India faces a number of environmental challenges as it continues to grow and develop. Some of the major problems that India is continually battling are water shortages and energy shortages. One of the ways that India has looked into rectifying both of these issues throughout their history is through the development and building of hydroelectric power dams. One such of these projects was called the Narmada Valley Dam Project, a now infamous project in India that resulted in many citizens protesting because of the adverse effects it would have on their lives, homes, and ecology of the area.
The details of this project included the construction of 3,200 dams, both large and small, all along the Narmada River. This river flows through three states in northern India; Madhya Pradesh, Maharastra and Gujarat. This had long been a discussed idea for this river, but it wasn’t until 1987 when the World Bank sanctioned a 450 million dollar loan to begin construction on the largest dam of the project, the Sardar Sarovar, that significant construction began. This dam was proposed to be 136.5 meters tall and was projected to provide irrigation to 1.8 million hectares as well as provide drinking water to the often draught prone areas of Kutch and Saurastra in Gujarat. However, many people feel that these benefits were grossly exaggerated and that the detrimental impact the building this dam would have on the river’s health, sensitive ecosystems, the environment, and on people’s lives far outweighed the benefits that it may bring to the area. The opposition to this dam increased as its construction commenced and displaced 320,000 people. In response to the significant impact this dam has had on many people in the community and knowing that if construction continued that the number of displaced persons could reach into the millions, protest movements began to take shape.
In 1990, the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) organization coordinated protest movements in the region. These were non-violent protests (satyagraha) that succeeded in getting the attention of the World Bank which caused them to review their support and loan of the project. The bank formed the Morse Commission to evaluate the dam and the affects that it was incurring on the people and environment. The findings of this report corroborated many of the grievances that the NBA had petitioned against the project and as a result the World Bank withdrew from the project. India continued on with the project but following a petition from the NBA the Supreme Court suspended the project in 1995 when it was at a height of 80.3 meters. Despite the massive protest movement, the dam was permitted to continued its construction after a review of the project by the Supreme Court and since 1999 has been undergoing construction at a slower pace and with more regulations in order to help alleviate some of the negative impacts of the dam. Whether or not the sacrifice made of the environment to build this dam was worth it remains up for debate.
Learning of this controversial dam and the World Bank’s role in making the project a reality has made me consider the effectiveness of multilateral organizations like the World Bank or IMF. These organizations promote development by granting loans to far away countries from their cozy offices in Washington, D.C. thinking that money will solve all the problems in these far off nations. That may be an overly dramatic and cynical statement, but I do think that a certain disconnect exists between these institutions and the local areas that their projects focus on. I say this because this summer I worked at a company that specialized in providing consulting services promoting sustainable development in developing countries. The projects I worked on were financed and approved by the World Bank and IMF and the next step was to ask companies like ours to go and fulfill the tasks set forth in the projects with the allotted amount of money given to the project. Our company worked on projects that were much smaller than the Narmada Dam, but the process of how these projects go about being completed are probably very similar. In getting familiar with these processes over the summer I realized that many of the experts that go in and offer their services on these projects do not stay there for very long. There are of course long term professionals and local experts that are full time workers on the project, but these other experts come and go quite rapidly. They offer advice and go on their way. After being in India for 5 weeks I feel like this may not be the best idea. This country is so different and has complex issues to deal with that an outsider could not possibly comprehend in a short stay to the country. I know that personally I would not feel comfortable offering advice on a large and expensive project even after 5 weeks of being in India, but what do I know as I am not even a college graduate. It just seems that if the people who were in charge of the Narmada Dam had paid closer attention to the environment, local communities, and people that they were about to impact that they may have not been so keen to go forth with this project.
I believe organizations like the World Bank have the best intentions when they approve any project, but in the future it may serve them well to bridge the disconnect that exists between their headquarters and the areas their projects are targeting. It is one thing to offer advice from far away when issues are put into nice little boxes, but in reality, the world is much more complex than that, something that I have learned day after day in India.
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