The Incredible India campaign has a line, “a nation in permanent rebellion”, illustrated by a picture of a fleeting dharna. Seeing it for the first time on an international flight, the jaw of a lady sitting next to me fell. I explained to her the innate anti-establishment/anti-imperialism of the average Indian, but I also added that we are also a fairly disciplined society. As vice-chancellor of one of India’s leading universities, I once went on satyagraha so as not to give up the moral space. However, that “nothing holds” is in fact not the idiom of the freedom movement. The perennial urge to review Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP), therefore, intrigues me. The Union minister for water resources meanwhile wants a review of the decision taken by bureaucrats on raising the height of the Narmada dam. This is echoed by a respected journal which, in its special number on conflict resolution, pitches for stopping the project at the dam height of 107 metres, rather than 140 metres.

The major contribution of earlier reviews was delay. The so-called arguments and agitations did not stop anything, since they were not based on facts, but only delayed matters. It also cost the country a lot — with its people having to pay for it. It is wrong to say that protests led to a rehabilitation plan. The Sardar Sarovar Rehabilitation Agency, a multi-disciplinary rehabilitation body, an independent evaluation procedure evolved by the Centre for Social Studies at Surat and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, an accredited grievance redressal machinery, were all agreed to in the mid-eighties. Land for land, for example, is still not a part of the National Rehabilitation Policy.

... contd.