[sacw] SACW Dispatch 29 Aug. 1999

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch
August 29, 1999
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Contents
# 1. The 2000 Nuclear War [in the Subcontinent]
# 2. Bride Burning 'kills Hundreds' [in Pakistan]
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[ Two Op-Ed pieces on the Narmada movement, and the debate on Dams in
India. The first piece is a reaction by Ashish Kothari to Gail Omvedt's
open letter to Arundhati Roy and the second a recent rejoinder by Gail
Omvedt.
# 3. Dams, bombs & development
# 4. Krishna and Narmada
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# 1.
The Nation
28 August 1999
Op-Ed

THE 2000 NUCLEAR WAR

By Brian Cloughley

India's draft nuclear 'doctrine' (which it isn't) was greeted by most
countries (and many Indians) with despair. How can adding to the world's
stock of nuclear weapons contribute to the cause of nuclear disarmament and
help social development of hundreds of millions of starving people? Having
been reconnaissance and survey officer of a nuclear missile regiment I
consider this a terrifying document, because all these academics don't know
what they are talking about in terms of likely human suffering. The future
of the subcontinent could be terrible if Pakistan tries to challenge India
to a race to Armageddon.
Worldpress despatch. Dateline: Washington, Friday, September 3, 2000: The
world was stunned today as nuclear devastation fell on the subcontinent.
Enormous areas of Bombay, Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Delhi were reduced to
radioactive rubble in the early hours of this morning (11am Washington
time). Both Hyderabads have been obliterated, as have Sargodha, Bahawalpur
and Jaipur by weapons that are thought to have had a yield of about 40
kilotons (the Hiroshima bomb was less than half that). A later Indian
strike against Karachi failed, when a nuclear-armed Su-30 aircraft had to
take evasive action and released its weapon about fifty miles west of
Pakistan's only port city, but prevailing winds drove massive clouds of
radioactive sand across the entire urban area. Ground zero for Pakistan's
nuclear rocket aimed at New Delhi appeared to be symbolic--India Gate. The
city's business area, centred round Connaught Place, no longer exists, and
destruction was total in the diplomatic enclave of Chanakyapuri and north
to Civil Lines, perhaps further.
It is estimated that two million may have died in Delhi, about the same
number in Bombay and Rawalpindi, and the entire population of Islamabad,
where a bomb landed, ironically, close to Zero Point on the road from
Rawalpindi, has vanished. Pakistan's attack on the Trombay nuclear facility
was driven off-target, but inaccuracy, did not matter: the hearts of
Pakistan and India have been laid waste.
There are smoking, contaminated, corpse-ridden ruins for hundreds of
square miles. Millions of people have disappeared--evaporated into the
contaminated air, as if they had never existed; countless more face
lingering, disgusting, disfigured death from the effects of blast and
radiation. Water supplies and crops have been poisoned. Many millions not
directly affected by the explosions will soon, die, and in particularly
horrible ways.
The governments of both countries remain functioning, and prime ministers
Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif, from their respective emergency centres of
government in Chennai (Madras) and Quetta, have said that they will fight
on. But they will die, too, with all their ministers and advisers, when the
winds and rains spread radioactive death thought the land.
The countries cannot fight on, or even survive as nations. Countless
millions of refugees are flooding out of cities and towns all over India
and Pakistan, heading in any direction that will take them away from what
they fear will be destruction of all population centres. Every main route
is verge-to-verge vehicles travelling at the snail pace of terrified and
hysterical crowds. The Rawalpindi-Peshawar road, in a bizarre development,
has been seen thousands of refugees from both cities meeting at Nowshera
where there is indescribable panic and confusion. The Khyber Pass is choked.
Similar scenes are evident in Japanese satellite pictures of the
Bombay-Pune road and at Hapur, half-way between Delhi and Moradabad.
Nowhere on any escape routes are there hygiene or medical facilities that
can cope with the exodus. Once refugees have exhausted their meagre
supplies of food and water there will be hunger, looting, disease, violence
and hideous death on a colossal scale.
An estimated hundred thousand military and civilian deaths were caused by
tactical nuclear missiles in Punjab, Sindh and Rajasthan. There was mutual
annihilation of Indian and Pakistani strike corps on Thursday morning as
the armour-heavy formations advanced into each other's territory Hundreds
of tanks and aircraft were destroyed. US satellites show that the only
Pakistani airfields remaining are emergency strips in Balochistan from
which about a dozen F-16 are flying missions--to what purpose is not
evident.
Half India's Mirage-2000 and Su-30 fleet was hit on the ground, but the
remainder appear to be based in eastern areas from which they are operating
deep into Pakistan territory. According to the last Indian and Pakistani
news broadcasts, the sight or sound of aircraft--any aircraft--causes
devastating panic in refugee columns. Neither side has launched follow-up
nuclear strikes, possibly because of horror at the death and destruction
they unleashed--or perhaps because there is no means of doing so. Bomb
stocks are held far from emergency airfields and it would be impossible to
transfer them, even if military communications are working, which is
doubtful. Foreign intelligence reports indicate that Pakistan's Ghauri
missiles, with the exception of the one targeted on Delhi, were destroyed
on the ground, as were India's Agnis, two of which had been made ready for
firing.
Western countries are stunned by the apocalyptic news. Although tension
had been high in the subcontinent, caused by conflict in Kashmir (which
many warned would lead to just this terrible nuclear havoc), Prime Minister
Vajpayee's continued reiteration that bilateral discussions would resolve
their problems gave hope that fighting in that disputed territory would not
spread. Prime Minster Nawaz Sharif seemed to echo New Delhi's assurances;
but in spite of their statements both sides continued to prepare for war.
The countries had sent armored forces close to their border in Punjab,
Rajasthan and Sindh in June and July, and then activated 'bare base'
airfields and moved tactical missiles and warheads to emergency deployment
positions in August. This activity was detected by foreign agencies and
satellites, but international comment died down after an initial burst of
concern.
America's lame-duck president gave conflicting messages to Islamabad and
New Delhi. Mr Clinton at first appeared to criticise Pakistan, but then
failed to follow-up by taking India to task for moving missiles. State
Department sources said today that warnings concerning the belligerent
stances of India and Pakistan went unheeded because President Clinton
believed assurances from both prime ministers that neither was
contemplating military action, but statements by Sharif and Vajpayee and
their advisers show that there was steady hardening of positions. Rhetoric
aside, this should have alerted foreign analysts to worsening situation,
but there was no warning when Pakistani and Indian leaders decided that
mutual incursions in Kashmir presented insults to national pride that
demanded military action. Coincidentally--and determinedly--both sides
moved in parallel towards nuclear catastrophe.
UPDATE: The situation in the region is worsening minute by minute.
Commercial satellite pictures show clouds of nuclear dust being blown in
every direction. Kashmir has received unseasonal torrential rains, mixed
with radioactive particles. The dust will drop on the Himalayas from where
most water in the subcontinent originates, and all northern rivers will be
terminally contaminated. The climate in the region seems to have altered to
the point of going berserk. Hot, swirling sandstorms in the deserts of
Rajasthan, Sindh and Balochistan have been driven into Punjab, North West
=46rontier Province, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. It seems that neighbouring
countries are being affected. Reports just in from Colombo indicate rising
levels of radiation.
Tehran has complained in the strongest terms concerning fallout in Kerman,
but there is no-one to listen to such protests--and nothing that could be
done; even were they heard. The UN Security Council is sitting in emergency
session, but reports indicate that it is a hand-wringing colloquy rather
than a meeting that could solve the staggering crisis that has erupted for
the world as a whole. A handful of nuclear weapons has caused devastation
on a scale not seen since the end of the dinosaurs.
All the world can do is wait until nature takes its course, over the
centuries. The subcontinent is ceasing to exist, and no help will come from
elsewhere, as even the most saintly of aid agencies will not hazard the
lives of its workers. No government could order its troops into nuclear
devastation to give assistance, no matter how desperate the situation.
Survivors in India and Pakistan will see repulsive, terrifying and hideous
scenes never before witnessed in the world--but there will be no outside
eye to observe them, other than the lenses of unwinding, dispassionate
cameras hundreds of miles above the earth that will record forever the
desolation's waste that is the result of pride, malevolence,
intransigence--and nuclear doctrine.

The writer's book "A History of the Pakistan Army" is about to appear in
an Urdu and a second English edition with a new final chapter
-----------------------------------------------

# 2.

BBC News Online: World: South Asia
=46riday, August 27, 1999 Published at 18:06 GMT 19:06 UK

BRIDE BURNING 'KILLS HUNDREDS'

Three-hundred Pakistani women are burned to death each year by their
husband's families, according to a report by a human rights organisation.

The Progressive Women's Association says the problem is growing, and very
few of the cases are picked up by the police.

It wants legislation to deal specifically with the issue of domestic
violence.

"According to the association's findings, bride burning every year accounts
for the violent death of at least 300 women, perpetrated most often by the
victims' husbands or husbands' families," said the association's Shamoon
Hashmi.

While divorce is possible in Pakistan, it is claimed that some families
decide instead to murder unwanted wives.

In many cases, the police are told the victim was killed by an exploding
stove, and there is no prosecution.

Doctors say the injuries to many of the victims they see are not consistent
with stove burns, according to the association

'Tip of the iceberg'

The report examines the cases of a dozen women in graphic detail. Most ended
with the offenders escaping punishment.

"What we see in this book is the tip of the iceberg," said Anne Kleening, of
the United Nations gender programme in Pakistan.

"They opt for burning because the chances of prosecution are less."

The Progressive Women's Association's chief co-ordinator, Shahnaz Bukhari,
said the report would be sent to Pakistani parliamentarians in the hope of a
special law against burnings being passed.

She said: "Every second Pakistani woman is the victim of a direct or
indirect form of mental or physical violence, leading to heinous crimes
against them including rape, murder, chopping of limbs or being burned
alive."

As well as campaigning for protective legislation, she wants to see a
support system for women including shelters and legal and financial help.

There is also an urgent need for more specialised burns units in Pakistan's
hospitals.

It has been a long struggle for Shahnaz Bukhari and others like her.

Earlier this month, the upper house, the Senate, rejected a resolution
condemning the practice of murdering women in the name of family honour.

Human rights groups had been calling for a new law to discourage the custom.

While the government has often dismissed claims that it does not protect the
rights of women and ethnic minorities, there are signs of change in the air.

The prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, has set up a high-level committee to look
into reports of human rights violations.

Back to top | BBC News Home | BBC Homepage | =A9

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# 3.

The Hindu
Tuesday, August 17, 1999
Opinion

DAMS, BOMBS & DEVELOPMENT

By Ashish Kothari

DAMS ARE not bombs. This key message of the article by
Ms. Gail Omvedt (TheHindu, August 4-5), written in
response to Ms. Arundhati Roy's critique of big dams,
is based on two premises: that big dams are necessary for reaching water to
dry areas and that they can be ``decentralised'' to provide benefits to
all. In the
process, she also criticises the ``anti-developmental'' stance of movements
such as the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA). These premises and arguments are
faulty.
Ms. Omvedt contends that dry areas in India (500 mm. rainfall) need big
dams. Is this true? In Alwar district of Rajasthan, with a rainfall of 600
mm, decentralised water harvesting has met the drinking water and
irrigation needs of over 200 villages. Some 3,000 johads and bandhs built
by local villagers with NGO help have transformed a severely drought-prone
area into a water- surplus one. Farmers can raise two or three crops now.
No external canal water is involved. Such success has also been shown in
Palamau in Bihar, Jhabua in Madhya Pradesh and several other places through
a combination of water harvesting and efficient use alternatives. So why
not in the Kutch and Saurashtra and Kalahandi? Indeed, the Saurashtra Lok
Manch has revived three lakh of the region's 7.5 lakh wells by devising a
simple technique of diverting the rainfall into the wells, and aims to
irrigate eight lakh acres at a cost of Rs. 200 crores, a fraction of what
it would cost through a big dam.
The trouble is even such money is often not available. In Gujarat, most
such projects are stalled for lack of funds because all the State's
resources are going into the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP)! Ironically,
official documents reveal that only 10 per cent of the Kutch and Saurashtra
will be serviced by the SSP canals, and the rest can be given water only
through an additional scheme, costing several thousand crores, for which
there is no money.
Ms. Omvedt is way off the mark in alleging that critics of big dams are
not genuinely interested in alternatives. The NBA has consistently demanded
alternatives, but when you are fighting a fire in the house, you cannot
simultaneously start designing a fire-proof house. After years of
agitation, now that it has forced the Madhya Pradesh Government to consider
alternatives to other big dams on the Narmada, the NBA is going to actually
try them out in a cluster of villages.
Big dams are not only unnecessary, they have tremendous social, ecological
and economic costs. Such projects always mean either a big displacement of
people and/or a big submergence of forests and other natural ecosystems.
Perhaps with the kind of mobilisation that Ms. Omvedt mentions as having
happened in the Krishna Valley, a few thousand people can be properly
resettled. But the ball game is entirely different when the figure mounts
to 2,00,000 or 3,00,000 people (the displacement by the SSP.). Where is the
land for resettlement? Ms. Omvedt would say in the command area - take it
from the farmers getting irrigation - but is this politically feasible for
a few lakh people? Especially when tens of thousands are being displaced by
the SSP canals in the command area itself? And what of the social and
political tensions that may erupt between the host and newly-resettled
people? It is sheer naivete to suggest that at this scale, the displaced
and the host populations can amicably settle matters. In Taloda,
Maharashtra, an Adivasi, defending her customary rights to the land
earmarked for the SSP oustees, was shot dead by police who were trying to
clear the area for resettlement. Big dams like the SSP are socially
unviable.
The ecological cost too is huge. In India, large dams have already
submerged 1.5 million hectares of forests and countless other ecosystems,
they have endangered several species of fish and mammals by drowning their
homes or blocking their migration, and they have increased salt-water
ingress along the coastline as the outflow of river-borne freshwater has
decreased. Contrary to the popular technocratic perception, rivers do not
go waste into the sea; they keep sea-water at bay, enrich fish spawning
grounds with nutrients, and perform a dozen other functions which we only
imperfectly understand. And while a few people can be resettled, a natural
forest can never be replaced and an extinct species can never be recreated.
At least in this sense, big dams, like bombs, are inevitably destructive.
Can these impacts be mitigated? As members of the Government of India's
Committee on Environmental Evaluation of River Valley Projects, we found
that in an astounding 89 per cent of the 300 dams given environmental
clearance since 1980, mitigatory measures were being violated. Compensatory
afforestation has not been done, the wildlife has not been restituted,
catchment areas have been left to erode and waterlogged command areas not
reclaimed. And yet, construction has not been halted. In other words, the
vast majority of dams have been built not just in ways that are
environmentally incompatible but in violation of the laws of the land!
Given the scale of impact, such violations are inevitable... big dams like
SSP are ecologically unviable.
Ms. Omvedt's conclusion that movements such as the NBA are
``anti-development'' is illogical. What they assert is that any development
project must be able to meet the standards of ecological sustainability,
social equity and self-sufficiency. The current large development projects,
by and large, fail on both these counts, and hence the opposition to them.
But this is not an opposition to development per se.
India's villages are indeed full of severe social and economic
exploitation, and it is incorrect to portray them as idyllic agri-pastoral
settlements, as Ms. Arundhati Roy may have implied. It is a travesty of
truth to suggest that such inequities can be solved only by a model of
development which stresses largescale industrialisation and big dams. How
can we ignore the evidence, documented not only by NGOs but

[FOR REASONS BEYOND OUR CONTROL THE ABOVE ARTICLE HAS BEEN PICKED UP IN A
INCOMPLETE FORM; MANY APPOLOGIES FOR THAT !]

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The Hindu,
August 28
Op-Ed

KRISHNA AND NARMADA

By Gail Omvedt

THE KOYNA, built high in Satara district of the Sahyadris on one of the
major tributaries of the Krishna, is a big dam, a ``major irrigation
project'' in the terminology of the Indian Government. Its reservoir has a
storage capacity of 98 tmcft and the dam generates over 900 MW of
electricity. When lift irrigation schemes on the Krishna are completed,
about 2.5 lakh hectares of drought-prone land in eastern Sangli district
will be irrigated. The reservoir has submerged 98 villages, affecting a
little over 9,000 people. Of these, 8,203 are officially classified as
``projected-affected persons''; of these, 6,372 have received 7,524
hectares in five districts of Maharashtra. Though the dam was completed in
1956-59, over 2,000 of the evictees have received land only since 1989,
when the Koyna Dharangrast Sangram Sanghatana was formed.
The areas to be irrigated by lift schemes taking water released from the
Koyna reservoir include Khanapur taluk, where the struggle to build the
Bali Raja Memorial Dam, a famous ``small dam'', was launched. This dam
irrigates 900 hectares in two villages, on the basis of ``equal water
distribution'' providing that all families in the villages, even the
landless, get water. However, its benefits cannot be extended to the whole
of the tehsil, since the Yerala river continues to have water only for one
month a year and any number of small dams built on it will not provide
sufficient water for the whole tehsil. The farmers and agricultural
labourers of the tehsil, like those in most of the Krishna Valley, scratch
along on dry land or try industries like poultry; and most families send
out sons who work in the textile industry or informal occupations in Mumbai
or find niches elsewhere. Some even join the migrants from the drought
districts of Marathwada or Karnataka to the south who work for six months a
year in miserable conditions as cane-cutters on sugar fields in western
Maharashtra. All of these are ecological refugees; their number may be
around 1.5 lakh from one tehsil alone. For these reasons, the people in the
villages supplied by the Bali Raja Memorial Dam have joined those in 13
taluks of drought-prone areas of the Krishna valley who are agitating, not
against big dams, but for the completion of the dams and the completion and
restructuring of canals and other distribution schemes so that every family
in the valley can get irrigation water.
This does not mean that the struggle is finished. Many of those who are
officially evicted continue to live in villages within the reserved forest
around the Koyna reservoir. Most of these also have the land given in
compensation, and spend money on bus fare to go as far as to Solapur
district to work on that land also. Their staying in their original home is
not a matter of ideology but a practical matter, making the most of their
situation, ``walking on two legs.'' Few have enough production from their
lands in the reservoir to maintain themselves; most depend also on
remittances from Mumbai or on some production from the lands given to them
elsewhere. According to Bharat Patankar, the Koyna Dam Dharangrast
Sanghatana also makes demands for these villages, including roads that will
make health and other services available, training in horticulture, water
allocation from the reservoir to irrigate their fields and demarcation of
their agricultural lands from the forest areas and building of fences to
protect them from wild animals.
I have mentioned the Krishna valley dams to make the point that not all
``big dams'' are destructive; many prevent vastly more number of ecological
refugees than they produce. The Koyna dam submerges very little forest and
displaces under 10,000 people, enough to be rehabilitated. Mr. Ashish
Kothari partly admits this reality in his reply to me in TheHindu (August
17) when he says that dam evictees in the thousands can be rehabilitated,
those in lakhs cannot be. This was precisely my point: not all big dams are
alike. But admitting this - admitting the particular conditions of the
Krishna valley and its completed and under- construction dams - leaves no
ground for Mr. Kothari to claim that ``all'' big dams either submerge vast
areas of forest or create too many evictees to be given compensation. Each
dam is different and has to be evaluated on its own terms.
For too long the public discourse on big dams has been dominated by
polarised, ``either-or'' claims. Big dams are either sources of
destruction, like bombs; or they are bringers of life. They either entice
peasants away from their simple but satisfying life of producing nutritious
food crops to the commercialised monetised business of ``cash crops'', or
they provide abundance and new, ``green'' agriculture. The reality is not
so simple. Many dams are ill-conceived, over-centralised and in need of
restructuring. In most cases, the state simply builds the dams and keeps
the canals and distribution systems in abeyance. In almost all cases, those
evicted for the dams have got little in compensation without any struggle.
But each case is different, and I continue to say: big dams are not bombs;
people who produce ``cash crops'' almost always eat better than those
scratching along on dry land (and ``cash crops'' are also more often food).
=46armers desiring to add water from canals to their lands are not, as Mr.
Krishna Iyer refers to them, ``kulaks''; the large majority are poor
farmers subsistined on dry lands, hoping to have a little better life. And
creating perennial irrigation and producing two crops, where one was done
before, are not like getting hooked on steroids. It is in fact a
millennia-old Indian tradition to improve the land, to grow more crops, to
dam and channel water and build reservoirs to do so. Ask anyone in
Thanjavur. And big projects can have decentralised management of water and
even electricity.
What about the Sardar Sarovar? This in many ways is a unique situation, in
which primarily Adivasis and non-Adivasi farmers in Madhya Pradesh are
getting evicted, while the benefits will go to lands far away in Gujarat.
We agree that the height should be lowered or kept low; that there should
be a minimum of displacement. The Paranjpe-Joy proposal would have
drastically restructured the dam to reduce the submergence by almost 70 per
cent and the number of persons displaced by up to 90 per cent. It would
also have linked this to forms of ecological agriculture in Gujarat itself,
using minimum of water and other inputs - but using some ``external
inputs'' - to produce a variety of crops. But little of such alternatives
became part of public discourse. Instead, the situation was polarised
between ``no dam'' and those holding fervently on to their hopes for more
water for their lands from the gigantic Sardar Sarovar project. The NBA
went on saying ``we will not move'' and rallying both Adivasis of the
valley and worldwide support; but the Gujarat Government went on building
the dam higher, and people moved.
Like Mr. Kothari, many activists of the NBA have blamed me for contesting
the simple ``no big dams'' slogan at a time of struggle. However, rallies
of thousands, and passionate urban and international support, will not
shake the Gujarat Government. Only the support or consent of farmers in the
drought-prone areas of the State can do so, and this can be won only by
restructuring the Sardar Sarovar, not by rejecting the dam- building
project completely. If the Paranjpe-Joy proposal had been accepted, the
Sardar Sarovar would have been drastically changed with a much reduced
height; but it would have remained a ``big dam'' and a huge, not simply
large, irrigation project. In fact, there is still time for restructuring
proposals to win acceptance. There is, even more at this time, need for
widespread public discussion on all alternatives. If, for reasons of
organisational identity, the NBA cannot back off from its ``no big dam''
stance, it is the responsibility of others to bring these alternatives
forward. This would be in the best interest of the Adivasi and non-Adivasi
farmers of the Narmada valley as well as those in Gujarat and elsewhere.