, under pressure from green advocacy groups in
>the
>USA, adopted environmental audit procedures that had to be undertaken
>before any project was financed. In 1993 the World Bank withdrew its
>funding for the Narmada Dam project - forcing millions of Indians to
>wait
>even longer for basic amenities taken for granted in the West.

Mr. Ferguson has misrepresented the Narmada issue in the above
paragraph. 

It was not just "green advocacy groups in the USA" that opposed the
Narmada project. The opposition came from people in India (I was
one of them, in fact; I was in India at that time and I opposed the
project). In fact the anti-dam agitation was wholly an indigenous
phenomenon and it was spontaneously started by the tribal population
that was being displaced by the dam.

The fact that the dam was going to be good for "millions of Indians"
is incorrect. The dam would have benefitted only rich farmers who could
afford to pay for the irrigation water that the dam would have 
provided, but not the common people. It is doubtful that small and
marginal farmers would have benefitted from the dam at all. Besides
there were the environmental risks and destruction of immense tracts
of forests through flooding, leading to displacement of the local
population. Note also that the major opposition centered on the 
proposed height of the dam.

As an Indian (not someone from the USA) who opposed the dam (in the 
form it was proposed), I submit that Mr. Ferguson is misrepresenting
the issue, and I urge him and others reading this to be informed about
the issue by checking out the Narmada page maintained by the 
Progressive South Asian Exchange Net. The URL is:

  http://home.dti.net/foil/economy/ecology/nbapg.htm

Please check it out.

-Sayan Bhattacharyya.










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