Tag: Narmada riverbed

Dammed in the Narmada, Damned by the State

The Gujarat government rushes to fill the dam. The Madhya Pradesh government admits 178 villages are yet to rehabilitated. Local residents watch as they lose their homes and farms to the water.

There is a haunting video of Ranjana Hiralal Gore online. She is sobbing. Draped in a blue and white sari, she tugs firmly to the edge of a metal gate outside her door, as her son and husband attempt to loosen her grip. The water has reached her waist. “Chalo! Chalo!” the men persuade her, as she gingerly steps forward.

She says something about ‘praying’ and ‘how she is being killed’. She holds on to the side of a canoe for support. At one point in the video, she says, “I’ll come, I’ll come”, asking the men to let go of her arms. They refuse.

As the Gujarat government fills the Sardar Sarovar dam reservoir, thousands of families in Madhya Pradesh with pending rehabilitation claims watch their homes and fields being inundated. The dam is the world’s second-biggest, is located in Gujarat and provides water and electricity to Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.

The Madhya Pradesh government has allotted Gore’s family a housing plot on a resettlement site. Under one of the government’s schemes for families affected by the project, she is also entitled to receive Rs 5.8 lakh to build a new house. This has not been paid.

However, there is a deeper trauma assailing people like Gore in the Narmada valley.

A man sits on top of his house waiting to be rescued in Semalda village. Photo: Narmada Bachao Andolan

A man sits on top of his house waiting to be rescued in Semalda village. Photo: Narmada Bachao Andolan

Sangeeta Kanera, a Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) activist, told The Wire, “It is one thing that Ranjana’s family has not received her housing grant but it is a completely different thing to watch your house being submerged.”

According to the NBA, as many as 32,000 families have one or more claims pending under various resettlement and rehabilitation plans.

On September 5, according to a tweet posted by the NBA, Praveen Vishwkarma, a tailor from a village named Khapar Kheda that has partly been submerged in Madhya Pradesh’s Dhar district, attempted suicide by jumping off a bridge into the Narmada reservoir. He was rescued and later taken to hospital. According to people close to him, the government had compensated Vishwkarma for his drowned field according to the terms of a Supreme Court judgement in 2017, but he had been struggling to buy an alternate plot of farmland with the handout.

The families that have won proper rehabilitation rights in the Narmada valley have had to fight long and hard for them.

Between August 25 and September 2 this year, the NBA activist Medha Patkar was on an indefinite hunger strike on the Narmada’s banks, sitting under a yellow plastic tent in front of a blue banner that read, “Narmada is our lifeline, we will not let it become our maran rekha.”

In August 2019, water was creeping up into this Chikalda resident's home. In September, it is likely to have been submerged. Photo: Nikhil Eapen

In August 2019, water was creeping up into this Chikalda resident’s home. In September, it is likely to have been submerged. Photo: Nikhil Eapen

On September 2, Patkar and eight of her peers in the NBA – Bhagwatibai Patidar, Nirmalabai Yadav, Subhadrabai, Bhagwan Bhai Patidar, Bhuvan Bhai, Kishore Bhai, Jitendra Kahar and Dheeraj Bhai – from villages at risk who later joined the strike, ended their fast after the Madhya Pradesh government assured them that it would rehabilitate affected families and attempt to stop the dam from being filled.

Three days later, in a public statement, the 34-year-old Narmada movement announced that the Madhya Pradesh government had revised the number of affected villages to 178 from a previous estimate of 76, from 2017.  The movement has since criticised Madhya Pradesh for not having been honest about the number of people affected.

In 2017, the state was ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which claimed the dam affected 6,000 families in 76 villages. However, it publicised neither the names of the villages nor the number of claimants there.

The Gujarat government’s decision to speed up the rate at which the dam is to be filled has made matters worse. The water in the basin, scheduled to be filled gradually up to 135 m by the end of September, stood at 135.9 meters on September 7 itself. This quickening has become possible presumably because officers from the Central Water Commission (CWC), a technical department under the Ministry of Jal Shakti, the Central Soil and Materials Research Station (CSMRS) and the Central Water and Power Research Station (CWPRS), have green-lit it.

However, it is not clear if the Ministry of Jal Shakti or the Gujarat government can decide, or act, unilaterally. The Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal requires any decisions on the “rules of regulation and water accounting” to be framed by the Narmada Control Authority (NCA), an inter-state administrative body set up for the project.

In a letter he sent to the Union water resources minister, Kamal Nath, the current chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, alleged the Government of Gujarat had violated the NCA’s schedule issued in May 2019. The schedule says that the dam was to be filled up to 135 m by September and to 138.68 metres by October 15. Nath took charge on December 17, 2018.

On two separate occasions in August 2019, Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani, a member of the BJP, told reporters the state did not need to seek any permissions to fill the reservoir to its maximum capacity.

But as the governments of Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat fight, activists ask whether the dam should be filled at all. For example, Joe Athialy, the executive director of the Centre for Financial Accountability, New Delhi, questioned “the logic of filling the dam” when the canal system remains incomplete.

Athialy shared photographs of the canal network in Kutch, Gujarat, from July 2019. “Large parts of the canal are still under construction in Kutch and water cannot be channeled to these parts,” he said.

The NCA has admitted that only 53.5% of the proposed sub-minor canal network, covering 48,320 km, has been built thus far. A sub-minor canal is the final branch in a larger canal network that reaches its intended consumers, such as farmers.

The Sardar Sarovar dam provides water and hydroelectric power to the three states but its main purpose is irrigation. Specifically, it was to irrigate 1.8 million hectares of land in Gujarat by 2010 but the state missed the target by miles. In 2017, surveyors estimated the dam had irrigated only about 0.64 million hectares of agricultural land – less than 35%.

Tremors

Villagers stand outside in the open after tremors in Mandil village. Photo: Nikhil Eapen

Villagers stand outside in the open after tremors in Mandil village. Photo: Nikhil Eapen

The NBA has also claimed that in at least 32 of the affected villages, the reservoir’s waters either flooded or were at imminent risk of inundating the area. At the time of writing, the hamlets of Chikhalda and Nisarpur were among the worst affected because the Narmada had flooded the whole villages.

Hukkam Chand, a fruit-seller in Badwani district who had faced improper eviction threats, had told this reporter that the waters had already submerged 35 houses in his village, Pichodi. He told The Wire that only eight feet separate the river’s wrath from his own house.

On August 27, The Wire visited Mandil village, also in Badwani district, where families have reported experiencing tremors. “The blasts happen at night. They also happen during the day,” Narsingbhai, a local resident, said.

He pointed at his house’s ceiling, where a portion of mud brick had cracked and fallen to the floor. “That happened this morning,” he said. In twenty minutes, the ground had shaken again.

On September 8, Narsingbhai confirmed over the phone that the tremors had spread and become more intense. “In five minutes, this afternoon, we experienced five separate blasts,” he said. “The tremors can throw people to the ground.” In a September 5 statement, the NBA said the residents of at least 11 villages in the region had similar experiences to share.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has regularly championed the cause of the Sardar Sarovar’s cause. As the chief minister of Gujarat in 2006, he undertook a 51-hour fast demanding the Centre – than ruled by the Congress – to raise the dam’s height. In 2014, soon after being elected to the Centre himself, Modi approved plans to raise the height to 138.68 meters. He inaugurated the dam in September 2017, organised to coincide with his birthday.

Last month, Modi tweeted that he had “thrilling news”: the water’s level in the dam had breached the 134-m mark. He also posted photographs urging new visitors to take in the “breathtaking view”. However, more recently, he has been mum about the local families’ pending rehabilitation claims.

Not surprisingly, the families were offended. “I want to ask Prime Minister Modi if he considers the people of Nisarpur to be a part of India,” one farmer The Wire over the phone referring to his native place. “If he does, I appeal to him to come and see this destruction.”

He emailed photographs to this correspondent. There was water everywhere: in front of the temples, in the panchayat office, over all the main roads, with a flotsam of plastic items. The houses looked desolate. A green film of algae was growing on the surface.

Nikhil Eapen is an independent journalist based in Bangalore.

Dammed and Mined, Narmada River Can No Longer Support Her People

The dams and rampant mining of sand from the foreshore and riverbed of the Narmada have caused significant damage to the riverine ecology, affecting livelihoods of people living in the river valley.

For sexagenarian Madoo Bhai, the world has changed beyond recognition since he was a child. He has spent his life in Chikhalda, a small village along the banks of Narmada River in Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh in central India.

“There was a time when both sides of the river was full of muskmelon plants, and I would go with my father to sell the fruit in the market,” he remembered. “Nature gave us enough.”

Those days, he regrets, are long past. Now the people of Chikhalda struggle to make ends meet. The story is repeated in village after village along the Narmada, the longest west flowing river in India that has been in the national and global limelight due to the building of the massive Sardar Sarovar Dam project despite sustained protests by residents of the river basin.

The travails of villagers in Chikhalda started long before the Sardar Sarovar Dam was built. In 1974, construction of the Bargi Dam started on the Narmada River, some 650 km upstream of Chikhalda. The dam was commissioned, after many delays, in 1990, and spelt trouble for communities living downstream in the Narmada valley.

The farmer-turned-fishing community along the Narmada river in Dhar district in Madhya Pradesh face a threat to their livelihood due to the damage caused to the river by the dam, sand mining, and pollution. Photo: Hridayesh Joshi

“First, the Bargi Dam was constructed, and that caused a lot of flooding. Bargi’s water would submerge our (muskmelon) crop again and again, and we were not compensated (by the government) for the losses,” said Madoo Bhai. “We kept on suffering.”

By 2008-09, most of the fruit growers in Chikhalda had taking to fishing in the river for a livelihood. But pollution and damage to the riverine ecology did not spare their new livelihood either. Farmers, who had turned fishermen, now find it difficult to catch fish in the river.

“When the water was flowing, the river had a life and it abounded in fish. Now, because of stagnant water, (fish) breeding is low,” said 65-year-old Saba, who quit farming 15 years ago to take up fishing. “For us, it is nearly impossible to survive on fishing.”

Successive loss of employment

Stagnation of the free flowing river and rampant sand mining has deteriorated the riverine ecology, aquatic life and prospects of agriculture in the stretch of the Narmada valley in Dhar and Barwani districts of Madhya Pradesh. Many fishermen have become daily labourers in the Barwani town to stay afloat financially.

In Pichodi village, a few kilometers away from Barwani town, 63-year-old farmer Salagram shows large patches of dug up land on the Narmada’s foreshore. A landscape once rich with the crops of cotton, wheat, banana and papaya now has a devastated torn look, due to relentless and illegal sand mining.

In Photos | A Rally for the Narmada, a Rally for the People

“This was our land where our homes were situated and our culture thrived, but when they ruined Narmada, everything fell apart,” said Salagram, whose family still lives in this area, which has been declared a submergence zone of Sardar Sarovar Dam. Today, his life is dependent on smallholder farming and fishing.

The Sardar Sarovar Dam, some 150 km downstream of Barwani, is among the 30 large dams proposed in Narmada Valley. With a total installed power generation capacity of 1450 MW, it is the third-highest concrete dam in India after Bhakhra Nangal in Himachal Pradesh and Lakhwar hydropower project in Uttar Pradesh.

River basin map of Narmada which flows through Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat. Map from Central Water Commission.

Originating at Amarkantak in Madhya Pradesh, Narmada River flows through Maharashtra and Gujarat before it meets Arabian Sea on the west coast. The river basin is spread over 97,410 sq. km, comprising 85,858 sq. km in Madhya Pradesh, 1658 sq. km in Maharashtra and 9894 sq. km in Gujarat. The drainage area up to Sardar Sarovar dam site is 88,000 sq. km, official data show. The river basin is massively dammed with 30 major projects, some of which are already operational.

The Sardar Sarovar project is now functional, but 30,000 families are still living in its submergence zone in the four districts of Khargaon, Badwani, Dhar and Alirajpur. For many of these families, fishing is a means of survival, but silting, industrial pollution and sand mining has become a curse for them.

When a dam is built, a large area becomes a lake to hold the impounded water. Besides this, long stretches of the foreshore of the river are declared as submergence zones as the river floods these areas for a few months every year during and after the rainy season, when the flow of water is high.

A villager points to land on the banks of the Narmada which was once rich with different crops before it was dug for sand mining. Photo: Hridayesh Joshi

Effects of sand mining

Energy expert and environmentalist Soumya Dutta, a member of the Advisory Board of United Nations Climate Technology Center, explained how mining sand from the riverbed affects the life of aquatic species and can snatch away the livelihoods of fishermen.

“Sand, stones and boulders are required to slow down the rate of flow of any stream, so that the riverbed is recharged. Otherwise, all the water will flush away and, as a result, the aquifer won’t get time for recharging,” said Dutta. “So even if you see a lot of water in the river in the rainy season, as soon as the rain stops, there is no water in the ground and that will affect the life of fish in the river.”

This is what is killing the river upstream of the Sardar Sarovar Dam, where the small fisherman like Madoo and Saba go fishing.

Interestingly, the government gives fishing contracts to big contractors in the reservoirs of these dams, but does not care about the life of the river upstream or downstream of any dam, where the riverine fishers eke out a living.

About 50% of the fisher population in the Narmada basin depend on the river and estuary of the basin, according to experts. Whereas the reservoirs are leased to contractors, the flowing river is free for the fishers. But, continuous mining and holding of water by dams are big problems, which the locals allege is killing many fish species.

Trucks with sand impounded by authorities. Despite the orders by the high court and National Green Tribunal, illegal mining continues in the Narmada Valley. Photo: Hridayesh Joshi

“The estuary of Narmada is extremely productive, particularly for Hilsa, but right now the hilsa fisheries has taken a hit, as nearly 60% of its production is down because there is no water is available there,” said river expert Parineeta Dandekar, Associate Coordinator, South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP), who has been researching on the Narmada valley for many years. “Hilsa needs a mix of saline and fresh water for breeding. Because we are holding all the water of river, no fresh water is coming down and fish can’t go up.” The estuary is downstream of the Sardar Sarovar Dam.

Likewise, the famous Mahseer is also disappearing from many parts of Narmada. At Rajghat Kukra village, at the district border between Dhar and Badwani in Madhya Pradesh, 50-year-old Rajaram said that now he drives an auto-rickshaw to earn his living instead of fishing.

“Hundreds of families were dependent on fishing here, but we hardly get any fish in the river now. It’s not more than one or two kg in a day. That isn’t sufficient to support a family,” said Rajaram. “So everyone is looking for other means of livelihood.”

India is ranked second in inland fish production. More than 10 million people dependon sources like rivers, wetlands and ponds, and for the rural poor, a free flowing river is a lifeline. Experts say if small fishermen quit fishing, it also threatens the life of the river. “River fisherfolk are the best mascots of the health of the river because their livelihood is actually is related to how healthy is river is,” said Dandekar.

Excessive sand mining at the banks of Narmada has destroyed the river bed and catchment area, affecting the fish population. Photo: Hridayesh Joshi

No catchment area treatment

Sand mining brings with it another problem. While extracting the sand, miners throw all thorny bushes and shrubs that grow on the banks of the river, along with an enormous amount of mud, in the water of Narmada. This causes heavy siltation and damages the nets of fishermen.

“We face a lot of problems due to the mud and shrubs thrown in Narmada. Our nets get stuck in it and we suffer huge losses,” said 40-year-old Madhu. “This is unbearable for us.”

However, this claim of fishers is refuted by government officials. “I don’t see a direct impact of mining on fishing because whatever little mining is being done, though it is illegal, that is done at the banks of river,” said Barwani’s district collector Amit Tomar. “When the water (of the river) recedes, it leaves sand at its banks and they dig that area.”

“We do not have many complaints about this. If someone comes to us (with complaints), we will have a look at it,” Tomar said. “We have very good experts in the fisheries department and we will take their help.”

Excessive mud and thorny bushes dumped in the river by sand miners damage fishing nets. Photo: Hridayesh Joshi

Sand mining in the Narmada River valley was banned by Madhya Pradesh High Court in May 2015, after a petition was filed by the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), the non-profit that was at the forefront of the agitation against the Sardar Sarovar project. Later, in a separate order, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) banned illegal mining in Narmada in 2017. Nevertheless, illegal mining is rampant across the state, particularly in the Narmada valley.

Tomar admits that in Barwani district alone, 119 cases of illegal mining were registered between April 2018 and March 2019, and 90 cases have been registered since April this year.

Medha Patkar, eminent environmentalist and leader of the NBA, said the government has consistently ignored the destruction of river. “As all rivers are getting polluted in the country, we see an attack on riverine fishery. They are dumping mountains of mud in the Narmada,” said Patkar. “The government had promised a catchment area treatment program with Rs 2 crore (USD 287,000) for it, but nothing happened till now.”

Cooperative hope

Dams and rampant mining of sand from the foreshore and riverbed of the Narmada have damaged the riverine ecology, affecting livelihoods of the communities living in the river valley. Photo: Rahul Yadav/Narmada Bachao Andolan

Amid the destruction of river by mining and damming, cooperative movements in the Narmada valley have kept hope alive for the beleaguered fishers. In 2017, 32 cooperative societies, comprising more than 1,000 fishers, were registered in four districts affected by the Sardar Sarovar Dam.

These cooperatives have proposed to form a federation. They hope to get fishing and management rights in the river and reservoirs of the Narmada, as fellow fishers around the Tawa and Bargi dams got nearly two decades ago after a spirited struggle.

“We are with the tribals and other communities. As they have rights over forests, they should also get rights of fishing,” said Sajjan Singh Varma, environment minister of Madhya Pradesh. “Anyone who fights for this, I will stand with him.”

This article was published on Mongabay. Read the original here.