The dam is ready/ It feeds the sugarcane fields/ making the crop lush and juicy/ But I walk miles in the searing sun/ in search of a drop of drinking water/ I water the vegetation with drops of my sweat / as dry leaves fall and fill my parched yard. - A song sung by tribal women displaced by the Sardar Sarovar Project in the Narmada valley.

These days, villagers living in and around the banks of the dam on the Barvi river at Badlapur are singing the song of the displaced Narmada Valley adivasi. With every centimetre that's being added to the dam's height, the villagers fear that they are moving that much closer to displacement.

Work on raising the height of the dam, built by the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) in 1973, from 41 mto 49 m began in January this year. The rockbed of the river is being blasted to buttress the dam's walls. And come monsoon, fears Balkrishna S Bangar (65), whose village Tondli sits snug on the riverbank, his village, its homes and fields will submerge in the waters. The same fear is spread across Tondali, Kachkoli, Mohaghar, Tale and Kolewakhel villages, homes to the Agri, Kunbi and Adivasi communities, with a population of around 8,000. Over 3,000 acres of prime forest land is also expected to get submerged, according to the project plan. The villages and forest area are ensconced between undulating hills in Murbad taluka of Thane district on the banks of the catchment area of Barvi.

The Barvi dam supplies water to Dombivli, Kalyan, Shahad, Ulhasnagar, Ambernath and Badlapur. Built at a cost of Rs 3.5 crore in 1973, it displaced around 2,000 people from seven villages. The villagers, among them Bangar, were offered equal amounts of land for what they lost.

``Each day takes its toll as we come closer tolosing everything for the second time,'' says Bangar. ``We are being uprooted once again from the land we were given for rehabilitating us then.''

And once again, they are being called upon to make a sacrifice for their urban counterparts. Rapid population growth in the suburbs has increased the demand for water, explained MIDC chief engineer A N Patil. ``Raising the dam's height will increase its capacity from 178 million cubic metres to 347 million cubic metres.'' When the water levels shrink, MIDC is besieged by complaints by civic bodies from these suburbs, he added.

Patil also pooh-poohed the idea of total submergence. ``No matter how high the walls are raised, water levels will rise only when the overflow section is raised,'' he said. However, acknowledging some degree of displacement, the government conducted a survey in March 1998 and earmarked 3,000 people as Project Affected Persons (PAPs). But no Environment Impact Analysis (EIA) - mandatory according to guidelines chalked out by the UnionEnvironment Ministry - was conducted before work started. ``We will be asking a private firm - Consulting Engineering Services - to conduct the EIA,'' assured Patil.

Each of the project-affected families is to get a plot of around 0.5 acres of land at Murbad, off the MIDC industrial belt. Scoffed Girija Bai Kharpade (50), an adivasi from Kachkoli village, ``How can we adivasis, who have lived for generations in forests, take to city life? When former collector Shrikant Singh visited us in December 1998, we were categorically told that the government had no agricultural land to give us,'' she stated. The non-tribals who own land live off it, while others work as farmhands on others' fields. But they are entirely dependent on forest produce, selling wild fruits, flowers and palash leaves which are sold at the Dadar flower market.

According to Rehabilitation Minister Jayprakaksh Mundada, displacement is not an issue in raising the dam's height. ``Rehabilitation is going on full swing. There is no dispute asthe villagers have agreed to evacuate willingly,'' he told Express Newsline. However, no rehabilitation seemed evident when this reporter visited the resettlement site at Murbad.

Last year, local MLA and BJP Kalyan district president Digmabar Vishe had assured villagers in this traditional Congress bastion that ``not even a brick will be laid before rehabilitation is undertaken.'' But his tune changed this year. ``Ultimately we cannot allow lakhs in Kalyan, Dombivli and Ulhasnagar to go thirsty, can we?'' reasoned Vishe. Former MP Ram Kapse wants an EIA report ``before going ahead with the project.'' State Tribal Minister Vishnu Sawra told Express Newsline: ``Rehabilitation should be the first priority. I will take up this issue with the CM.''

Till the state government decides, though, on the exact human costs of raising the Barvi dam's height, the villagers uneasily watch the project plough on. Clearly, this is one monsoon that they will not be looking forward to.