Obstruction as Ideology

Excerpts from Madhu Kishwar’s 2006 Outlook piece

NBA defines itself mainly through negative agendas — anti-dam, anti-liberalisation, anti-globalisation, anti-WTO, anti this, anti that. The alternative development paradigm Medha Patkar claims to represent has not yet offered any practical and positive worldview or agenda for action.

I cannot pass a definitive verdict on the Sardar Sarovar Dam Project. My gut feeling, however, is that mega projects that cause mega displacements tend to be politician- and contractor-friendly rather than people friendly. Moreover, our government (no matter which party is in power) has a shameless record of habitually cheating people of their rights, responding to their genuine grievances with callousness and even brutality, robbing the poor of their pitiful resources and transferring them to the rich and powerful and facilitating outright loot and corruption in the guise of development projects. I also believe that our netas and babus are not enthusiastic about low-cost, eco-friendly options for water harvesting and power generation because they cannot siphon off as much money from them as they can through mega projects. I myself played an active role for a long period in the campaign against building the Tehri Dam, which I believe to be far more ecologically dangerous than the Narmada Dam. I share many of the misgivings of those opposing the Narmada Dam. Yet, I prefer that the merits and demerits of each such project be evaluated in a non partisan manner through a public audit by genuine experts, rather than adopting a permanent oppositionist position as a matter of ideology.

Despite my reservations regarding mega-projects, I am forced to conclude that the mountains of propaganda material generated by the NBA, including the melodramatic tracts written by Arundhati Roy, are not fully trustworthy.

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Consider this:

Though NBA never tires of pointing to the real and imagined failures of Relief & Rehabilitation (R&R) as the main reason for their opposition to the Narmada Dam, it has actually worked tirelessly to obstruct many legitimate R&R projects.

..Her stand became even more uncompromising when, under pressure from the World Bank, the Gujarat government agreed to give a generous R&R package.

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Far from welcoming it and joining hands with those who began working to ensure that the government’s promise of R&R was translated into concrete action, she declared that the NBA would not accept any kind of R&R package because NBA was opposed to obstructing the “natural” flow of rivers. Even the name of the movement, “Narmada Bachao Andolan”, indicates that the NBA is more obsessed with “saving” the river from human beings than protecting the interests of poor farmers.

Thereafter she began a sustained campaign by the NBA against all those who were acting as watchdogs to ensure proper rehabilitation. They were dubbed as anti-poor, anti-tribal, pro-kulaks and hostages to corporate interests. NBA activists were instructed to prevent the entry not just of government officials, but also of independent NGOs into villages for collecting honest, updated data regarding families requiring resettlement. They physically obstructed those who tried to provide accurate information about the R&R package to prevent people from making an informed choice. They even got tribals to take a sacred oath, with water of the holy Narmada in hand, that they would choose death to relocation.

However, it did not take long for many of their local followers to realize that NBA was denying them the right to an informed choice.

Therefore, despite the “sacred” oath NBA administered to them, most of the tribal villages began quietly voting with their feet and accepted the unprecedented R&R package of 5 acres per adult son and Rs.45,000 to each family for building a new house, free transportation of their household goods, including the timber frame of their house, plus truckloads of additional wood from their villages.

The R&R process in Maharashtra and Gujarat is almost complete. All said and done, the R&R package offered to Narmada Dam oustees is by all accounts better than anything we have witnessed so far in part because several Gandhians and NGOs in Gujarat did a fairly good job of playing watchdogs, insisting that the government must give the land of their choice to oustees even if it meant purchasing it from private owners. That is one of the reasons that in recent years oustees who have settled in Gujarat and even Maharashtra have not been seen seeking the help of NBA.

Most of the new villages for oustees have been provided with better schools and primary health facilities and better connectivity with urban centers than they ever had before. This is not to suggest that the rehabilitation package is flawless.

According to Prof. Ghanshyam Shah of the Surat based Centre for Social Studies, who has closely followed the R&R in Gujarat, while 80 percent of oustees in Gujarat have been given a fair deal, about 20 percent have not received their full due. All this because of sustained pressure rather than due to an innate desire of the Gujarat government to give a fair economic deal. Activists of Arch Vahini who played a vital role in this were so worn out in the process that they withdrew from the Resettlement and Land purchasing Committee after resettling villagers from 19 uprooted villages spread over 155 Gujarat villages. Maharashtra government too played a lot of mischief with the awards, and the Madhya Pradesh government has also done all it could to wriggle out of its commitments…

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NBA activists put all manner of hurdles in the way of those working for R&R, including the use of outright violence. More than 200 criminal cases have been filed in Madhya Pradesh against NBA activists for engaging in violent attacks. As per news reports, as recently as April 6, NBA activists were reported to have beaten up and torn the clothes of government officials who visited Bajrikheda for survey work.

One would have dismissed this reported instance as an example of the repressive policy of the state government — except for the fact that it is not just government officials who have alleged obstructionist attacks by the NBA; honest NGOs working for R&R narrate similar accounts. The Indian Express of May 1, 2006 also reported how when they tracked down some of the families in Madhya Pradesh whose case the NBA took to the Supreme Court, they found these families had actually bought land of their choice with the settlement money provided by the government but the NBA activists were pressuring them not to move from their original villages so that they could continue to argue in the Court that R&R was incomplete.

Such tactics are not new. They date back to the early days of NBA. This is how Ambrish of Arch-Vahini describes one among many reported episodes of NBA’s techniques: When a large majority of tribals from Manibeli wanted to move to the new land sites offered to them in Gujarat, the minority who were still aligned to NBA declared they would not let those who wanted to move take their dismantled houses with them. Since tribal homes are built with a lot of valuable timber, no one who was ready to accept the government offer was willing to let the minority NBA activists take forcible possession of their houses.

Another method used by NBA to obstruct R&R was to demand that, since tribals are forest dwellers, they should be given forestland for resettlement. For years the Ministry of Environment resisted the idea because the new environment laws are against allowing new settlements in forest areas. However, when, under World Bank pressure, the government of Maharashtra was persuaded to make forest land available for oustees, the NBA decided to create a big furore by reversing its stand without explanation. They objected to this deal on the plea that this would destroy the already depleted forest cover in Maharashtra, proving yet again that for NBA keeping the “movement” alive has become more important than protecting the rights of vulnerable citizens.

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Today, despite the obstructionist tactics of the NBA, Gujarat and Maharashtra have almost completed the R&R process. Madhya Pradesh is the only state that has not fulfilled its entire commitment. However, most of the 35,000 families whose cause NBA is currently espousing with a view to stopping work on the Dam are not tribals, though they are paraded as adivasis. Tribal lands were submerged long ago; the adivasis have mostly been settled despite NBA obstructions.

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Even those who disagree with NBA’s methods cannot deny that by building a sustained and relentless campaign on the issue of rehabilitation, at the national and international level, making Narmada Dam an international cause célèbre and tirelessly drawing attention to the many real and imagined bunglings, it has undoubtedly played an important role in forcing the government to offer a decent R&R package. While determined interventions by the Supreme Court and the ground level work by Arch-Vahini and other concerned citizens doesn’t ever get due acknowledgement, even the NBA’s detractors admit that pressure from the World Bank after NBA lobbied hard to get them to withdraw from the project played a significant role in ensuring a fair deal for the displaced.

However, by their mixing untruths, half-truths and overstatements and their consistent obstructionist attitude towards R&R while cynically using the issue to stall the dam construction by defaming those who took up the task seriously, NBA has compromised its own credibility and ended up being an extremely divisive movement. It often gave the impression that keeping alive the movement became an end in itself and the oustees were being used as mere instruments toward this end.

The NBA has also harmed itself by making light of the drinking water needs of Gujarat and making it seem as if the dam was going to cater only to the urban elite. It was this total lack of acknowledgement, this total lack of compassion for those deprived of water that would make anyone feel, if not demonized, at least dismissed and totally blanked out of the picture. It is this rigid and inflexible stand, with no compassion shown or alternative offered for drinking water needs of the people of Gujarat who saw the dam as the only panacea on offer, that made this into a ‘us versus them’ divisive battle.

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Another important reason for NBA losing a lot of goodwill it had initially garnered is that it appears to have made a religion out of opposing all kinds of development projects without examining the merits of each case. NBA defines itself mainly through negative agendas — anti-dam, anti-liberalisation, anti-globalisation, anti-WTO, anti this, anti that. The alternative development paradigm Medha Patkar claims to represent has not yet offered any practical and positive worldview or agenda for action. That is why even those of us who have serious misgivings about the Sarkari Paradigm of Development feel sceptical of the Patkar-Roy Politics of Non-Development. They have made the single theme of obstructionism into high ideology. One expects a more constructive approach in politics from those who claim to draw inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi.