‘We’ll generate power worth Rs 7 cr daily once we reach the mark’

Dahyabhai Parsottambhai Baria, 55-year-old farmer of Gomda village in Gujarat’s tribal dominated Narmada district, had never grown wheat in his life. He could take only one crop a year as agriculture depended solely on rainfall. He and his neighbours had no work during the parched summers and every second person in the village was forced to migrate, along with family, to the nearby towns of Vadodara and Surat to work as construction labourers.

Then, the canals came alive with the Narmada waters and changed Baria’s life. For the past two years, he and other farmers of Gomda have been reaping bumper harvests of wheat, with a yield of over three quintals per bigho. They have also started harveswting two crops—one kharif, another rabi.

Ambalal Jethabhai Baria is another Gomda farmer who could never manage more than four quintals of cotton per bigho, two quintals of makai (corn) or one to three quintals of jowar/bajra. Last year, he got a yield of six quintals of makai, eight quintals of cotton and eight quintals of jowar and bajra per bigho. ’’ I am not only able to feed my family now but have a surplus to sell in the market,’’ said Ambalal.

The network of canals from the Sardar Sarovar dam has changed lives for thousands. In Gomda alone, 13,000 villagers have benefitted from increased agricultural production and the availability of green fodder. With more than 200 buffaloes in the village, over 160 litres of milk was daily supplied by the Gomda Milk Cooperative Society to the Baroda Dairy. Secretary Balubhai Shankarbhai Baria says the monthly turnover of the society has touched Rs 90,000. Two years ago, the daily supply from the village was around 100 litres per day.

Gomda is part of a much bigger picture of happiness. So far, 1.2 lakh hectares of land in the districts of Narmada, Bharuch, Vadodara, Panchmahals and Mehsana have been brought under irrigation through a network of 10,470-km long canals.

When the entire stretch of canal network measuring 85,898 km is complete, it would irrigate 18 lakh hectares of land, covering 3,112 villages in 15 districts of Gujarat, besides 2.46 lakh hectares in Barmer and Jalore districts of Rajasthan.

SSNL chairman-cum-managing director PK Laheri says more than 90 per cent of the main Narmada canals and 70 per cent of the branch canals have already been completed, only the minor canals remain. Though the total water carrying capacity of the Narmada canal is 40,000 cusecs (10,000 crore litres) per day, only 2,500 cusecs of water is released. According to SSNNL officials, the entire canal network is likely to be completed by 2010.

Of the 2,500 cusecs being released since 2001, a major portion is being utilised for supplying drinking water to 57 towns and 2,044 villages, besides recharging seasonal rivers and village ponds on route of the canal.

So far, 21 rivers, including Sabarmati in Ahmedabad and Mahi near Vadodara, have been filled by Narmada waters, bringing about ecological changes and reducing temperatures. Other important rivers that have been recharged en route the canal are Maan, Heran, Karad, Kun, Vatrak, Meswa, Saraswati and Banas. About 616 village ponds were also filled up by Narmada waters.

During 1986-88, when Saurashtra region witnessed a severe drought, Gujarat had spent Rs 750 crore for running ‘‘water special’’ trains to supply drinking water to these areas. ‘‘Water special trains in Gujarat have now become a thing of the past,’’ said Laheri.

Though 11 hydro-electric power houses installed at the Narmada dam are yet to become fully operational, generation since August 2004 from five power houses have already produced 216 crore units of power worth Rs 432 crore. According to executive engineer Ashok Gajjar (inset), a total of 3.48 crore units of power worth Rs. 7 crore would be generated per day once the dam height is raised to 121.92 metres. Annually, that amounts to power worth Rs 2500 crore.

SYED KHALIQUE AHMED

THE RELIEF

‘After its Action Taken Report was rejected in Sept, MP did rehab work on a war footing’

MILIND GHATWAI

BHOPAL

BOTH Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat describe the Narmada as their lifeline. But the Sardar Sarovar Project invokes different responses from them simply because Madhya Pradesh’s gains are little compared to Gujarat’s. The latter has already benefited from the project in terms of irrigation, power and drinking water and has plans ready for spin-offs like tourism and water sports.

While Gujarat has always insisted on the dam reaching its full height, Madhya Pradesh not so long ago argued that it would settle for a much smaller dam. When the Congress was in power, the state was so tardy in meeting compulsions that it was often accused of tacitly supporting the cause of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA). Now, when the BJP is ruling both states, it is obvious the reasons are not entirely political.

Unlike Narendra Modi and Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh has more explaining to do, and lesser time too. Here, as many as 193 villages will be partly submerged when the dam reaches its full height compared to the 33 in Gujarat. The benefits, set against these concerns, do not exactly make an equation.

The oustees saw little gain in being cut off from their roots when the power generated from the project would go to homes in the city. The government, however, has other things to consider. Madhya Pradesh will get 57 per cent (826.5 MW) of the electricity from the project against Gujarat’s 16 per cent, all the more precious as the last Congress regime lost the elections solely on the bijli-sadak-pani plank.

The NBA calls it a conspiracy between two states and a step taken by MP under pressure because it has to build five major dams and several medium and small dams across the Narmada. “They are inhuman, insensitive and callous,” says NBA activist Ashish Mandloi, who identifies himself among the project-affected (PAF). The NBA points out that the MP government’s offer of cash compensation is in violation of the Supreme Court order which lays down the “land for land” formula. It also accuses the government of forcing the affected to accept cash.

The state government dismisses the allegations as “propaganda”. Commissioner (Rehabilitation) Vinod Kumar says: “Why hasn’t any PAF filed a single case with the Grievance Redressal Authority that the state government is forcing oustees to accept cash compensation?’’ he says, adding bigger resettlement sites are taking shape in Dharampur and Nisarpur.

The state believes it has the backing of the Narmada Control Authority (NCA) which has accepted its action taken report (ATR). “Had we not been satisfied with the relief and rehabilitation work, why would we have submitted the ATR?’’ says Narmada Valley Development Authority (NVDA) chairman A V Singh.

“We are not sure what happened between September 12 (when the ATR was rejected) and March (when the NCA gave the go-ahead to raise the height),’’ says NBA’s Clifton.

The state insists it took up the disbursal of relief on a war footing after September. Revenue staff who didn’t coorperate earlier was made to fall in line after the CMO intervened. Earlier, the rehabilitation work was handled only by NVDA which didn’t have enough staff. Now the collectors of Dhar and Badwani have also been roped in.

A senior official attached to the NCA’s office in Indore, however, admits it’s difficult to visit each and every oustee at the sites. “We verify the ATR by randomly sampling between 15-20 per cent of the PAFs,’’ he says.

The discrepancy is evident on ground. At the Bhilkheda rehabilitation site, only 75 of the 235 housing plots are occupied; in Kupra, 61 of 261 plots and in Kasrawat, 98 of 804 plots. The government says the poor occupancy is because oustees are still living in their villages which are yet to be submerged.

‘‘We will see significant submergence only now,’’ says Kumar. Until then, the displaced have the option of tilling their original land or staying back even if they have accepted land or cash compensation.

Several landless labourers who were offered a special package moved to Gujarat. And though a few of them have returned, there has been more resettlement of MP oustees in Gujarat than in Madhya Pradesh.

THE STATUS

‘Another 1,30,000 cubic metres of concrete and, finally, the Dam’

SYED KHALIQUE AHMED

NAVAGAM (GUJARAT)

THE numbers are daunting. 21 years, 110.64 metres, Rs 21,000 crore. Two years, 121.92 metres and a few crores more. That so far has been the skewed mathematics of one of the world’s largest dams, caught between politicians, environmentalists and advocates of progress.

But that’s half the story. On the other side of the dam, expected to be completed by 2008, is irrigation for 18 lakh hectares in Gujarat, Maharashtra and the deserts of Rajasthan; drinking water for more than 8,200-odd villages and power for Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

This explains why executive engineer Ashok Gajjar, involved for the last 20 years with the dam construction, has a different count of the daily work going into the structure at Navagam village, with or without imported cable cranes. “Rs 50 lakh,” he says, is the worth of work they do every day, 250 engineers and 1,500 labourers in all.

That was March 8, when the Narmada Control Authority allowed the height of the dam to be raised to 121.92m. And the deadline Gajjar is racing against: June 30.

This, everybody on the site agrees, isn’t too early. Not a drop of the coming monsoon should go waste, every bit needs to be tapped and transferred to parched Saurashtra and Barmer and Jallore to name a few. The turbines have been in place at the Canal Head Power House and the River Bed Power House for several years now. Another two years and the Narmada can course through as electricity across the homes and industries of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra, they say.

It’s been a long wait after all. It’s taken since Independence when the project was conceived and several politicians, including Bhailal Patel alias Bhai Kaka of the Swatantra Party and founder of Sardar Patel University at Vallabh Vidyanagar, joined the campaign to take the Narmada to the dry fields of Gujarat. Navagam became the pivot point, from where just gravitational flow would do the job.

Since then, the scope of the project has grown and so has the dam, quite literally, metre by metre. The project was cleared in 1987; the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) was born a year earlier, carrying on from local groups. Protests continued to dog the construction. In 1994, the NBA filed a petition with the Supreme Court and since then, it’s been a now-on-now-off affair.

The Supreme Court capped construction at 80m in 1995, then stepped it up to 85m in 1999, 90m in 2000. The NCA approved raising the height to 95m in 2002, then 100m in 2003 and 100.64 in March 2004. The final call came this month.

As engineers at the site brace for the last lap, Gajjar’s timetable is simple:

» The middle portion of the dam is what needs to be raised to 121.92 metres

» Between March 9 when work resumed and last week, engineers of the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Limited (SSNNL) have put in 14,900 cubic metres of concrete on the mid-portion of the dam. (The flanks on both sides and the gates, when complete, will bring the dam to 146 metres).

» After attaining the height of 121.92 metres, the only work left to be undertaken is construction of piers for erecting 30 huge gates, which have already been procured and shifted to the dam site.

Gajjar has his numbers ready—93.5 per cent of the work, he says, is done. Another 1,30,000 cubic metres of concrete and, finally, the Sardar Sarovar dam.

Engineers say the full potential of the dam can be exploited at 121.92 metres itself but they would require another permission to construct piers and install the 30 gates. This would mean further raising the water level upstream and submerging of more areas, raising rehabilitation concerns.

Superintending engineer PM Patel (inset) puts the deadline at June 2008, if (and that’s a big if) work progresses at this rate, and, the permission comes on time. So far, the years and metres on India’s third highest dam after Bhakra and Lakhwar have cost the exchequer Rs 21,000 crore; more than a third of that amount goes towards interests on loans.

SSNL’s chairman-cum-managing director PK Laheri says about Rs 2,000 crore have been spent so far on rehabilitation of those who lost homes and double that for the dam proper including the 11 turbines imported from Japan. But at Navagam, all that adds up only to one dream that runs a long way—85,898 km of canals right into the parched heart of Gujarat.

CHECKS & BALANCES

In 1999, when the Supreme Court allowed construction of the dam to resume after 10 years, it set up an elaborate inter-disciplinary mechanism to address two major concerns: rehabilitation of oustees, and the possible environmental damage.

GRIEVANCES REDRESSAL AUTHORITY Constituted to obviate the need for the courts to come in. The four states concerned have all constituted the Grievances Redressal Authorities (GRAs) headed by either a retired SC judge or an eminent HC judge. With a staff of 20-25, they can resolve disputes over compensations and their directives are binding upon the government. At present, nearly 5,000 cases are lying with the GRAs.

RESETTLEMENT, REHABILITATION SUB-GROUP Headed by the Secretary, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, this is an interdisciplinary body with 14 members, including secretaries of Relief and Rehabilitation of states.

ENVIRONMENT SUB-GROUP Headed by the secretary, MoEF, it looks into the environmental impact of any height increase.

NARMADA CONTROL AUTHORITY The two sub-groups submit their reports to the Narmada Control Authority (NCA). This is an inter-state body comprising senior bureaucrats who take decision on increasing the height after going through reports of the two sub-groups. The NCA is headed by the secretary, Ministry of Water Resources, and has as members the Union secretaries from ministries of Power, Environment & Forests, Social Justice & Empowerment and Tribal Affairs as well as chief secretaries of the four states.

REVIEW COMMITTEE OF NARMADA CONTROL AUTHORITY The RCNCA headed by the Union Minister of Water Resources, also has the Minister for Environment & Forests and the CMs of the four states. It can suo-motu or on the application of any party, review a decision of the NCA.