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This article provides information about the needs for Large Dams in India !
There has been a strong support for large dams in India. There are specialists such as economists, engineers, development planners and agronomists who have defended the construction of large dams.
Image Courtesy : upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/NagarjunaSagarDam.JPG
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The defenders of large dams have tried to answer the doubts about the efficacy of large dams and have been unconvinced by the hue and cry raised by environmentalists and social activists about the destructive potential of large dams. Large dams have been supported on the grounds that they are the best among the existing options in dealing with the crisis in irrigation, drinking water and power.
With nuclear energy being questioned for its safety with regard to radiation and thermal energy for using non-renewable resources, the only viable source of renewable energy is water resources. Hydel power is the cheapest, cleanest and a renewable resource. The lack of appropriate technology in the field of solar energy has left no other option but to tap hydel power. If this option is also opposed, the proponents argue, there is no other viable choice left for meeting the energy requirements of the country.
The 1960s in India was characterised by a critical food shortage and the government singularly focused on increasing food production. That is when a concerted effort was made to introduce methods of increasing production. It is argued that the self-sufficiency achieved by the Indian government in the production of foodgrain is primarily due to its focus on improving irrigation facilities, increasing the area under cultivation and its output by the use of improved fertilizers and seeds.
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Without the introduction of modern techniques, which have been criticised by environmentalists for its debilitating and poisonous effect on the soil and on the health of the general population, this feat would not have been possible. Thus the first criticism presented by the defenders of large dams is that the latter is necessitated by the sheer scale and requirement of irrigation and power in the country.
The Agricultural Division of World Bank listed a number of arguments in support of large dams. The arguments summarise the views of a number of development planners and engineers in support of large dams. An excerpt of their defence is presented below. The context was their defence on the Sardar Sarovar Dam.
While small dams have a role and are, indeed, a significant part of the overall development proposals for the Narmada Basin, they do not, and cannot approach the scale of the benefits of the larger dams. First they are not as low cost as is often claimed: a study of small “tanks” (as they are called) in India by an International Research Institution found most of them to be uneconomic (partly because of the amount of the land they inundate relative to the water stored).
Second, while a few good small dam remains that could be developed at modest cost, the cost escalates greatly as in the search for the large numbers of small dams needed for storing significant volumes of water, one is compelled to tackle increasingly less suitable sites.
Third, they fail to fill in the very year, the dry year, when they are needed the most. It was only the large dams that performed adequately for Gujarat in the last drought. Fourth, they inundate relatively massive areas of land; in the lower parts of basins this tends to be very fertile agricultural land, in the upper parts forest.
Typically small “tanks” of around 40 to 100 ha. size inundate almost as much land as they irrigate, around 0.9 of a hectare for every 1.0 hectare (usually irrigating one crop only, whereas large dams irrigate much more than one, apart from also providing power). Sardar Sarovar will inundate only about 1.6% of the area irrigated. Thus even if it were technically possible to find enough small dam sites to store the same amount of water, the land lost to inundation could well be over 1 million hectares as opposed to about 37,000 ha. for the Sardar Sarovar Reservoir.
An important issue raised by the defenders of large dams is the over-exploitation of ground water for irrigation purposes. The small dams have according to them proved to be poor substitutes, as people still continue to rely on ground water for their most essential and regular requirements. With regards to the detrimental consequences of large dams, the proponents of large dams admit that large dams do submerge large tracts of forests, but also draw attention to the fact that the loss of forest in the Narmada Basin has been at the rate of about 20,000 ha per annum without the large dam in place or any other mega development project.
This is a significant observation not only about the state of forest management in the country as a whole, wherein forest products are being extracted indiscriminately by encroachers and commercial interests, but also the increasing pressure on forests to fulfill subsistence needs of the people. This brings out the levels of corruption, malpractice and inefficiency that exist in India, with or without large dams. Development initiatives thereby get a bad name, as the discrepancy in the implementation process is passed on to the plan itself.
Also, they are of the opinion that planting trees in the irrigation area, which can also supply ‘far greater’ supply of wood, can easily make up the loss. The regular supply of water from the large dams can improve general health conditions of the people, while the chances of getting waterborne diseases from the dam site can be controlled through appropriate preventive measures.
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A fact that is borne out by both sides is that the costs of large dams, or for that matter any development project, escalate with time. Indian development has been plagued by a delay in completing development projects, which not only increases expenditure, but also intensifies the misery of people affected by the project who are left in an indeterminate state, neither in a state that they had lived with and adjusted to thus far (however miserable), nor settled in the “promised land”, where they were to be provided with a ‘better’ life.
As is evident, the debate is inconclusive. However, the debate has managed to arouse public interest in matters of development and increased transparency in the planning process. Hopefully, the debate will push for greater participation and involvement of concerned citizens as well as the affected persons of large development projects in directing the course of economic and social development in the country.