Framing India's hydraulic crises: The politics of the modern large dam

Monthly Review

Volumn 60, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 112-124

  D'Souza, Rohan ^a  

^a JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY   (India)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 48849093761     PISSN: 00270520     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.14452/MR-060-03-2008-07_7     Document Type: Review

References (41)

1. For the full quote see endnote 4 in Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living (London: Flamingo [imprint HarperCollins], 1999), 104. Gigantism as the condition of the modern positivist technocratic mind is well summed up by Paul Virilio's stark quip that these "enthusiasts for Progress" are but a "dangerous gang of dwarves smitten with gigantism," who in entertaining a naïve conception of the world have the "satisfaction of a stubbornly repeated infantile refusal." Put differently, they are plagued by the refusal to grow up.
2. See Paul Virilo, Ground Zero (London: Verso, 2002), 2.
3. K. L. Rao, Cusecs Candidate (New Delhi: Metropolitan, Kanpur Printing Press, 1978), 37.
4. Henry Hart, New India's Rivers (Bombay: Orient Longman, 1956), 256.
5. Rohan D'Souza, "Damming the Mahanadi River," Indian Economic and Social History Review 40, no. 1 (2003): 82-105.
6. On the global influence of the TVA and India in particular see Daniel Klingensmith, "One Valley and a Thousand" (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007).
7. Also see David A. Biggs, "Reclamation Nations," Comparative Technology Transfer and Society 4, no. 3 (2006): 225-46;
8. Heather J. Hoag, "Transplanting the TVA? International Contributions to Postwar River Development in Tanzania," Comparative Technology Transfer and Society 4, no. 3 (2006): 247-68.
9. See James C. Scott, "High Modernist Social Engineering," in Lloyd I. Rudolph and John Kurt Jacobsen, Experiencing the State (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), 3-52.
10. For a comprehensive discussion of the various types of water harvesting structures termed "traditional" see Anil Agrawal and Sunita Narain (ed.), Dying Wisdom (New Delhi: Centre for Science and Environment, 1997).
11. Rohan D'Souza, "Water in British India," History Compass 4, no.4, (2006): 621-28.
12. See Rohan D'Souza, Drowned and Dammed (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006).
13. Here a large dam is defined following the International Commission on Large Dams, as one with a height of more than fifteen meters from its deepest foundation; also see the report by the World Commission on Dams that was released on November 16, 2000, http://www.dams.org.
14. The literature on dam displacement in India is vast but an excellent introduction to the subject is Jean Dreze, Meera Samson, and Satyajit Singh (ed.), The Dam and the Nation (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997).
15. The Second Citizens' Report (New Delhi: State of India's Environment, Centre for Science and Environment, 1996 [reprint, 1985]). According to a recent estimate, there are 4,528 large dams in India, which could have submerged at least 4.426 million hectares or 44,262 square kilometers. This is equal to 10 million acres.
16. See the newsletter Dams, Rivers & People 5, no. 4-5 (May-June 2007), 8-9.
17. Uma Maheswari, "Preparing to Repeat a Dammed History," India Together, February 2-9, 2006, http://www.indiatogether.org/2006/sep/hrt- polavaram.htm.
18. Satyajit Singh, Taming the Waters (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 67-76.
19. The agencies that carried out the cost-benefit analysis for the Sardar Sarovar Project were the Narmada Planning Group (1983), Tata Economic Consultancy Services (1983), the World Bank (1985), SSP Narmada Nigam Ltd. (1989), and the World Bank again (1990). See Ranjit Dwivedi, Conflict and Collective Action (London: Routledge, 2006), 102.
20. On the agitation against the Sardar Sarovar Project see Sanjay Sangvai, The River and Life: People's Struggle in the Narmada Valley (Mumbai: Earthcare Books, 2000)
21. and Amita Baviskar, In the Belly of the River: Tribal Conflicts over Development in the Narmada Valley (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995).
22. Radha D'Souza, Interstates Disputes over Krishna Waters (Hyderbad: Orient Longman, 2006), 215-35, 433-62.
23. Shripad Dharmadhikary, Unravelling Bhakra (Badwani: Manthan, 2005).
24. Dharmadhikary, Unravelling Bhakra, 24, 29.
25. Dharmadhikary, Unravelling Bhakra, 151-206.
26. Dharmadhikary, Unravelling Bhakra, 198-99.
27. IUCN, "Indus Delta, Pakistan," Case Studies in Wetland Valuation no. 5 (May 2003).
28. Also see Altaf A. Memon, "Devastation of the Indus River Delta," Proceedings, World Water & Environmental Resources Congress 2005, American Society of Civil Engineers, Environmental and Water Resources Institute, Anchorage, Alaska, May 14-19, 2005, 1-14.
29. See D. P. Chattacharya, Ahmedabad, The Indian Express, April 1, 2007, http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid+229515.
30. Richard Mahapatra and Ranjan K. Panda, "Ground Swell," Down To Earth (December 31, 2007) 22-30, http://www.downtoearth.org.in.
31. For an excellent review of water conflicts in contemporary India see the compilation by Biskam Gujja, K. J. Joy, Suhas Paranjape, Vinod Goud, and Shruti Vispute, "Water Conflicts in India," Economic and Political Weekly 41, no.7 (February, 2006): 570-612.
32. Rohan D'Souza, "Supply-Side Hydrology in India: The Last Gasp," Economic and Political Weekly 38, no. 36 (September 2003): 3785-90.
33. Dhirendra Kumar Singh and Anil Kumar Singh, "Groundwater Situation in India," Water Resources Development 18, no. 4 (2002): 563-80.
34. Sandra Postel, Pillars of Sand? (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 93.
35. A fairly substantial number of criticisms against large dams in India have emerged from the "non-expert." One of the first authoritative non-official overviews of the negative impacts by large dams in India was The Second Citizens' Report, cited above.
36. See also Anil Agarwal, Sunita Narain, and Srabani Sen (ed.), The Citizen's Fifth Report (New Dellhi: Center for Sceince and Enviornment, 1999), http://www.cseindia.org/html/pub_soie.htm#sie2.htm 131-66.
37. Two excellent recent collections on large dams in North East India are, "Large Dams Northeast India; Rivers, Forests, People and Power," The Ecologist (Asia) 11, no. 1 (January-March 2003),
38. and Manju Menon and Kanchi Kohli (compilation), Large Dams for Hydropower in Northeast India (Pune and New Delhi: Kalpavriksh, South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, 2005). For regular updates on resistance to large dams in India see the newsletter Dams, Rivers & People brought out by the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, http://www.sandrp.in.
39. For criticism of the inter-linking rivers project see Medha Patkar (ed.), River Linking (Mumbai: National Alliance of People's Movement, 2004)
40. and Arun Kumar Singh, Inter-Linking of Rivers in India (New Delhi: The Other Media, 2003).
41. Some of the most significant critical and alternative ideas on the subject of water in India have been expressed in the writings of Medha Patkar, Himanshu Thakkar, Shripad Dharmadhikary, Dinesh Mishra, Jayanta Bandyopadhyay, and Ramaswamy R. Iyer.