by Arundhati Roy

“Privatization” is presented as being the only alternative to an inefficient, corrupt state. In fact, it’s not a choice at all. It’s only made to look like one. Essentially, privatization is a mutually profitable business contract between the private (preferably foreign) company or financial institution, and the ruling elite of the third world. (One of the fallouts is that even corruption becomes an elitist affair. Your average small-fry government official is in grave danger of losing his or her bit on the side).

Basically, ECAs insure private companies operating in foreign countries against commercial and political risks. The device is called an export credit guarantee. It’s quite simple, really. No first world private company wants to export capital or goods or services to a politically and/or economically unstable country without insuring itself against unforeseen contingencies. So the private company covers itself with an export credit guarantee. The ECA, in turn, has an agreement with the government of its own country. The government of its own country has an agreement with the government of the importing country. The upshot of this fine imbrication is that if a situation does arise in which the ECA has to pay its client, its own government pays the ECA and recovers its money by adding it to the bilateral debt owed by the importing country. (So the real guarantors are actually, once again, the poorest people in the poorest countries). Complicated, but cool. And foolproof.

The quadrangular private company-ECA-government-government formation neatly circumvents political accountability. Though they’re all actually business associates, flak from noisy, tiresome nongovernmental organizations and activist groups can be diverted and funneled to the ECA, where, like noxious industrial effluent, it lies in cooling ponds before being disposed of. The attraction of the ECAs (for both governments and private companies) is that they are secretive and don’t bother with tedious details like human rights violations and environmental guidelines. (The rare ones that do, like the US Export-Import Bank, are under pressure to change). It short-circuits lumbering World Bank-style bureaucracy. It makes projects like Big Dams (which involve the displacement and impoverishment of large numbers of people, which in turn is politically risky) that much easier to finance. With an ECA guarantee, “developers” can go ahead and dig and quarry and mine and dam the hell out of peoples’ lives without having to even address, never mind answer, embarrassing questions.

Now, coming back to Maheshwar...

In order to place India’s first private Big Dam in perspective, I need to briefly set out the short, vulgar history of Big Dams in India in general and on the Narmada in particular.

The international dam industry alone is worth US $32-46 billion a year. In the first world, dams are being de-commissioned, blown up. That leaves us with another industry threatened with redundancy desperately in search of dumping grounds. Fortunately (for the industry), most third world countries, India especially, are deeply committed to Big Dams.

India has the third-largest number of Big Dams in the world. Three thousand six hundred Indian dams qualify as Big Dams under the ICOLD (International Commission On Large Dams) definition. Six hundred and ninety-five more are under construction. This means that 40 percent of all the Big Dams being built in the world are being built in India. For reasons more cynical than honorable, politicians and planners have successfully portrayed Big Dams to an unquestioning public as symbols of nationalism - huge, wet, concrete flags. Nehru’s speech about Big Dams being “the temples of modern India” has made its way into primary school textbooks in every Indian language. Every schoolchild is taught that Big Dams will deliver the people of India from hunger and poverty.

Will they? Have they?

To merely ask these questions is to invite accusations of sedition, of being anti-national, of being a spy, and, most ludicrous of all - of receiving “foreign funds.” The distinguished Mr Advani (home minister now), while speaking at the inauguration of construction at the Sardar Sarovar Dam site on October 31, 2000 said that the three greatest achievements of his government were: the nuclear tests in 1998, the war with Pakistan in 1999, and the Supreme Court verdict in favor of the construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam in 2000. He called it a victory for “development nationalism” (a twisted variation of cultural nationalism). For the home minister to call a Supreme Court verdict a victory for his government doesn’t say much for the Supreme Court. I have no quarrel with Mr Advani clubbing together nuclear bombs, big dams and wars. However, calling them “achievements” is sinister. Mr Advani then went on to make farcical allegations about how those of us who were against the dam were “working at the behest of…outsiders” and “those who do not wish to see India becoming strong in security and socio-economic development.” Unfortunately, this is not imbecilic paranoia. It’s a deliberate, dangerous attempt to suppress outrageous facts by whipping up mindless mob frenzy. He did it in the run up to the destruction of the Babri Masjid. He’s doing it again. He has given notice that he will stop at nothing. Those who come in his way will be dealt with by any methods he deems necessary.

Nevertheless, there is too much at stake to remain silent. After all, we don’t want to be like good middle-class Germans in the ‘30s, who drove their children to piano classes and never noticed the concentration camps springing up around them - or do we?

There are questions that must be asked. And answered. There is space here for no more than a brief summary of the costs and benefits of Big Dams. A brief summary is all we need.

Ninety percent of the Big Dams in India are irrigation dams. They are the key, according to planners, of India’s “food security."

So how much food do Big Dams produce?

The extraordinary thing is that there is no official government figure for this.

The India Country Study section in the World Commission on Dams Report was prepared by a team of experts - the former secretary of water resources, the former director of the Madras Institute of Development Studies, a former secretary of the Central Water Commission and two members of the faculty of the Indian Institute of Public Administration. One of the chapters in the study deduces that the contribution of large dams to India’s food grain produce is less than 10 percent! Less than 10 percent!

Ten per cent of the total produce currently works out to 20 million tons. This year, more than double that amount is rotting in government storehouses while at the same time 350 million Indian citizens live below the poverty line (and while grain is actually being imported!). The ministry of food and civil supplies says that 10 percent of India’s total food grain produce is eaten every year by rats. India must be the only country in the world that builds dams, uproots millions of people, submerges thousands of hectares of forest, in order to feed rats.

It’s hard to believe that things can go so grievously, so perilously wrong. But they have. It’s understandable that those who are responsible find it hard to own up to their mistakes, because Big Dams did not start out as a cynical enterprise. They began as a dream. They have ended as grisly nightmare. It’s time to wake up.

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