[sacw] An Open Letter To Arundhati Roy

[Harsh Kapoor]

July 21, 1999
FYI
(South Asia Citizens Web)
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From: Gail Omvedt

AN OPEN LETTER TO ARUNDHATI ROY

Dear Arundhati,

I'm sorry to have to write a critical letter to you. I very much liked The
God of Small Things. I also appreciated your intervention on the nuclear
issue. I was impressed on reading in Indian Express that you had decided to
donate some royalties to
the Dalit Sahitya Academy.

However, when it comes to the issue of "big dams," I can understand the
urgency you feel for the people of the valley and the victims of misguided
development projects everywhere, but I feel that you're missing many
things. There are important questions not only regarding the dam-afflicted
but also the drought-afflicted, issues of water for agriculture, and of
democracy in peoples' movements. I would like to share with you some of my
experiences, mainly in Maharashtra, on drought and water issues, on
movements for opposing eviction and for building small dams, among farmers
and agricultural labourers of various castes and among adivasis in northern
Maharashtra, near theNarmada.

The first time I even heard of the Narmada dams was around 1984. The
CPI(M), the Shramik Mukti Dal (SMD) and the Shramik Sanghatana-an
organisation of adivasis in Dhule district-had organised a demonstration in
Akkalkuva, where they presented a petition to the government demanding
mainly that Maharashtrian evictees be given alternative land in Maharashtra
itself and calling for alternatives to the Sardar Sarovar. I remember that
it was during the monsoon season; we walked miles afterwards through
drizzling rain to enjoy discussions, intellectual puzzles with matchboxes
and a simple meal in one of the many remote villages of the area.

A little after that, in 1986, many of the same activists of the Shramik
Sanghatana and SMD organised an "Adivasi-Forest
Conference" in Shahada. I had come to Dhule to help in rallyingsupport
among the social and political activists of the district.This was just
after Medha had made her first visit to thedistrict. She had crossed the
Narmada with Achyut Yagnik ofAhmedabad; their boat had capsized but somehow
they had made theirway down through the district, stopping off at Shahada
to meetShramik Sanghatana people-the main organisation of adivasitoilers in
the region-and then coming to Dhule where she formeda support organisation.
All this was fine. There were only twocritical questions raised. One was
mine: Medha at that time wasfollowing the guidelines of the World Bank in
demanding justicefor evictees, and these guidelines identified only male
heads offamilies as eligible for alternative land. We were at the
timealready starting to raise the question of land for women, and Ifelt it
was too bad that the landlessness of women was beingneglected in the
process of rehabilitation and building anew.

But that was minor. Looking back, probably a more importantnegative
reaction came from Waharu Sonavane, at that time theleading young adivasi
activist of Shramik Sanghatana. Waharu hadbeen in the movement since
1971-72,working with AmbarsinghMaharaj, a truly unique indigenous leader
and with the ShramikSanghatana and Shramik Mukti Dal, a Maharashtra-wide
organisationof Marxist activists. Waharu is a poet and an
intellectual-though he has never had the opportunity to learn English, and
Iwill quote for you a few lines of one of his poems which came outof his
years of experience with movements. It is given as a titlethe English word
(a word that also has come in Marathi) -"Stage."

We did not go on to the stage,
Neither were we called.
We were shown our places,
told to sit.
But they, sitting on the stage,
went on telling us of our sorrows,
our sorrows remained ours, they never became theirs.

There is more but that is the main point. Waharu's main objectionwas that
in all her discussions on the anti-dam movement, Medhanever gave credit to
those who had organised on the issue beforeher. More recently also it was
Waharu who raised the question toSanjay Sanghvi of the NBA, "Why is it that
there is no top rankingadivasi leadership in the NBA?" This was at a
seminar organisedby the Pune university women's studies centre. Sanjay
could notanswer except to say "But all our village leaders are
adivasis."This is no answer, I hope you understand, when you are
dealingwith villagesthat are nearly 100% adivasi. Why are all the leaders
from theurban elite, and how democratic exactly is their relationship tothe
rural poor they are organising?

There were and are real questions about the way in which theleadership of
the NBA relates to-and "represents", uses, itsadivasi and nonadivasi farmer
following. One of these has to dowith an area you should be an expert in:
words. Why the term
"tribal"? I know, nearly every English speaker in India,apparently
including supporters and activists of the NBA, uses"tribal" for adivasis
when speaking in English. (In Indianlanguages all now use "adivasi" or
some equivalent). But, thoughestablished now, the term "tribal" is an
insulting and demeaningword, inaccurate even from a social-scientific point
of view; andI don't know of any group of indigenous people the world over
whowould accept it for themselves. (I won't here go into the debateabout
whether or not "adivasis" should be called "indigenouspeople.") The only
reason it survives in India is that because ofthe abysmal state of
education in general among adivasis and evenworse state of English
education, there is no one really in aposition to protest. Otherwise there
would be massive objections,just as Dalits have thrown out the term
"harijan." Thoseclassified as "scheduled tribe" in northeast India -
people likeMr. Sangma-made clear long ago their feelings about beingcalled
"hill tribes." The fact "tribal" is still a widely usedword in English, I
think, has something to do with the way peopleare a little careless about
the identities and real feelings ofthose they represent. And if this
includes you and the NBA, then
you should think about it.

In any case, Waharu's earliest objection was in terms ofnon-recognition of
what they had done before; and this was veryearly on in the anti-Narmada
movement, when there was no NBA assuch and Medha and others were still
talking mainly ofrehabilitation and not of total opposition to big dams as
such.But the tendency of not recognising the work of others, or reallybeing
willing to admit that there has been a history of struggles,has remained.
You write very easily of "people's organisations"in different states coming
together to form the NBA. These wereorganisations set up by Medha and her
associates. In Maharashtrathe largest "peoples' organisation" or alliance
working onrehabilitation issues is the Maharashtra Rajya Dharangrast
vaPrakalgrast Shetkari Parishad (Maharashtra. state conference ofdam and
project affected farmers), which has been working sincethe 1970s. It has
been a broad platform in which various localstruggles have united. Its
leaders from the beginning were peoplelike Baba Adhav, a socialist and also
a man very much involved inanti-caste campaigns; Datta Deshmukh, a
communist of the LalNishan Party (now deceased); Naganath Naikaudi, an
independentMarxist and freedom fighter from southern Maharashtra;
BharatPatankar of the Shramik Mukti Dal; many others. These have nearlyall
been involved on issues or irrigation and water as well as
problems of dam evictees.

The Meaning of Water

People in these organisations were concerned about the socialjustice of
dams and the sustainable use of water from very early.But they never
opposed dams as such. The main slogan of thepeople involved in their
struggles was "first rehabilitation, thenthe dam." Later this was linked
to "equal water distribution"-the demand that irrigation projects should be
restructured toprovide water to every family in every village in a
watershedarea. Movements are going on for this, for example in regard
tothe Krishna Valley dams.

Bharat Patankar (my husband, to keep things in perspective)and others were
involved in a fight for one rather well-known peasant built small dam in
Sangli district in Maharashtra, theBali Rajya Memorial Dam, irrigating two
villages. This was eventaken as a kind of model of the type of dams the NBA
would approveof. But they, we, have never opposed "big dams" as such.
Bharat,at the time when Medha turned from simply agitation
forrehabilitation to opposing big dams as such, was also active in
amovementof Koyna dam evictees-working with farmers who had lost theirland
decades back at the time of construction of the Koyna dam.He very simply
felt that there were at least some big dams-Koyna was one-which were not by
any means inherentlydestructive and which did not submerge significant
areas offorest.

Why does anybody need "big dams" or "big irrigationprojects"? Arundhati,
there is a very simple issue here thaturban people-I hope this doesn't
sound too sarcastic-findhard to understand. Water is needed, not only for
drinking, butfor agriculture. NBA documents have talked a lot about
drinkingwater, but they have not had much to say about water
foragriculture. You cannot grow crops without water, and when thereis only
500mm of water per year-this is true of three-fourthsof the Krishna valley
area in Maharashtra and of much of Gujaratincluding Saurashtra and
Kutch-then some external water,provided by canals, is necessary to
supplement rainfall."Rainwater harvesting" is not enough in such areas of
lowrainfall. The millions of people living in such areas are
thedrought-afflicted, suffering from years of parched earth anddamaged
crops; they are driven off their lands to the cities tolive, or migrate to
work as labourers, for instance sugar canecutters, in areas of irrigation.
But they would prefer to be ableto prosper in their homes just as much as
those threatened by damand project eviction want the alternative of not
moving. You saythat the thousands of dams built in India since
independence havesimply led to eviction on one hand and waterlogging on the
other,but this is not true. So many farmers have benefited fromirrigation
water, and millions who have not can see this, and wantsuch benefits also.
Our arguments are not against big irrigationprojects as such, but against
badly conceived ones; big projectscan be sustainable and work in a
decentralised manner.

It may well be that, hundreds of years ago when the lowrainfall regions
were mainly occupied by pastoralists, peoplecould carry on traditional
livelihoods. That is no longer true.Population has multiplied, and the
ways of using naturalresources, converting them into food and materials for
living,have to be developed. Productivity has to be increased, and
thismeans that some form of irrigation projects as well as other kindsof
technological development are necessary. In areas of very lowrainfall,
even villages which have become famous for "watersheddevelopment" and using
rainwater-such as Ralegan Siddhi inAhmednagar district of Maharashtra-are
supplementing this withcanal water.

In any case, most of those who stand to lose their lands fordam projects
are farmers, whether adivasis or nonadivasis, whounderstand the need of
water for agriculture.. Their refusal tobe victims of development does not
mean an opposition todevelopment; they would like a share in it; they would
like it tobe just and sustainable. (Indeed, one of the achievements of
theMaharashtra Rajya Dharangrast-Prakalgrast Shetkari Parishad was towin
acceptance of the principle that those losing their land inthe catchment
area of dams should get alternative land in thecommand area - a share of
the water of the dam).

I visited Ferkuva in early 1991. I had come from the Gujaratside, from
Surat-along with a representative of a farmers'organisation which would be
considerd a "rich peasant"organisation by most of NBA supporters. He was
staunchly for thedam, and when I brought up the usual objections, he
simplyresponded, "there's is a cup of water which is half full. You sayit's
half empty, I say it's half full." Gujarat so badly neededthe water, he
felt, that it could deal with flaws. He, like mostGujaratis I know, was
adamantly against any compromise, and couldnot be argued with. However, he
was an old Gandhian and wanted tovisit Baba Amte and Medha, both of whom he
knew. We approachedfrom the Gujarat side, -- where the government had
organiseditself large rallies both of adivasi and nonadivasi farmers.Well,
they were "brought there" I suppose. On the Maharashtraside, where the NBA
was camped out, were a band of adivasis andalso some farmers from the
Niphad area. Medha's fast had started.I talked a bit to the Niphad
farmers-I suppose they are theones who call themselves "Rajputs," though
this honorary title ismainly a claim to status and they may not be much
different fromthe mainly Kunbi-Maratha families in the Maharashtrian
villagewhere I live. They said, "people of both sides should sit downand
talk it over." "People"-not the government, not just theorganisation
leaders. People like themselves, from both sides.

This never happened.

Arundhati, you see the NBA as a "small ragtag army"confronting the mighty
forces of government and the World Bank. Isee it as a worldwide alliance
with considerable money and backingfrom upper middle class people in North
America and Europe, not tomention Delhi and Mumbai, along with a rather
small local base inthe Narmada valley. Medha Patkar stands in between, at
theintersection between the two. You are calling for the people ofthe
world, doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants whatever, tojoin the
NBA-you don't need to call them, they have been therealmost from the
beginning.
So what is the NBA? an adivasi organisation? ask Waharu. amovement of
those threatened by eviction due to the dam? ask someof the evictees many
of whom have gotten land through otherorganisations working for
rehabilitation, both in Gujarat andMaharashtra.

There is nothing wrong with going out to organise people,with throwing
oneself into a cause or supporting a cause, withrallying world opinion.
NBA has succeeded in giving great powerto a "no big dam" position and in
putting a big question markbefore the whole issue of "development". You
have every right tosupport them. But in doing so, please think about one
thing: whenyou go as leaders to people in the valley, or when you
representpeople in the valley to the world outside, what are
theconsequences for them of the arguments you make? what does itmean when
you put your own arguments, either explicitly orimplicitly, in their
mouths? are you so sure your sweepingopposition to big dams is in their
best interest, or that you aredemocratically representing their real
feelings on the matter?

Talking about alternatives

The NBA has begun to talk of "alternative development." Butthey have not
been much interested in alternatives that departfrom their particular line.

There are people working on alternatives-some in southernMaharashtra
struggles and campaigns, based in struggles, drawingon popular initiatives
and on technological innovations proposed byradical engineers and others in
Mumbai and Pune-of variouskinds. They use some very simple principles in
suggesting
alternatives.

These are: minimizing the height of dams and the areas to besubmerged;
ensuring that all of those who will lose lands orlivelihood to the projects
get compensation, land for landwherever possible; and ensuring that the all
drought-afflected wholook hopefully for benefits will get access to water.
The sloganof "equal water distribution" calls for the widest
possibleavailability of water - and for concrete, technologically
viablemethods of doing this.

You see, to have a really powerful people's struggle againstunjust dams and
the horrors of losing one's home, you have tobuild such a wide unity - of
the drought-afflicted along with thedam-afflicted, of those in the command
area of dams as well asthose in the catchment area. Otherwise, the state
will simplyuse the longings of those millions of drought-afflicted
againstdam evictees; this is their game of divide and rule, and it cannotbe
defeated simply by the support of middle class urbanitesoutside the area of
the project, however fervent and idealisticthey may be.

An alternative along these lines had been proposed for theSardar Sarovar
Dam. It has been published by Suhas Paranjape andK.J. Joy, in a book
titled Sustainable Technology: Making theSardar Sarovar Project Viable.
(They would be glad to send it toyou if they had your address). Their
proposal is based to alarge extent on work done by the groups of engineers
working withK.R.Datye of Mumbai and on struggles and experiments
inMaharashtra. The themes of this are simple: lower the height ofthe dam
drastically; construct a barrage below the present SardarSarovar dam to
take water to Saurashtra andKatch. Instead of storing water the year
around in a hugereservoir, most of the water would be distributed to
farmers andstored in farmers' fields-there to be converted into biomass.The
biomass can provide not only food, fiber, fodder etc. but evenelectricity:
instead of a centralised electricity generating dam,electricity can be
generated on a decentralised base usinggasifiers and other very modern
technological devices BY THEFARMERS themselves, and sold by the farmers to
the central grid.

Such an alternative would not do away with the dam, but itwould lower its
height and drastically reduce the number of peoplewho would lose their
land. It would also unite people, thedrought-afflicted especially in
areas such as Saurashtra andKutch, and the dam-afflicted.

But the alternative was never seriously considered. Thegovernment of
Gujarat of course was opposed; by now most opinionhas hardened and
positions have hardened. No change in the dam.Well, we might expect that
from the repressive State. But thealternative was also never considered,
never taken up, neverpublicized by NBA either. They may have been upset by
the idea of"making the Sardar Sarovar Project viable" - giving a new lease
oflife even though in a radically altered form, to something theywere
trying to totally destroy.

Could we conclude that they are not really interested inalternatives?

Was the NBA not playing into the hands of the State which hassystematically
and continually tried to divide people, which hasbuilt for itself a support
base against the farmers of the valleyamong the millions in Gujarat hoping
for water to maintain theirlivelihood? Isn't talk of only using rainwater
harvesting acruel joke on the people in the areas of Saurashtra and Kutch?

Krishna valley alternatives

Similar issues have come up regarding the dams in the Krishnavalley region
of Maharashtra. Take Koyna dam. There is oneactivist, Avinash B.J., a
long time NGO worker, who is consideredpart of the NBA group, working in
the area. I believe he evenattended a world conference in Rio and talked
of Koyna and Krishnavalley dams. He has little local base. But his
position in regardto the farmers of the region who still have some lands
around thereservoir itself, was that they should not move. The
maincommittee of Koyna evictees has had employment provision as one ofits
demands. But Avinash B.J.'s position was that the farmersshould stay and
carry out their life near the reservoir. Whetheror not it sounds good to
say that people should not join the floodgoing to live in questionable
conditions in the big cities, thefact remains that in this particular case
the result would be thatthe landless and land-poor farmers would have no
other occupationthat to provide agricultural labour to the bigger
landowners.

In the Krishna Valley as a whole the NBA has no support;there is a large
people's movement under the leadership ofNaganath Naikaudi and Bharat
Patankar and others, mainly organisedthrough the Shetmajur Kashtakari
Shetkari Sanghatana-sorry tobother you with a lot of long names, my
publishers always say itsbad for readers from abroad, they get confused,
and quiteunderstandable; talking only of the NBA and of no big dams is
amuch simpler message; unfortunately, however, people organisethemselves in
a multitude of organisations and with a multitude ofideas and aims.
Anyway, some of the movements have been ofvillagers standing to have their
lands flooded by construction ofdams. In Urmodi (in Satara district)
people have held a dharnafor over two months stopping construction of the
dam because theirrehabilitation is not assured; in Azra taluka of Kolhapur
districtthe construction of the Uchangi dam was halted to give thevillagers
a chance to present an alternative proposal.

Overall, the movements has taken up the demand to completethe dams in the
Krishna valley so that the water allotted toMaharashtra can be used before
the deadline set by the BachawatAward, in May 2000. But, the people are
insisting that thegovernment's method of building dams-top down,
bureaucratic,capitalistic-should be changed to provide a distribution
systemthat would give water to every village and every family in theKrishna
valley, not just to create green islands of development ina sea of drought.
And they have amassed experiments and data toshow that this can be done. A
Marathi booklet on this by BharatPatankar sold 10,000 copies on the day of
the conference when itwas brought out. (There is an English translation,
not yetpublished). Within this framework of demanding sustainable
damconstruction, full rehabilitation, and equal water distribution,people
of 13 drought-prone talukas in five districts of southernMaharashtra have
organised themselves. But they are better atcommunicating in Marathi than
in English, and the urban-middleclass component of this particular movement
is very weak. Thelocal papers (that is, the local editions of papers)
publish news,the government pays attention, but the Bombay and Pune
editions donot publish their news. Even when five days of demonstrations
bynearly 100,000 people in the area, simultaneous demonstrations byboth the
dam-afflicted and the drought-afflicted, were held inlate October 1998,
there was no reporting in the big metropolitanpress.

So I ask myself, what kind of movement is this, what kind ofmovement is the
NBA? Whose movement is it, anyway?

On Bags of Grain and the Meaning of Development

That requires a few comments about the question ofdevelopment. You are,
like many urbanites and many people inEurope and North America who buy food
from the market every day,very pessimistic and even antagonistic to the
idea of Indianfarmers getting into "commercialised agriculture." (Oh
yes,starvation in the midst of plenty: I was in Kalahandi, also, in1996
when I spent a few months at an institute in Bhubaneswar; itsproblem is not
commercialised agriculture, but the total andabysmal lack of any industrial
development in the district, alongwith the fact that 40% of forest land is
owned by the state). Itsomehow seems an destruction of a beautiful,
perhaps poor butnevertheless rich in variety and emotion, traditional way
of life.You wrote of the "bags of grain" in the farmers' household, andhow
they bragged about them.

I would like to say a little big about bags of grain. I'vemarried into a
farming family, perhaps not too different fromthese. We have 15 acres on
the banks of the Krishna, and we havea lot of bags of grain that have
sometimes filled even the "livingroom" of the house after harvest.
But, bags of grain are not worth all that much. Maybe 1000rupees a bag,
depending on the crop. Farmers don't make much of aliving off of
agriculture. They do not do so now, they did not doso either in traditional
times. That is, in times before "modern"commercialised agriculture and all
the paraphernalia ofcontemporary society entered their lives. We can say
both goodand bad things about the agriculture and industry and society
oftoday-but let's examine the traditional one a bit.

There is a Marathi saying: "Knowledge in the house of theBrahmans; grain in
the house of the Kunbis; songs in the house ofthe Mahars" (dalits). One
meaning of course is that theMahars, the Dalits, are the worst off, they
hardly have food toeat. But the other is that both the Mahars and the
Kunbi peasantsalong with all the vast middle castes who were identified
as"shudras" traditionally were deprived of knowledge and education.They
were subsistence producers traditionally, growing their ownfood-except for
the surplus eaten up by the Brahmans and thefeudalists and merchants-so
they had grain. But little else.It was a caste-stratified society. Then,
as today, "knowledge"was the mostvaluable; knowledge could command grain
and songs. Kunbis werelooked down upon as shudras and servants, dalits
were even worseoff. Economists have even argued that the average wage
foragricultural and basic manual labourers at the time of theArthashastra
represented the same in money terms as the averagewage during colonial
times; and it has not changed very much inthe 50 years of independence.

That is your traditional, non-commercialised society. Do youreally think
the adivasis, dalits and shudra or Rajput farmers ofthe Narmada valley want
to keep that? Are you so convinced thatthe thousands of dams built since
independence have been anunmitigated evil? Or that the goal should not be
to restructureand improve them rather than abandon them? Or that the
struggleshould not be to unite all the rural people aspiring to a life
ofprosperity and achievement in the modern world, drought afflictedand dam
afflicted,-- rather than to just take up the cause of the
opposition to change?
Development to so many people in India means getting outtraditional traps
of caste hierarchy and of being held in abirth-determined play. It is not
simply economic progress, butthe capacity to participate in a society in
which knowledge, grainand songs will be available in full measure to
everyone. When youso romantically imply that such development is not
possible, whenyou give all publicity and support to anti-development
organisations, are you not yourself helping to close such doors?
Hoping to hear from you,
Gail Omvedt
Kasegaon
District Sangli
India 415404

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