Date: Wed, 03 Dec 1997 15:43:40
From: Andrew Allen Walton <reed-AT-hn.pl.net>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Soviets+electrification


>
>Louis Proyect:
>This is just a bald-faced lie. The Narmada Dam is a typical World Bank
>project and it has been stalled by a mass movement of Indian people. A New
>Zealander by the name of Philip Ferguson, who is one of Heartfield's
>co-religionists, made the same stupid argument on behalf of the dam on the
>Trotsky newsgroup. He was answered by an Indian who participated in the
>struggle. No LM'er has been able to answer her.
>
>She wrote:
>
>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.
>
>
List. 

I'm forwarding this from Phillip Ferguson, whom the above post makes
mention of.

I know Louis Proyect has a great reputation for slander and inaccuracy, but
here he has outdone himself.  Leaving aside his inane comments about
'co-religionists', I have NEVER posted any such comments on the Narmada Dam
as he claims.  I know nothing about the dam, or even where it is, and have
not contributed AT ALL to the discussion of the dam project in the apst
news group, let alone made the comments that are attributed to me in quote
marks.

Proyect should apologise and cease making up stories about people he
diagrees with.

Philip Ferguson





Warm Regards.

Andrew Allen Walton.

"Marxism is above all a method of analysis - not analysis of texts, 
but analysis of social relations." - Leon Trotsky.	

"Bourgeois class rule fights its last battle under a false flag,
under the flag of revolution itself." - Rosa Luxemburg.



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