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Words
on Water:
A documentary film by Sanjay Kak.
85 minutes.
English language with subtitles.
Yet
another film on the Narmada dams. Once again the troubling
questions that we avoid answering. With the haunting refrain of a
folk melody and words that linger in the memory, Sanjay Kak tells
the story of the dams on the Narmada in Gujarat and Madhya
Pradesh. Stories of real people, people whose lives have been
ravaged by decisions imposed on them. The Bhilwasi settlement
woman’s story, for example. She tells you her tale as she
prepares a sparse meal for her son. She protested with a hunger
fast for 18 days after which she was hauled off to a hospital in
Baroda. The family barely survives from day to day. When she was
in the hospital in Baroda, her husband would visit to inquire
about the progress of their settlement and would be met with the
usual government response -- the files are not available, the
transport has not come…Bundle the papers, he said to them, and
throw them into the Narmada, for what use are they? There are days
when they have no money, she says, no food; there are days when
she thinks the family should go to the dam and drown themselves in
the river.
‘Displacement of these people would undoubtedly disconnect them
from their past, culture, customs and tradition. But then, it
becomes necessary to harvest a river for the larger good’,
announced Justice BN Kirpal of the Supreme Court in his order of
2000, lifting the six-year stay on the construction of the Sardar
Sarovar dam, voicing the sentiments of the pro-dammers, vociferous
in their support of big dams on the Narmada. These include the
governments of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, financial institutions,
politicians, administrators, contractors, engineers. The
governments promised that the dams on the Narmada would bring
water to drought-prone areas in Kutch, Saurashtra and Northern
Gujarat, provide water for irrigation in Madhya Pradesh and
Maharashtra, and harness electricity for all the states concerned.
The governments also promised adequate compensation, land for
land, relief and resettlement of ‘project affected persons’
(reduced to the acronym PAP). Words on Water shows that
where the powerful are concerned, promises are easily broken,
conveniently forgotten.
Some facts about the ‘larger good’ that we need to look at
afresh and remember. These are from the statistics put out by the
government of Gujarat itself! Less than two per cent of the
cultivable land in Kutch, nine per cent in Saurashtra and 18 per
cent in north Gujarat will receive the Narmada water.
So what happens to the water from the Sardar Sarovar? Channelled
off to water-intensive industries, water-guzzling cash crops of
the already wealthy farmers and for the ever-increasing appetites
of urban consumers. Words on Water takes a break from the
arid, drought-prone, water -starved areas to the happier premises
of Water World just outside Mehsana in north Gujarat. This is
clean water, the Water World official assures us, clean water for
the hedonistic pleasure of his city clients. (By the way, the
run-off will be used for irrigation). Mehsana district has
greedily consumed water to the extent that the underground water
table has gone down to an alarming level. But Water World beckons.
Development and progress and consumerism come at a price.
Sacrifices have to be made and they have to be made by the
faceless villagers of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.
Justice Kirpal is reassuring, ‘Displacement of tribals and other
people would not per se result in the violation of their
fundamental or other rights…’
What do these words of the Honourable Justice mean to the
illiterate tribal from Mokhdi in Gujarat, with implicit trust in
the sarkari who took his thumb-print on a document and
swiftly took away his home and land and dispatched him to
Piparvati, a resettlement waiting area? Where he has spent several
years doing just that -- waiting. He did not know he had
fundamental rights, no one bothered to tell him.
More facts. Sanjay Kak takes us to the Bargi dam in Madhya
Pradesh, which displaced over 100,000 people in the eighties with
no resettlement. By the government’s own admission, the dam has
submerged more land than it irrigates, and it irrigates only five
per cent of what it had promised.
Cut to the Wildlife Interpretation Centre at the Sardar Sarovar
site. The guide pauses by life-size dummies of tribal people in
traditional attire and accessories, and reels off a spiel on the
glorious customs and traditions of Gujarat as reflected in these
clay replicas. Real people shunted off to pseudo-resettlement
areas and, while still alive, immortalised in a museum! How
unfeeling, cruel can a government get?
Recall the Justice’s words quoted earlier. Displacement of the
tribal, harvesting a river, are all for the larger good. So,
perhaps, is the Wildlife Interpretation Centre.
Promises made, promises broken. Deceit. One watches speechless as Words
on Water actually captures the state machinery getting ready
land to be given as compensation. A thin layer of black mud is
laid on poor quality grazing ground (depriving other poor
villagers of their rights to this land). This is to be passed off,
with a stroke of a pen in a government office, as black cotton
soil to resettle PAP.
Slowly, the waves of resistance are swelling as the dispossessed
come together to save their homes, their livelihood, their river.
There are glimpses of the indomitable Medha Patkar and the Narmada
Bachao Andolan as Kak captures the intensity of feeling and
growing momentum of the people’s resistance. ‘Narmada bachao,
manav bachao’ (Save Narmada. Save humanity). Let us live,
let us be.
The movement to save the Narmada has gone beyond rural, regional
and national boundaries, compelling governments, private
corporations, and international financial institutions to
reconsider the issue of large dams.
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