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Author (with spectacles) at Narmada Sangharsh Yatra (Struggle Journey), 1990

Photo by Shailendra Yashwant

CLIMATE CRISIS

It did not stop the dam, but is it a failure?

23rd February 2023

The many faces of India’s Narmada movement: Since the mid-1980s, the Narmada valley has also been the site of one of Independent India’s most iconic and globally well-known people’s movements, the Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the Narmada Movement). For the last nearly 40 years, this movement has raised questions about and tried to stop, a series of mega-dams along the river and its tributaries.

ALTERNATIVES

How the ‘Gujarat model’ is devouring Gujarat (and not just Gujarat)

6th October 2019

From The Hindu: The perverse ‘achievements’ of those relentless in their advocacy of the Sardar-Sarovar dam are now evident. The riches of Gujarat—shown as a model to the rest of India—are the result of such violent extraction, exploitation and destruction that benefit a few while victimising many. Any protest is being beaten into the earth….

Bookshelf

Arundhati Roy: ‘We’re lurching into an unknown future, in a blitzkrieg of idiocy’

14th May 2019

“And now, irony of ironies, a consensus is building that climate change is the world’s single largest security challenge. Increasingly the vocabulary around it is being militarized. And no doubt very soon its victims will become the ‘enemies’ in the new war without end.” (From Arundhati Roy’s Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture for PEN-America)…

ALTERNATIVES

The great Indian irrigation deceit

29th November 2018

J. Harsha, Director, Central Water Commission, writes: India fails to deliver water in time, and in adequate quantities to small landholdings (< 1 hectare) belonging to marginal farmers (constituting 85 per cent of total farmers) cultivating in 43.64 million hectares of canal-irrigated areas. The impact of this great Indian irrigation deceit is enormous on agriculture…

ALTERNATIVES

Why is the Indian govt silent on this 86-year-old’s fast for the river Ganga?

2nd October 2018

From Mainstream Weekly: Dr. G. D. Agrawal (now Swami Gyan Swaroop Sanand) is one of India’s most distinguished environmental engineers, who served as the first Member-Secretary of India’s Central Pollution Control Board. Fasting for almost 100 days now to save the river Ganga, he’s now on his sixth, and in his own words, final “fast-unto-death”….

Tagore in an open-air classroom at Shantiniketan, the university he founded

ALTERNATIVES

Re-reading Tagore in the age of development gone mad

20th September 2018

Aseem Shrivastava writes: Tagore’s play Mukta-Dhara foretells the manner in which people across the country have been losing their freedom— those uprooted by development quite obviously so, those ‘benefitting’ from it (mostly living in cities) more subtly and invisibly. This is the ecologically fatal price of ‘progress’, which Rabindranath anticipated in much of his work….

ALTERNATIVES

Madhav Gadgil: A people’s campaign to rebuild Kerala

14th September 2018

From The Hindu: It’s imperative that we abandon business as usual. We cannot just focus on man-made capital; but enhance the sum total of man-made, natural, human and social capital. The new regime that we usher in should acknowledge that it is local communities that have a genuine stake in the health of their ecosystems….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Kerala floods: Time for introspection and amends as water recedes

29th August 2018

From Mongabay: It was the worst flooding in Kerala in nearly a century, with all 14 districts on red alert. With over 445 dead, a million still in relief camps, its impact will last for years. But the future can be more climate-resilient if grassroots communities realise start working for the conservation of fragile ecologies…

Representative Pic

Conflict/Dispossession

Modi govt is building the world’s tallest dam – in earthquake-prone Himalayas!

11th August 2018

Pancheshwar Dam, kingpin of the river-linking project, will be the Himalayas’ largest reservoir. It’ll be located in one of india’s most seismically active areas, yet the project has been marred by shockingly poor environment appraisal. With little chances of it being economically viable, the project is nothing but a lucrative, contractor-friendly pipedream, writes Himanshu Thakkar….

Representative pic

Conflict/Dispossession

Polavaram: The pointless mega dam that will displace 4,00,000

22nd May 2018

Dam’ned, a documentary by filmmaker Saraswati Kavula, takes a closer look at how the Polavaram Dam project affects the lives and livelihoods of thousands of people, with dubious benefits expected. Despite increasing evidence of the destructive consequences of big dams across the world, why do our governments keep pushing for these mega projects, she asks….

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Development/Growth

The price of development: Gujarat’s dams are now drowning the state

2nd January 2018

Sneha Vakharia reports: Gujarat’s chronic floods, underreported and devastating, tell the story of Narendra Modi’s failure to deliver the state from water scarcity, and the onset of a new kind of problem, with crucial political implications. Since the state began its battle to control its water, increasingly and unforgivingly, the water has started fighting back….

ALTERNATIVES

‘Nature gives us hope’: A tribute to Latha Anantha, river guardian

18th November 2017

Dr Latha Anantha, an expert on rivers and one of the first names to crop up in the struggle to protect them, is no more. The founder and moving spirit behind the River Research Centre, Kerala, she was best known for her efforts to save the Chalakudy river. She’d been diagnosed with cancer in 2014….

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Conflict/Dispossession

India’s big dam mania brings achche din to its corrupt dam lobby

29th October 2017

Himanshu Thakkar writes: Can we expect any improvement in state of our water resources under the new minister Shri Nitin Gadkari? It was interesting that after taking over the portfolio from Uma Bharti, Gadkari’s first stop was Maharashtra, to offer the Chief Minister Rs 55 000 crores for same corruption-ridden irrigation projects in three years….

Conflict/Dispossession

Salil Tripathi: The real cost of big development projects

23rd September 2017

It’s been said that the Sardar Sarovar dam would provide many with access to water and power. But there’s no such thing as a free thaali, as Gujaratis, of all people, must surely know. Someone has to bear the cost, and that cost, as with all major development projects, has been borne by the poor….

ALTERNATIVES

Medha Patkar: Politics over Narmada, once again

28th July 2017

From The Wire: As the Gujarat government rushes to close the Sardar Sarovar dam gates ahead of elections, 40,000 residents of the Narmada valley are facing a nightmare of submergence. It’s this injustice and violence, and the development paradigm debate –development for whom and at what cost– that makes Narmada a litmus test for India….

Busting apart this aging dam in Connecticut opened up 27 kilometers of salmon habitat

Lia McLaughlin/USFWS

ALTERNATIVES

Dam busters! The nascent green movement liberating rivers and freeing fish

23rd July 2017

From Hakai Magazine: For almost 15 years, Harold and Gephard have removed five dams from Connecticut waterways. They spend most of their time meeting owners whose ties to their dams can go back centuries. “It’s about trying to get dam owners to do something that they can’t quite decide. You have to basically say, ‘trust me.’”…

Protests gather pace across Narmada Valley after the Supreme Court asks the government to relocate all affected families by July 31

Narmada Bachao Andolan

Conflict/Dispossession

What Gujarat govt calls ‘historic’, could be catastrophic for 1,00,000 villagers

23rd June 2017

Fifty-six years after the foundation stone for the Sardar-Sarovar dam on the Narmada was laid, the Gujarat government has got permission from the Centre to shut its gates. It will open the gates of misery for more than 100,000 people, whose houses and land are likely to get submerged. A Down To Earth ground report….

Jemima Rohekar

Conserve/Resist

Sounds of silence: a forest that survived ‘development’

20th January 2017

Jemima Rohekar writes: So secluded is Silent Valley that there is no written record of any human habitation in its core area. It is also the site of the first and most bitterly fought ‘environment vs development’ debate in India. Silent Valley reinforces the fact that forests and their resident biodiversity are our greatest wealth….

ALTERNATIVES

Tribute: T. Hanumantha Rao, champion of water management alternatives

18th January 2017

T. Hanumantha Rao, irrigation engineering expert and the brain behind a participative method of water management based on his ‘Four Waters’ concept, passed away on Sunday. The Four Waters concept, explained in this video, brought rich benefits to Rajasthan, where even drought-affected areas improved over the years. Several other states are actively pursuing his recommendations….

CLIMATE CRISIS

The hydropower paradox: is this energy as clean as it seems?

25th November 2016

Hydropower is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions: a new study shows that the world’s hydroelectric dams are responsible for as much methane emissions as Canada. The study finds that methane, which is at least 34 times more potent than carbon dioxide, makes up 80% of the emissions from water reservoirs created by dams….