Details of Module and its Structure

Module Detail

Subject Name Sociology

Paper Name Ecology and Society

Module Name/Title Development and Ecology Part I: Hydroelectric Projects and Large Dams

Pre-requisites

Objectives

Keywords

Structure of Module / Syllabus of a module (Define Topic / Sub-topic of module)

Summary This module introduces students to environmental and social impacts of

large dams and hydroelectric projects. It provides students with an
understanding of how large dams were presented as ‘temples of modern
India’ during the first initial years after India’s independence. It also talks
about the resistance to large dams in different parts of country since 1970s.

Role Name Affiliation

Principal Investigator Prof Sujata Patel University of Hyderabad

Paper Coordinator Himanshu Upadhyaya Azim Premji University

Content Writer/Author Himanshu Upadhyaya Azim Premji University

(CW)
Content Reviewer (CR) Savyasachi Jamila Milia Islamia
Language Editor (LE) Savyasachi Jamila Milia Islamia
Hydroelectric Projects and Large Dams

This module will discuss why it is pertinent to talk about environmental impacts of hydropower projects
and large dams. Since independence India has already constructed more 3300 large dams and in late
1990s, even as World Commission on Dams put the paradigm of development that heavily relied on
large dams under critical evaluation, India continued to walk on the path of development through
envisioning large dams as temples of modern India.

The energy of flowing water has been harnessed by human beings for purposes such as grinding flour
since seventh century in Indian subcontinent. In his article, ‘Gharats of Uttaranchal: Harnessing Natural
Energy’, Manikant Shah talks about three kinds of watermills1. The first hydropower plan in the world
was commissioned in 1878. The biggest hydropower projects today are: Three Gorges Dam in China
(22500 MW installed capacity) and Itaipu Dam in Brazil/ Paraguay (14000 MW installed capacity). More
than 150 countries generated electricity through hydropower dams and hydroelectricity accounted for
11 percent of electricity generation in the year 2011. In India, hydropower accounts for 26 percent of
total electricity generation and compared to 508 MW installed capacity at the time of independence,
the contribution of hydropower in terms of installed capacity had gone up 43 times with 21,700 MW
installed capacity in the year 1996-’97. During late 1990s, India government launched a very ambitious
program to add 50,000 MW installed capacity.

While Jawaharlal Nehru’s speech on large dams as temples of India is oft quoted, it would be worth
reproducing the exact words in order to grasp the import of Nehru’s thoughts:

“What is now complete is only half the work. We may celebrate its completion but we must
remember that the most difficult part still remains to be done – the construction of the dam
which you have heard so much. Our engineers tell us that probably nowhere else in the world is
there a dam as high as this. The work bristles with difficulties and complications. As I walked
round the site I thought that these days the biggest temple and mosque and gurudwara is the
place where man works for the good of mankind. Which place can be greater than this, this
Bhakra-Nangal, where thousand and lakhs of men have worked, have shed their blood and
sweat and laid down their lives as well? Where can be greater a greater and holier place that
this, which we can regard as higher?”

Four years later, Nehru while speaking at 29th annual meeting of Central Board of Irrigation and Power
voiced his thoughts that suggest his commitment for environment. We reproduce words that represent
the developmental thinking and philosophy below:

“For some time past, however, I have been beginning to think that we are suffering from what
we may call, “disease of gigantism”. We want to show that we can build big dams and do big
thing. This is dangerous outlook developing in India… the idea of having big undertakings and
doing big tasks for the sake of showing that we can do big things is not a good outlook at all. We
have to realise that we can also meet out problems much more rapidly and efficiently by taking
up a large number of small schemes is much less and the results obtained are rapid. Further, in

1
See Shah, Manikant (nondated) ‘Gharats of Uttaranchal: Harnessing Natural Energy’, Infinity Foundation,
http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/t_es/t_es_shah_m_gharats_frameset.htm
 those small schemes you can get a good deal of what is called public co-operation, and
therefore, there is that social value in associating people with such small schemes.”

It is also important to add that Nehru’s voices in that meeting was also marked his formal
announcement that he wished water and power engineers to start paying serious attention to the scope
of smaller schemes, as he clearly voiced his disagreement with the then president of CBIP:

“You (the then president of CBIP) have said just now in your address that the cost of production
in a small project is great. I am not at all sure if that is so, because the cost of a small project has
to be judged after taking into account all the social upsets connected with the enormous
concentration of national energy, all the national upsets, upsets of people moving out and their
rehabilitation and many other things, associated with a big project. Also it takes a long time to
build a project. The small projects, however, does not bring about these upsets nor does it
involve such a large endeavor.”

During colonial period in India, an idea that gained currency amongst development planners was trying to
seek solution for multiple problems in what came to be known as multi-purpose river valley development
projects that sought to offer large dam as providing perennial irrigation, hydropower, drinking water and
flood control. Did affected people losing their land mount protest and resistance movements against
these projects? Rajendra Vora in his book, The World’s First Anti-Dam Movement: The Mulshi Satyagrah
(1920-1924), narrates the story of struggle by affected person led by Senapati Bapat to prevent the
submergence of the Mulshi valley. Guha (2008) refers to how “as a boy growing up in Pune in the 1940s,
Madhav Gadgil had known of Senapati Bapat and later in 1960s, came across a book written by Bapat’s
associate V. M. Bhuskute and still later in 1990s, he came to read a historical study written in Marathi by
Rajendra Vora”. The struggle to oppose the dam being built by Tata Power Company, with the support of
British government, for irrigation as well as hydroelectric power under the leadership of Pandurang
Mahadev (Senapati) Bapat coincided with the ‘non-cooperation’ phase of larger anti-colonial struggle.

Vora analyses the arguments of the proponents and the opponents to the dam. The movement arose
during those years of non-cooperation movement. Malekar (2008) recollects that “the saga of
displacement began when in 191 an ambitious plan to dam the confluence of the Nila and Mula rivers at
Mulshi Peta began. In June 1919, the farmers of Mulshi Peta, near Pune were served land acquisition
notices. Some 10000 peasants had to move out and farmers had to give up land that would be
submerged”. Rothermund (1999: 75) recounts that “when Gandhi visited Pune in 1920, the Mavals met
him and asked for his advice in their struggle. Gandhi asked them not to petition the government, but to
lie on the land which was being dug up and offer satyaagrahi.” Acting on Gandhi’s advice, the Mavals
launched Satyaagrah on April 16, 1921 under the leadership of Bapat. At the Maharashtra Provincial
Congress Committee session in May 1921, under the chairmanship Dr Munje, a resolution was passed
supporting the Mulshi satyaagrah. Malekar (2008) recollects that on June 22, 1921 Bapat and his
associates removed the rails being laid by the company as part of the project. They were arrested and
held guilty by the court and on October 19, 1921 were sentenced to six months simple imprisonment.
Sangvai (2002: 37), drawing upon Marathi language sourceii recollects “peasant leaders of Maval area
continued their opposition to the dam with novel methods. In 1924, Bapat declared Aatm SamarpaN
(Sacrificing the self) to oppose the dam”. Despite the profoundly ambivalent attitude of Gandhi towards
the continued opposition to dam, the struggle carved out a self-imagination as that of defending the
subsistence economy and opposing the efforts of government to justify the profit motives of a private
company in the name of ‘public purpose’.

We learn from Rajendra Vora’s account of Mulshi Satyagrah that large dams had not gone un-contested,
and the human impacts of large dams had come under criticism right from 1920s. Gadgil and Guha (1995:
70-71) in their book, Ecology and Equity bring to us an account of “strong protests by the peasants of
Sambalpur district who were to be ousted” by Hirakud Dam in Orissa, when the foundation stone was laid
in March 1946. They also suggest that river valley projects of 1950s met with little opposition, even when
each of these projects – the Bhakra Nangal dam in Punjab, the Tungbhadra project on the Andhra Pradesh
– Karnataka border and the Rihand dam in Uttar Pradesh – displaced tens of thousands of people. 1950s
was a decade when both the superpower nation-state believed in competing with each other in terms of
building large dams and altering the course of the rivers. If in United States, we witnessed Tennesse Valley
Authority as an exercise that marked the development planning, in Society Union it was the Leningrad
Power Station that received accolades, following Stalin’s concept of “transformation of nature into
machine for the communist state”. In some ways, independent India was walking that script when it
started to work on Damodar Valley projects2.

In 1970s, social environmental impacts of large dams had come under questions and criticism. In 1973,
Kenneth E. Boulding penned a poem titled ‘A Ballad of Ecological Awareness’ that captures the
environmental impacts caused by construction of large dams and raises relevant questions on behalf of
affected communities.

“The cost of building dams is always underestimated

There’s erosion of the delta that the river has created,
There’s fertile soil below the dam that’s likely to be looted,
And the tangled mat of forest that has got to be uprooted.
There’s the breaking up of cultures with old haunts and habits loss,
There’s the education program that just doesn’t come across,
And the wasted fruits of progress that are seldom much enjoyed
By expelled subsistence farmers who are urban unemployed.
There’s disappointing yield of fish, beyond the first explosion;
There’s silting up, and drawing down, and watershed erosion.
Above the dam the water’s lost by sheer evaporation;
Below, the river scours, and suffers dangerous alteration.
For engineers, however good, are likely to be guilty
Of quietly forgetting that a river can be silty,
While the irrigation people too are frequently forgetting
That water poured upon the land is likely to be wetting.
Then the water in the lake, and what the lake releases,

2
For an account of how large dams and multi-purpose river valley projects were being envisioned as ‘nation-
building’ projects and how Damodar Valley projects were almost a carbon copy of development planning paradigm
offered by Tennesse Valley Authority, see Klingensmith, Daniel (2007) One Valley and Thousand Dams: DVC as
India’s TVA, Oxford University Press, New Delhi.
 Is crawling with infected snails and water-borne diseases.
There’s a hideous locust breeding ground when water level’s low,
And a million ecologic facts we really do not know.

There are benefits, of course, which may be countable, but which

Have a tendency to fall into the pockets of the rich.
While the costs are apt to fall upon the shoulders of the poor.
So cost-benefit analysis is nearly always sure.
To justify the building of a solid concrete fact,
While the Ecologic Truth is left behind in the Abstract.”

However, by 1980s it was being acknowledged that “a significant percentage of water development in
United States has been a sad mistake”. Writing a foreword to Nicholas Hildyard and Edward Goldsmith’s
two volume comprehensive, Social and Ecological Effects of Large Dams3, Brent Blackwater wrote:
“America’s Tennessee Valley Authority is often held up as a model of how to make the economy of a valley
flourish. In fact, people from all over the world come to see what TVA has done. Unfortunately, the TVA
story is really a myth. The Environmental Policy Institute’s analysis of the costs and benefits experienced
by TVA’s water projects during its first 50 years showed that the flood control and navigation objectives
have yet to pay for themselves by any reasonable standard of accounting. Furthermore, areas in the
Southeastern United States which did not receive financial aid from TVA did as well as or better than the
TVA region, even though they were as poor, or poorer, to begin with.”

Published in 1984, Social and Ecological Effects of Large Dams presented an indictment of follies in
development planning that relied heavily on large dams. It had appeared at a time when the
environmental movement had started to stir the consciousness. It also influenced creative writers from
global South who had started to articulate environmental consciousness by weaving new fables and fairy
tales. Here, we reproduce a short passage from Vikram Seth’s 1991 poem, The Elephant and the Tragopan
(a fiery speech by the tragopan to the Bigshot) in order to show indictment of political economy of large
dams:

You say that town is short of water

Yet at the wedding of your daughter
The whole municipal supply
Was poured on your lawns. Well, why?
And why is it that Minister’s Hill
And Babu’s Barrow drink their fill
Through every season, dry or wet,
When all the common people get
Is water on alternate days?
At least that’s what my data says,
And every figure has been checked.
So, Bigshot, wouldn’t you expect

3
Hildyard, Nicholas and Edward Goldsmith (1984) Social and Ecological Effects of Large Dams, Wadebridge
Ecological Centre, Worthyvale Manor Camelford, Cornwall.
 A radical redistribution
Would help provide a just solution?’

In 1996, Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams authored by Patrick McCully got published
by Zed Book in association with the International Rivers Network, Berkeley. The central theme of silenced
Rivers was a further evaluation of the massive adverse impacts that large dams had left on ecology and
society and a yet another attempt to outline – with robust analysis of data that was available – that
benefits from large dams had been exaggerated and could often have been produced by other less
destructive and more equitable means.

Attempting to explain why in 1990s, the Indian villager slated to be displaced by the construction of a
large dam developed “a marked unwillingness to make way for ‘nation-building’ projects”, Gadgil and
Guha (1995: 71) states, “The resettlement of dam evacuees has uniformly been inadequate: the rates of
cash compensation have been low; the promise of land for land has very rarely been fulfilled (and where
it has, the news lands are invariably of much poorer quality); not to speak of the difficulties of making a
new home in unfamiliar, and often hostile, surroundings”. In early 1990s, environmental movements in
India were asking pertinent questions around the large dams, ranging from Silent Valley in Kerala to Tehri
in Garhwal Himalayas, on the banks of Subarnarekha river in Bihar and on the banks of Narmada in
Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.

Narmada Bachao Andolan had petitioned the World Bank to constitute an independent review of the
ambitious Sardar Sarovar Dam and on September 01, 1991, two experts began the independent review
that till date remains an example of a comprehensive assessment of the human and environmental
impacts of a proposed large dam. These two experts were, Bradford Morse, a former Under-Secretary-
General of the United Nations for ten years (1976-86) and former head of UNDP and Thomas R Berger,
who had conducted Mackenzie Valley Pipiline Inquiry (1974-77) and the Alaska Native Review Commission
(1983-85).

As per the World Commission on Dams4 report, large dams have forced 40 to 80 million people from their
lands in the past six decades. While displacement due to submergence of habitat is the most visible
impact, many more have lost land to the canals, irrigation schemes, power lines and ancillary
developments that accompany large dams and hydropower projects. Those living downstream of large
dams and hydropower projects have suffered due to unprecedented hydrological changes in river eco-
system5.

In terms of economic impacts, in earlier times, large dams were promoted as providing “cheap”
hydropower and water supply, but increasing amount of data and research started showing the truth
behind the public relations façade. It was argued that large dams mostly end up experiencing cost and

4
World Commission on Dams was a global multi-stake holder body initiated in 1997 by the World Bank and the
World Conservation Union (IUCN) in response to growing opposition to large dam projects. For the final report of
the commission see, http://www.internationalrivers.org/files/attached-
files/world_commission_on_dams_final_report.pdf
5
For a scientific study that takes an in-depth look at downstream impacts of large dams, see Brian D. Richter,
Sandra Postel, Carmen Revenga, Thayer Scudder, Bernhard Lehner, Allegra Churchill, Morgan Chow (2010) ‘Lost in
development's shadow: The downstream human consequences of dams’, Water Alternatives 3(2), June 2010: pp.
14-42. For a summary of the findings of this research paper see,
http://www.internationalrivers.org/blogs/227/the-forgotten-downstream-victims-of-large-dams
time overruns. The World Commission on Dams found that “on an average, large dams have been at best
only marginally economically viable. The average cost overruns of the dam is 56%. A new research study
by four researchers from Oxford University came across “overwhelming evidence that budgets are
systematically biased below actual costs of large hydropower dams — excluding inflation, substantial debt
servicing, environmental, and social costs”6. Over four years, the authors of the new study – Atif Ansar,
Bent Flyvbjerg, Alexander Budzier and Daniel Lunn – analyzed all large dams which were built between
1934 and 2007 for which reliable costs and schedule figures are available. Their database includes 245
projects in 65 countries with a total cost of US$353 billion (in 2010 prices). We reproduce below two main
findings of this study:

 Large dams suffered average cost overruns of 96%. The degree of cost overruns tended to
increase with the size of projects. Even without considering social and environmental costs,
large dams on average don’t make economic sense.
 Project implementation suffered an average delay of 44%. The implementation schedule does
not include the lengthy lead time required to prepare projects.

The environmental consequences of large dams and hydropower projects are numerous and varied. On
the upstream side, it transforms a free-flowing river ecosystem into an artificial slack-water reservoir. This
may also lead to adverse impacts for aquatic plants and animal species that evolved with a given river eco-
system habitat, since chemical composition, changes in temperature, dissolved oxygen levels of a
reservoir may no longer prove tolerable to these native species. Research by biological scientists has
shown that reservoir often attract non-native and invasive species.

Cernea (1997: 04) talks about following downstream impacts of large dams and hydropower projects:

 Drying up of river in non-monsoon months, leading to drying of water source for the people
living on the banks of the river.
 Stoppage of groundwater recharge in the downstream regions.
 Salinity ingress due to stoppage of fresh water flow.
 Such salinity ingress can destroy the existing groundwater in the region and also affect the
lands on the banks of the river.
 Pollution concentration in the downstream region.
 Destruction of mangroves in the downstream areas.
 Destruction of riverine and estuarine fisheries and displacement of people thereby. This is
contributed both by the stoppage of freshwater flow and also by the stoppage of silt in the
reservoir behind the dam.
 Flashfloods in the downstream area are generally more destructive than the floods without
dams.
 The stoppage of downstream flow can also affect use of river for navigation for the people on
the banks of the river.
 Geomorphological impacts are also important ones to be mentioned. Þ The people in the
downstream that depend on the river for bringing water for diversion agriculture in the

6
For a summary of the findings of this research study, see http://www.internationalrivers.org/blogs/227/large-
dams-are-uneconomic-scientific-study-finds
 floodplains also get deprived of this when dam is built in the upstream area. This can bring
lower harvests, drops in productivity and impoverishment.

In a revised version of Silenced Rivers, McCully (2001: xvii) states that “The great hope for the hydropower
industry is that global warming will come to its rescue – that hydropower will be recognized as ‘climate-
friendly’ technology and receive carbon credits as part of the international emissions trading mechanism
under the Kyoto Protocol. But science is not doing the hydropower industry any favours here – studies
show that reservoirs in the tropical countries most likely to be at the technology-receiving end of any
North-South emissions trading schemes can emit greenhouse gases at levels higher than even fosil-fuel-
fires power plants”.

As an effort to ensure the protection of healthy river ecosystems, McCully (2001: 312) urges society to
move from the dams to the watershed thinking. He states that “The key to protecting and restoring rivers
lies in treating with care and respect their entire watershed. Thinking on the watershed level means seeing
rivers as integral parts of a complex and dynamic system of land and water and biota. Disrupting any part
of the system will eventually affect all the other parts. Looking after rivers thus means looking after water,
soils, ecosystems and the air. Watershed thinking means dropping the language and accompanying
concepts of ‘controlling’ and ‘enslaving’ ‘wild’, ‘unruly’ and ‘wasted’ rivers. One cannot control a
watershed. It requires recognizing and respecting the complexity of the interactions between land, water
and atomsphere. It means adapting to this complexity rather than making counter-productive efforts to
control and simplify it. It also means respecting the diversity of different watershed and the natural and
human communities that live within them”.

To sum up, let’s recall the advice that elephant gives to the Bigshot in Vikarm Seth’s poem, The Elephant
and the Tragopan (1991):

I do not see the reason why

You do not use what lies to hand
Before you try to dam our land…
Your pipes cry out for renovation.
Your storage tanks corrode and leak;
The valves are loose, the washers weak.
I’ve seen the water gushing out
From every reservoir and spout.
Repair them it will cost far less
Than driving us to homelessness….
But that’s just one of many things:
Plant trees, revive your wells and springs.
Guide from your roofs the monsoon rain
Into great tanks to use again.
Reduce your runoff and your waste
Rather than with unholy haste
Destroying beauty which, once gone,
The world will never look upon.”
References

Ansar, Atif; Bent Flyvbjerg, Alexander Budzier and Damniel Lunn (2014) ‘Should we build more large
dams? The actual costs of hydropower megaproject development’, Energy Policy, March 2014, pp. 01-
14. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2406852

Boulding, Kenneth (1973) A Ballad of Ecological Awareness

Guha, Ramchandra (2008) ‘The World’s First Anti-Dam Movement,’ in Magazine, The Hindu dated July
06, 2008. http://www.hindu.com/mag/2008/07/06/stories/2008070650110300.htm

Malekar, Ashutosh 2008 ‘The Mavals of Mulshi: Displacement’s Earliest Victims’, Infochange India
Feature, July 2008 Available online at http://infochangeindia.org/agenda/migration-a-displacement/the-
mavlas-of-mulshi-displacements-earliest-victims.html

Morse, Bradford and Thomas Berges (1992) Sardar Sarovar: The Report of the Independent Review,
Resource Futures International, Ottawa, Canada.

Seth, Vikram (1991) The Elephant and the Tragopan

Sangvai, Sanjay 2002 The River and Life: People’s Struggle in the Narmada Valley, Earthcare Books,
Calcutta

Vora, Rajendra 2009 World’s First Anti Dam Movement, Permanent Black, New Delhi.

i
Translated literally it means ‘an act to assert the Truth’, this term was popularized Gandhi during the course of
anti colonial struggle to denote the non-violent protest acts.
ii
Sangvai cites the source as Vora, Rajendra 1994 Mulshi Satyagrah, Pratibha Prakashan, Pune.