Analysis: Drowned Out
Kendall Moyer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICnSsK-ZHTg
Drowned Out is a documentary that was created in 2002 by a tiny independent film company, Spanner films. The film tells the true story of an Indian family who decided to stay home and drown rather than move for the Narmada Dam. The documentary asks some very large questions involving the dam: Will the water go to poor farmers or to rich industrialists? Why are children dying in the resettlement sites? What happened to the 16 million people displaced by fifty years of dam building? Why should we care? The documentary is a real eye-opener as to the effects that dams have on the people who were in the area first.
The Narmada Dam is the second largest dam in the world, and India’s largest project. The chief engineer even boasts that the project took so much concrete that you could roll it around the equator. Villagers who depend on their land for their livelihood are facing increasing struggles and threats to their way of life as their fields gradually flood while the dam is constructed. The Adivasis, India’s original inhabitants, face the biggest threat to their way of life, as they have no alternative means to survival if they lose their land, unlike city people. The Narmada River is sacred to the people of India, legend has it that while one must bathe in the Ganges River to purify the soul, one need only look at the Narmada River to get the same healing. However, the government planners see the river differently. They envision a giant staircase of reservoirs, held in place by more than three thousand dams, including small, medium, and mega dams. It is the largest river development project undertaken anywhere in the world. The idea is to make India self-sufficient in power and in food.
The project aims to bring electricity, irrigation, and drinking water to tens of millions of people. However, the native Adivasis, some of which have lived in the same village for more the more than twelve generations, feel they have rightful claim over the land, and are refusing to move or give up their way of life. The first mega dam has already been put in place on the river, creating a reservoir and submerging two villages. During the monsoon season, the reservoir will swell, completely submerging more villages. The dam currently stands at two-thirds its intended height. Once completed, the dam will be 200 Kilometers long and 245 villages will be submerged. The water will then be redirected down one of the largest canal systems ever constructed in the world. Time magazine called it “one of the engineering wonders of the world.” If the government’s plan works, the water will travel 500 kilometers north, up to one of the world’s most drought-stricken regions, where, with no water, tens of thousands of people have already been forced to leave their homes. More than 200 villages have been abandoned.
Meanwhile, the water continues to encroach on the homes of those living in the dams flood areas. One villager despairs the government notice left on his home when no one was there- he cannot understand it because he cannot read. He believes a fair government would have resettled his family a long time ago, since the dam has been under construction for twenty years already.
In May 2002, the Narmada Construction Authority gave clearance for the dam to be built up to a height of 95 meters. At this height, there are 8,000 families who will be submerged that have not yet been resettled, breaking the regulations laid down in the Supreme Court ruling. A campaign targeting foreign corporations intending to invest in the project has already succeeded in making six withdraw. In May 2002, police arrived in the village Jalsindhi and started cutting down the forest. The trees were burned in front of the villagers. As monsoon season approaches, the villagers are resolute. They tell the government “we will drown, but we will not move.”
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