SACW | 5 May 2004

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire   |  5 May,  2004
via:  www.sacw.net

[1] Pakistan: Media freedom over a decade (I.A. Rehman)
[2] India: Outsourcing religion, on a wing and a prayer (Siddharth Srivastava)
[3] India: Bhopal gas tragedy lives on, 20 years later (Scott Baldauf)
[4] Victims of World Bank Policies Remembered (Robert Jensen)
+ Narmada Bacho Andolan Press Release - Supreme 
Court Directs M.P. Government to Provide 
Land-based Rehabilitation . . .


--------------


[1]

The News on Sunday [Pakistan]
May 2, 2004

MEDIA FREEDOM OVER A DECADE

While the past decade did not prove to be barren 
of development as the preceding one, the gains to 
the media were quite meager

By I.A. Rehman

How a country's media fares depends on the state 
structure and the style of governance because the 
more responsible, democratic and open a state 
establishment the greater the freedom of 
expression the media will have. Such an 
establishment would not think of assuming the 
powers to concede freedom of expression but would 
instead be driven by its chosen norms of 
governance to respect the right to free 
expression of ideas and opinion, including 
criticism of its working and dissent. The media 
in Pakistan has had to suffer heavily as a result 
of frequent and long deviations from the 
principles of representative and transparent 
governance. During the last decade its 
tribulations continued for want of clarity on and 
commitment to open management of public affairs.

The preceding ten years had constituted a wasted 
decade. The Zia regime had set records in 
muzzling the media. Martial Law regulations and 
censorship had been used to suppress the print 
media while the electronic media was exclusively 
employed for government propaganda. Journalists 
were thrown out of jobs, incarcerated and 
flogged, and their trade union was split up. 
However, half-way through the decade the world 
started changing. Electronic communications 
started demolishing the barriers closed societies 
had thrown around themselves. In 1988 the 
Pakistan media won a major victory when following 
judicial intervention the much-hated Press and 
Publication Ordinance of the Ayub period was 
amended.

The most significant result was that the right to 
publish, that had earlier on been made subject to 
the whim and caprice of the government (in some 
cases matters had to be referred to the head of 
the state), was somewhat better recognized. A few 
months later restoration of civilian elected 
government became possible. The transition to 
democracy demanded removal of constraints on 
democratic functioning of state institutions. 
Equally necessary was it to free the media of the 
restraints devised over the preceding 60 years or 
so -- first by the colonial administration, then 
by myopic quasi-democratic governments and 
finally by authoritarian regimes. No attention 
was paid to the task during the remaining years 
of the decade preceding the last one.

By the beginning of the last decade the 
transition to democratic rule had run into 
serious problems. The second post-1988 elected 
government had been sacked by the all-powerful 
establishment like its predecessor / and the 
theory of the majority parliamentary party's 
exclusivist rules, which implied destruction of 
the opposition, in parliament and outside, 
through the foulest possible means, had come into 
full sway. The need to free the media of 
traditional curbs could get no place on the 
official agenda in this situation.

The agenda for due recognition of the media's 
freedom was by no means light. A number of laws 
existed on the statute book that, directly as 
well as indirectly, curtailed the right to 
freedom of expression. These included the 
Security of Pakistan Act, the Official Secrets 
Act, the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, 
the Press and Publication Ordinance (or its 
replacement -- Registration of Printing Presses 
and Publications Ordinance), and certain 
provisions of the Penal Code, the Criminal 
Procedure Code and the Contempt of Court Act. 
Repeal of these laws or at least drastic 
amendments in them, would have met only a part of 
the requisites of a free media. Another 
requirement was freeing the electronic media of 
government control. Further, it was necessary to 
allow the media the fruits of the movement 
towards responsible and transparent governance 
which meant more wholesome and honest 
communication from the government to the people 
and recognition of the latter's right to know.

While the past decade did not prove to be barren 
of development as the preceding one, the gains to 
the media were quite meager. The National Press 
Trust's publishing venture ended (although the 
collateral damage in the form of demise of the 
Pakistan Times and Imroze was neither warranted 
nor welcome). And freedom of information moved 
from a debasing point to a legislative issue. 
However, none of the restrictive laws was 
touched. Instead, more restrictive laws were 
drafted. The trend away from transparency 
manifestly became stronger.

Nothing demonstrates the Establishment's 
resistance to openness better than the affairs of 
the freedom of information legislation. Yielding 
to domestic pressure and external goading, the 
government decided the enactment of a freedom of 
information law could not be avoided. The process 
began with the drafting of an ordinance in the 
last month of 1996 but before it was promulgated 
its author left the caretaker regime. His 
successors found the bill's sweep unacceptable 
and they issued a diluted version in January 
1997. It was defended on the ground that the 
media should accept what the bureaucracy had 
condescended to permit. The cabinet was reported 
to have finalised the rules under the ordinance 
but these were omitted from the official gazette. 
The ordinance remained unimplemented and expired 
four months after its still-birth. The post 
October-1999 regime drafted a new ordinance and 
offered it for public debate and soon afterwards 
the matter was shelved. Then suddenly a freedom 
of Information Ordinance was issued in October 
2002, after the general election had been held, 
and that piece of legislation is not subject to 
the constitutional limitation on the life of an 
ordinance.

This ordinance has been the subject of an 
extended controversy for more than year. First, 
it does not satisfy the internationally 
recognized requisites of legislation on the 
subject -- maximum possible access to public 
records, narrow space for exemptions, legitimate 
sanction for denial of information, and judicial 
redress for arbitrary withholding of information. 
Secondly, it is limited to federal authorities' 
records. Even if the federal government has 
chosen to become sensitive to provincial rights 
in this matter, there is no evidence of 
suggestion or advice to the provincial 
governments to have their own freedom of 
information laws (as is happening in India). 
Thirdly, the ordinance is considered 
unenforceable, especially by the administration, 
in the absence of rules that are yet to be 
notified. An enterprising NGO has challenged this 
position and got a ruling from the Federal 
Ombudsman to the effect that the keepers of 
public records have an obligation to provide 
information to applicants even in the absence of 
rules. For the large body of potential 
beneficiaries the ordinance remains a dead letter.

The government suffered a considerable loss of 
goodwill on the freedom of information issue by 
presenting it with unclean hands. The freedom of 
information ordinance formed part of a package 
that also included a Press Council Ordinance, a 
special defamation law and a new version of the 
Press and Publication Ordinance. All of these 
laws have been vigorously assailed as being 
contrary to the demands of media freedom. Thus, 
it can be argued that with all the old 
restrictive laws remaining in place and some new 
ones added to them, the curbs on freedom of 
expression and media freedom have increased.

The reality on the ground is however, somewhat 
different than the legal framework for the media 
would indicate. The media community, especially 
journalists in the print media, rushed to occupy 
the space opened up by the 1988 developments and 
the immense support they received from the public 
encouraged them to enlarge the area of freedom. 
They were also helped by the revolution in 
electronic communication and by the fact that 
even a controlled democracy must allow some 
public discourse. If governments do not go on 
talking they may be found completely idle. In 
such situations resort to punitive laws becomes 
difficult because exceptionally high stakes (much 
as national security) have to be mentioned. The 
scheme of reliance on an officially controlled 
electronic media to dictate to a captive audience 
has to a considerable extent been undermined by 
the emergence of private TV channels. Whatever 
they may do to remain on the right side of 
authority by serving its interest, they cannot 
survive without competing with each other in 
enlarging the scope of public discourse. They 
cannot help without increasing people's knowledge 
of themselves and the world. Advocates ofclosed 
society have no answer to this situation and 
cannot but suffer it.

Where state structures fail to completely stem 
free expression of ideas and opinions recourse is 
taken to policies and style of governance. It is 
in this area that the Pakistan media faces its 
greatest threat today. The restrictions on 
political activity obviously reduce the media's 
freedom. Besides, things happen without anybody 
owning responsibility and the media cannot edify 
the people. An agitation against denial of 
official publicity to a leading newspaper has 
been going on for weeks. The Information Minister 
has denied responsibility and so has the Prime 
Minister. If the authorship of restrictive orders 
is not known, against whom does one appeal and 
where? A journalist was detained and his arrest 
denied for many days. In much cases, freedom of 
expression does not face a frontal attack, the 
edifice on which this freedom rests is pulled 
down.

If any lesson can be derived from this brief 
review of the media's fortunes over the past 
decade it is simply this: the basic rights are 
indivisible. The media's right to freedom will 
rise and fall no more and no less than the upward 
or downward movement of the whole body of the 
people's basic rights.


______



[2]


Asia Times
May 1, 2004

OUTSOURCING RELIGION, ON A WING AND A PRAYER
By Siddharth Srivastava

NEW DELHI - One area of outsourcing is not taking 
away jobs in the West, but it is certainly making 
quite a few Christians say "Oh Jesus". A mix of 
economics and a shortage of priests in Western 
Europe and the United States have fueled the 
outsourcing of the "holy mass" to parishes in the 
south Indian state of Kerala.
This is how it works: mass intentions - requests 
for services, such as thanksgiving and memorial 
masses for the dead - are made at the foreign 
dioceses and then passed to churches in Kerala, 
to priests and congregations with time on their 
hands. The communication is usually via email. As 
there is no official channel, many intentions are 
through personal relations of the priests, who 
may have friends abroad.
If a devotee offers a mass in, say, New York, it 
may be performed in Thrissur. Each mass is said 
in front of a public congregation in Malayalam, 
the local language. Reports from Kerala say 
bishops have had to limit priests to just one 
outsourced mass a day to prevent them from 
denying others the opportunity to earn a higher 
income. There is a dominant Christian population 
in Kerala, with churches dotting the urban and 
rural landscape.
Referred to as "dollar masses", several reports 
on prayer outsourcing have been appearing in the 
local press in Kerala due to the incomes 
generated among local churches. "Most of these 
requests are made from the US and European 
countries. These mass intentions are usually 
routed through dioceses and handed over to 
relatively less busy parishes," Jose Porunnedam, 
chancellor of Syro-Malabar Church, told a local 
daily newspaper.
"Pilgrim centers also direct mass intentions to 
the diocese. We also get mass intentions made at 
Lourdes in France and Santiago De Compestele in 
Spain," says Father Dr Philip Nelpuraparambil, 
director of ecumenism and dialogue at the 
Archdiocese of Changanassery.
The main reason for the outsourcing of prayers is 
the lack of manpower and hectic schedules in 
churches in the West. Add the financial benefits. 
As in the case of corporate outsourcing, the 
money saved can be substantial. While fees for a 
holy mass intention made in Germany can be 50 
euro (US$60), it is just Rs 50 ($1) at a Thrissur 
diocese. Rates vary from country to country: a 
request from North America or Europe can net an 
Indian priest three pounds or four pounds ($5-7), 
which is good money here.
"Mostly these intentions are given out for 
meeting expenses of parishes with membership of 
fewer than 250 families and less sources of 
income. The money is also used for paying 
remuneration for the priests," says Father Paul 
Alappat, chancellor of the Thrissur Archdiocese, 
which gets an average of 50 mass intentions from 
abroad every month.
One Indian news agency has quoted the case of 
Father Benson Kundulam, who lived in Paris for 
several years, and recently held a requiem mass 
in Cochin, India for a man in France mourning the 
death of his father. "It doesn't matter where the 
person is from, we treat the request the same," 
he says. The money, he says, is the last thing on 
the priest's mind. "It is a religious duty to say 
the mass. We do it the same, whether it is an 
Indian paying a few rupees or an American paying 
dollars."
His colleague, Father Tony Paul, who has not 
traveled abroad, gets far fewer foreign requests 
and more Indian ones, which earn only a fraction 
of the money. "If you don't get personal 
requests, it is up to the bishops to hand them 
out," he said.
Virtual worship is not unusual in India as 
several prominent temples, such as Tirupati and 
Vaishnodevi, have set up websites that allow 
online darshan (prayers) as well as the offering 
of prasad (sweets, incense etc) by paying via 
credit card.
However, as in the case of corporate outsourcing, 
there have been voices of protest from the West. 
Britain's biggest industrial union, Amicus, 
expressed alarm earlier this week at the latest 
trend in outsourcing to South Asia: religion.
"Religious services and prayers for the dead are 
being offshored from the United Kingdom to India 
because of a lack of priests," Amicus, whose 
one-million-plus membership includes several 
thousand clergymen, said in a statement. Amicus 
cited press reports that revealed how more and 
more prayers were being said in Kerala because 
they had become too expensive in the West. "This 
shows that no aspect of life in the West is 
sacred," said Amicus' national secretary, David 
Fleming.
Church representatives, however, aver that 
outsourcing religious services has been going on 
for many years, which has nothing to do with the 
current fad over business process outsourcing or 
services sector jobs.
Paul Thelakat, spokesman for the Cochin 
archdiocese and editor of the largest-selling 
Catholic weekly in Malayalam, has been quoted as 
saying that prayers for the dead have been 
outsourced for decades and that the tradition has 
been thrust into the spotlight only because of 
the controversy over corporate outsourcing in the 
West.
"Priests and bishops abroad have no choice but to 
send them here or else the mass intentions would 
never be said," Thelakat said.
Other critics say that though religious 
outsourcing does not take jobs away from other 
parts of the world, unlike its corporate 
equivalent, there may be a tendency by 
unscrupulous priests scrambling to make a profit, 
with no way to verify whether the clerics perform 
the ceremonies they are assigned.
It could indeed be morally right to outsource God 
as it results in money being re-distributed to 
the poor and needy. On the other hand, should 
matters concerning the human spirit be shopped 
around to the lowest material bidder? One would 
think that, like one's faith, the choice should 
be individual.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New Delhi-based journalist


______



[3]

The Christian Science Monitor
May 04, 2004

[Photo] ACCOUNTABILITY: Raisa Bi, who survived 
the Union Carbide tragedy in 1984, has put 
pressure on the Indian government to hold the 
company responsible for the accident.
SCOTT BALDAUF

Bhopal gas tragedy lives on, 20 years later
Evidence of contaminated water in Indian city mounts.
By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

BHOPAL, INDIA - Nearly 20 years after an accident 
at a Union Carbide chemical plant killed 
thousands here, there are signs that a second 
tragedy is in the making. New environmental 
studies indicate that tons of toxic material 
dumped at the old plant have now seeped into the 
groundwater, affecting a new generation of Bhopal 
citizens.

The Indian government - long criticized for its 
lax regulation of Union Carbide and reluctance to 
pursue legal claims - now says it's ready to hold 
parent company Dow Chemical liable for the ground 
contamination.

For many, the Bhopal litigation serves as a test 
case for India's relationship with foreign 
businesses and investors. But for the victims of 
Bhopal, the gas tragedy is a matter of justice, 
compensation, and safety - all of which, they 
say, has been a long time in coming.

While Union Carbide settled a civil suit in 1989 
by agreeing to pay victims a lump sum of $470 
million, a criminal trial against the company and 
its top officials is entering its 15th year, with 
less than half of the few hundred witnesses 
having testified. And the compensation process 
has taken so long that the settlement fund has 
nearly doubled in value; Officials haven't 
decided how to dole out nearly $333 million in 
unplanned interest.

In the meantime, government inaction on water 
contamination may be affecting untold thousands 
who were seemingly left untouched by the 
poisonous gas accident of Dec. 3, 1984.

"Our state pollution control board in December 
filed a report that confirms that there is 
contamination of the groundwater, and we will 
give this to the Supreme Court to settle," says 
Babu Lal Gaur, state minister for rehabilitation 
of the Bhopal gas victims, in an interview with 
the Monitor.

He notes that these studies were kept under wraps 
by the previous Congress Party government, but 
that the new state government, led by the 
Bharatiya Janata Party, will pursue the case with 
vigor. "The Dow company, they are responsible for 
this, and the state government wants Dow to clean 
up, after the decision of our Supreme Court."

A Union Carbide spokesman says that the company 
and its sole shareholder, the Dow Chemical 
Company, cannot be held liable for any waste 
cleanup at the plant or any contamination of the 
ground water. "There is no legal foundation for 
application of liability," says John Musser, the 
Union Carbide spokesman, speaking from Midland, 
Mich., headquarters.

Union Carbide took "moral responsibility" for the 
tragedy, says Mr. Musser, but never had legal 
responsibility for the Bhopal plant, since that 
plant was operated by a separate Indian 
subsidiary, Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL).

At the time of the accident, Union Carbide owned 
50.9 percent of UCIL's shares, but severed its 
relationship with UCIL in 1994. UCIL did some 
cleanup at the site, Musser says, "but did not 
complete the work," and the plant site was later 
bought by another Indian company, Everready 
Industries India Limited. Today, the plant site 
has been transferred to the legal responsibility 
of the state government itself, he says. "The 
chain of responsibility is very clear and Union 
Carbide has not been a party in that."

For Abdul Jabbar, a community activist here, a 
case establishing clear responsibility has been a 
long time in coming. Mr. Jabbar has been involved 
in the Bhopal gas victims' cause since that first 
night on Dec. 3, 1984, when he woke up to the 
sounds of screams on the street, and gathered up 
his family to flee.

"This tragedy is living on," says Jabbar, who 
runs a seamstress workshop for widows of gas 
victims. "The groundwater for 3 to 5 kilometers 
from the site is contaminated, and this comes 20 
years after the fact. The state public health 
agency has conducted two studies proving the 
water is unfit for drinking, but still people use 
the hand pumps."

Jabbar says he believes that the previous 
Congress government withheld information about 
water contamination at the Union Carbide site 
because it was the Congress government that 
welcomed Union Carbide to Bhopal in 1969, and 
Congress led governments that regulated it 
thereafter. The current government's hands are 
not dirty, he adds, so they are happy to blame 
Congress and move on with the issue. Officials 
with the Congress Party did not return calls for 
this report.

The scientific evidence of water contamination is 
mounting. By 2002, a number of environmental and 
public interest groups had collected samples from 
the soil, groundwater, fruits, and vegetables, 
finding high levels of heavy metals such as 
nickel, chromium, mercury, and lead, along with 
other toxic materials such as dichlorobenzines, 
all of which were used at the Union Carbide plant.

Contamination levels in soil and water samples at 
the plant were more than 10 times higher than in 
surrounding areas, indicating that the plant was 
the source of the contamination. Mercury and lead 
contamination have even found their way into 
samples of breast milk.

There is one more cruel twist. Back in 1984, the 
wind direction carried the methyl isocyanate gas 
toward the south. But now, the contaminated 
groundwater is heading north, carrying the 
poisons to a completely new population.

Holding Dow Chemical responsible has its risks, 
of course. India's central government, led by the 
BJP, has opened its doors to foreign business, 
including dozens of new chemical factories 
scattered along the Arabian Sea coast, from 
Bombay to the southern tip of Kerala and up the 
east coast of Tamil Nadu.

Any new legal action in the 20-year-old Bhopal 
case could scare off foreign investors who might 
fear an unending barrage of litigation in the 
case of an accident. Some survivors here say that 
Indian regulations on industry remain lax and 
sporadic, and that a future Bhopal-style tragedy 
is still possible.

Down at Shahjahani Park - a small patch of grass 
from which tall mango trees grow - a meeting of 
old men and women promises to keep the struggle 
going.

Among them is Raisa Bi, one of more than 500,000 
Bhopal residents who survived that night but 
continues to suffer from its effects. She works 
six days a week stitching clothes at the workshop 
run by Jabbar's group. Her disabled husband, 
himself a gas victim, cries every day she goes to 
work, she says. "He asks, 'How do I go on living 
my life like this?'"

While she is encouraged that the state government 
is now showing interest in water contamination, 
she believes that the only people who truly care 
about the Bhopal gas tragedy are those who have 
survived it.

"Those who are living out the consequences of the 
tragedy, they are the only ones who remember it," 
she says.


______



[4]


alterNet.org
April 23, 2004

VICTIMS OF WORLD BANK POLICIES REMEMBERED
By Robert Jensen, AlterNet

For tourists interested in democracy, Washington, 
D.C. holds a number of attractions this weekend. 
In addition to the March for Women's Lives on 
Sunday, visitors and residents alike might want 
to visit the World Bank at 1818 H St. NW.

It's not what is inside the building that is 
worth the stop, but the three people who will be 
across the street on a symbolic hunger strike for 
four days "to commemorate the forgotten people in 
the Bank's 60-year history, those whose right to 
development has been violated by the very 
institution that claims to listen to the voices 
of the poor."

The action, April 23-26, will coincide with the 
Bank's and International Monetary Fund's annual 
meetings, and is at odds with the Bank's campaign 
to cast itself as the new champion of the 
downtrodden. "The global imbalance between rich 
and poor countries must be urgently addressed if 
the world is to prosper into the 21st century," 
reads the news release.

Beyond the slick statements of Bank officials, we 
should look to the experience of the people who 
deal directly with the Bank. As Indian activist 
Medha Patkar put it in an interview this fall: 
"The existing development process is skewed; in 
the name of development, it leaves a large 
majority of our population out of the real 
benefits of this growth model." Instead of 
promoting a more democratic system, "institutions 
like the World Bank undermine the process of 
community participation within the country," 
Patkar said.

Angana Chatterji (anthropology professor, 
California Institute of Integral Studies), Dana 
Clark (president, International Accountability 
Project, Berkeley, CA) and Dickson Mundia 
(founder, Basilwizi Trust, Zimbabwe) hope their 
strike will inject some reality into the Bank's 
publicity campaign by highlighting the 
devastating effects on people evicted from their 
lands and homes as a result of projects financed 
by the Bank.


Their statement, excerpted below, deserves close 
study and consideration by those engaged in the 
global justice and anti-empire movements in the 
United States. (The full version includes the 
list of demands and a place to endorse.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

WHY ARE WE FASTING?

We are here to commemorate the forgotten people 
in the Bank's 60-year history, those whose right 
to development has been violated by the very 
institution that claims to listen to the voices 
of the poor. We are bearing witness to situations 
across the globe where the Bank's lending has 
violated its mandate and its policy framework, 
and we are undertaking a fast to call attention 
to this aspect of the Bank's legacy. We stand in 
solidarity with those who have suffered 
devastating impacts after having been evicted 
from their lands and their homes to make way for 
Bank-financed projects.

We are here to call on the Bank to abandon its 
indifference to the plight of people who are 
suffering from the effects of these failures, and 
instead to respect the rights of project-affected 
people, and to support the right to development 
for those marginalized and impoverished 
communities that have borne the brunt of 60 years 
of lending dangerously.

Over the past sixty years, the Bank has supported 
projects that, in the name of development, have 
led to the displacement of tens of millions of 
people. Nobody knows exactly how many people have 
been displaced by Bank projects over time, 
because the Bank has been negligent in keeping 
track. However, the reality is that World 
Bank-financed dam projects alone have displaced 
ten million people over the years. The World 
Bank's own research has shown that most people 
who are involuntarily resettled do not easily 
regain their previous standard of living, much 
less benefit from the project and have their 
standard of living improved, as called for by 
Bank policy.

We are gravely concerned by the role played by 
the World Bank in funding and legitimizing many 
projects that have come to represent a legacy of 
implementation difficulties, of underestimated 
and under-resourced externalities and costs, 
costs which are borne by those least able to bear 
them. The Kariba dam in Zimbabwe and Zambia, 
built during a time of British colonial 
occupation in the 1950s, has been an enduring 
source of misery for 50 years for the Tonga 
people. The Singrauli coal-fired plants in India, 
financed by the Bank from the mid-70s to the 
early 90s, have wreaked havoc on the lives of 
hundreds of thousands of people. The Yacyretá dam 
in Paraguay and Argentina, financed in the 1980s 
and early 1990s by the World Bank and 
Inter-American Development Bank, has been the 
subject of multiple inspection panel claims and 
yet problems persist and effective remedial 
measures remain elusive.

We recognize that in the past two decades there 
have been significant shifts in the World Bank's 
commitment to sustainable development, in 
particular the development of a set of 
environmental and social policies and the 
creation of the groundbreaking Inspection Panel. 
We commend this attention to the empowerment of 
the people affected by World Bank lending and the 
increased awareness of social and environmental 
risks associated with World Bank lending.

We are also aware of an unfortunate recent trend 
that has manifested itself: the World Bank's 
shifts to minimize its obligations and shift more 
of the burdens and risks onto local people and 
borrowing governments. This tendency is reflected 
in the recent exercises in reformulating Bank 
operational policies. Many organizations have 
engaged in dialogue with the Bank over the years 
regarding revisions to its policy framework - 
including policies on involuntary resettlement 
and indigenous peoples - only to be frustrated by 
the Bank's practice of weakening policies and 
resisting calls for the policies to be improved 
and brought into line with existing and emerging 
standards of international law. This frustration 
is similarly reflected in the press conference 
being held this week by participants in the World 
Commission on Dams, Structural Adjustment Review 
Initiative and the Extractive Industries Review; 
in each case, the Bank is seeking to avoid 
recommendations developed as part of 
multi-stakeholder processes.

We are particularly concerned about project 
supervision issues. Although the Bank has 
apparently been paying more attention to due 
diligence at the design stage ever since the 
China Western Poverty Reduction Project, there is 
still much to be desired in the Bank's approach 
to project supervision and project 
implementation. In 2001, the World Bank 
significantly weakened the language of its 
project supervision policy; the revision was done 
without public input.

In correspondence last month regarding the threat 
of an increase in the height of Sardar Sarovar 
dam on the Narmada river without adequate 
rehabilitation and in violation of the terms of 
the loan agreement, the country director for 
India confirmed that the Bank as a rule does not 
supervise projects beyond the disbursement of 
funds by the bank to the borrower. We note that 
when the Bank was forced to withdraw from Sardar 
Sarovar in 1993, the Bank's General Counsel 
clarified that the terms of the loan agreement 
continue to apply to a project until it is 
repaid. The Sardar Sarovar Project loan has not 
been repaid and is therefore still legally 
binding. Nonetheless, Bank Management is taking a 
hands-off, laissez-faire approach to project 
supervision - at least with respect to the 
environmental and social loan conditionality. 
This approach makes a mockery of the terms of the 
involuntary resettlement, indigenous peoples and 
other policies that are supposed to mitigate the 
longer-term impacts of Bank-financed projects. By 
failing to ensure that funds are being used in 
accordance with the purpose and conditions of the 
loan, the Bank is abrogating its responsibilities 
as a lender, and its mandate of poverty 
alleviation.

We are acting in solidarity with people affected 
by Sardar Sarovar on the Narmada river, where the 
World Bank has willfully ignored publicly 
reported accounts of policy violations, and 
remained silent when the Indian government 
authorized yet another increase in the height of 
the dam. The Bank shares complicity in last 
month's decision to increase the dam height to 
110 meters, as a result of which thousands of 
people - mostly indigenous or tribal people - 
will face an onslaught of miseries this year.

The Bank's silent acceptance of forcible 
displacement without adequate resettlement and 
rehabilitation is in violation of its own policy 
framework, and in violation of basic principles 
of international law. Its determination to 
continue displacing people and ignoring the 
consequences is reflected in its renewed emphasis 
on high-risk infrastructure, including potential 
support for the Omkareshwar dam upstream of 
Sardar Sarovar, a dam project that would displace 
50,000 people.

We are aware that many projects in the Bank's 
portfolio are out of compliance with the loan 
agreements and Bank policies - including projects 
like Sardar Sarovar that are not actionable 
through the Panel process. In addition, we are 
troubled that those problems that have been 
identified by local people and confirmed by the 
Inspection Panel have not been adequately 
remedied. We stand in solidarity with communities 
affected by these accountability gaps.

We are concerned that lessons of the past do not 
seem to be affecting plans for the future. A 
recent report by International Rivers Network, 
"The World Bank at 60: A Case of Institutional 
Amnesia?" documents the Bank's return to a 
strategy of financing high-risk and unsound 
infrastructure projects, and emphasis on a 
government and corporate focused approach to 
development that systematically marginalizes 
civil society in decision-making. Where is the 
Bank's commitment to addressing critical problems 
and implementing effective remedial measures? 
These problems must not be ignored, as they play 
out, harshly impacting people and the environment.

To remedy some of these problems, we call on the 
Bank to ensure, at a minimum, that projects that 
it has supported are brought into compliance with 
its own policies and loan covenants. We call in 
particular for full compliance with the terms of 
the resettlement policy for all communities that 
have been displaced by a Bank-financed project. 
The Bank must ensure that people who have 
suffered displacement by its projects are able to 
regain and improve their standard of living. The 
Bank should dedicate new resources and create 
institutional capacity to address implementation 
failures and assist the borrowers and affected 
communities to come to terms with legacy issues. 
We call on the World Bank to take responsibility 
for ensuring the development effectiveness of its 
lending and the accomplishment of a 
rights-respecting and rights-enhancing approach 
to development.

Angana Chatterji, Associate Professor of 
Anthropology, California Institute of Integral 
Studies. Since 1984, Dr. Chatterji has been 
conducting advocacy and policy research with 
postcolonial social movements toward enabling 
participatory democracy for social and ecological 
justice.

Dana Clark, President, International 
Accountability Project, Berkeley, CA. Ms. Clark 
is a human rights and environmental lawyer that 
has recently edited a book assessing the efficacy 
of the World Bank's Inspection Panel.

Dickson Mundia, Founder, Basilwizi Trust, Kariba 
Dam (Zimbabwe) oustee. Mr. Mundia is a lawyer 
campaigning for compensation for the Tonga 
people, displaced by the World Bank funded Kariba 
Dam in Zimbabwe.


o o o

[See Also]

NARMADA BACHAO ANDOLAN
B-13, Shivam Flats, Ellora Park, Baroda-390007 
(Ph. 0265-2282232 baroda at narmada.org)
58, Gandhi Marg, Badwani, M.P.(Ph. 07290-222464 badwani at narmada.org)

Press Release/ 17 April 2004


Supreme Court Directs M.P. Government to Provide Land-based Rehabilitation;

Refuses to Stay SSP Construction Despite Incomplete Rehabilitation:

On April 16, 2004, the Supreme Court heard a 
petition by Sardar Sarovar Dam affected families 
from Madhya Pradesh. While taking a lenient view 
of the crass violation of law, constitutional and 
human rights by the all the concerned 
governments, it refused to stay the construction 
upto 110 m. of the Sardar Sarovar Dam, despite 
the crying evidence of utter lack of 
rehabilitation in the submergence area of the 
dam, it did however make clear that Government of 
Madhya Pradesh must comply with the provisions of 
the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal Award (NWDTA) 
and past Court rulings to provide full land-based 
rehabilitation to all Project affected families 
(PAFs). It ruled that the cash compensation in 
lieu of land-based resettlement was unacceptable.

The case was filed by PAFs of Picchodi and 
Jalsindhi villages who were affected at the 95 
and 100m dam levels, who are still not been 
rehabilitated despite being affected long back. 
While declining to issue a stay on construction, 
the bench consisting of Justice Y K Sabharwal, 
Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justice S B Sinha, 
they did however ruled that the Government Madhya 
Pradesh must comply with the provisions of the 
Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal Award (NWDTA) and 
past Court rulings and provide full land-based 
rehabilitation to all PAFs and
that cash compensation is unacceptable. While 
such directions indeed are necessary, but the 
Court will fail to prevent the tragic and 
unlawful submergence of thousands of families, 
without any sort of rehabilitation, during this 
year’s monsoon season.

Modi Absolved; Trickery by M.P.

The Court's judgement comes after a March 16th 
decision by the Narmada Control Authority (NCA) 
giving clearance to further construct the dam 
from its present height of 100m to 110m. The 
clearance came after a protracted struggle by the 
NBA challenging the false claims of 
rehabilitation and thus the legality of a further 
height increase. While Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh 
both claimed to have completely rehabilitated all 
PAFs,
Maharashtra admitted that rehabilitation was 
incomplete (although greatly underestimating the 
balance of PAFs to resettle). Nonetheless, under 
pressure from Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh to give 
a green light for further
construction, Maharashtra signed a letter 
promising to resettle the balance PAFs before 
submergence. With this, Gujarat CM Narendra Modi 
got his wish for a height increase before the 
elections.

The decision to go ahead with construction even 
though rehabilitation is admittedly incomplete in 
Maharashtra is itself a clear breach of the law, 
which requires resettlement of families at least 
6 months before submergence. Nevertheless, while 
these obvious problems in Maharashtra exist, 
there are even more glaring and large scale 
problems with rehabilitation in the dam-affected 
villages of Madhya Pradesh. M.P. accounts for 193 
of the 245 villages affected by the dam and the 
bulk of the 40,000 affected families, and it is 
here where the greatest travesty of justice is 
occurring.

There are thousands of families who have been 
left off of the government's PAF list for a 
variety of reasons, including land titles that 
haven't been cleared up, major sons (who are 
entitled to land) who haven't been counted, 
faulty level surveys, and the unwillingness of 
the government to recognize the traditional but 
untitled lands of adivasis living along the 
river. In addition, the government is simply 
deleting people from its PAF list who it finds 
inconvenient to rehabilitate. Minutes of Narmada 
Control Authority meetings show that GoMP has 
made terribly inconsistent estimates of PAFs, 
erasing thousands with the stroke of a pen from 
one statement to the next. For example, at two 
meetings of the NCA’s R&R Sub-Group (February and 
November 2002), GoMP testified that there were a 
total of 12,600 families from 135 villages in the 
state
affected by the dam at 110m. In fact, this was 
the number it had consistently given at meetings 
over the course of several years.

Nevertheless, in May of 2003 it made the 
"tentative" claim that now only 5,607 families 
were affected at 110m. A month later it bumped 
that number up to 8,406 families, still a 
reduction of over 4,000 families. Amazingly, the 
government reduced the number of PAFs it 
recognized by a third.

And while GoMP plays this game of numbers, it is 
failing to actually rehabilitate the PAFs it does 
recognize. While M.P. has illegally forced a 
portion of its PAFs to accept cash or to 
involuntarily move to Gujarat, it has not given 
one family in M.P. proper rehabilitation with 
replacement agricultural land as required by law. 
In clear violation of the NWDTA and the Supreme 
Court orders of 2000, M.P. is only giving out 
insufficient cash compensation or allotting 
mostly uncultivable land in Gujarat, violating 
the PAFs right of choice to settle in their home 
state. As a consequence, many people that have 
been declared as affected remain in the valley, 
refusing to take bad land in Gujarat and 
demanding land-based rehabilitation in Madhya 
Pradesh. It thus clear that between faulty 
counting and totally insufficient rehabilitation 
of those declared, rehabilitation in M.P. is 
anything but complete.

Allows Abuse of Law

Given this situation and law surrounding 
rehabilitation for the project, it is clear that 
this height increase is totally illegal. 
According to the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal 
Award (NWDTA) whose provisions govern
dam construction, all Project Affected Families 
(PAFs) must receive land-based rehabilitation 
before being ousted from their land. To 
quote:"Gujarat [read state government with funds 
from Gujarat] shall acquire and
make available a year in advance of the 
submergence before each successive stage, 
irrigable lands and house sites for 
rehabilitation of the oustee families from Madhya 
Pradesh and Maharashtra who are willing to 
migrate to
Gujarat. Gujarat shall in the first instance 
offer to rehabilitate the oustees in its own 
territory." Thus, oustees must be provided with 
rehabilitation land either in Gujarat or in the 
their home state (depending on the oustee's 
choice) one year before any submergence. It 
further says that the PAFs should be totally 
shifted to the new plots no
later than six months before submergence.

The Award further states, "In no event shall any 
areas in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra be 
submerged under the Sardar Sarovar unless all 
payment of compensation, expenses and costs as 
aforesaid is made for acquisition
of land and properties and arrangements are made 
for the rehabilitation of the oustees." Again, 
there is no ambiguity: rehabilitation before 
submergence.

The Supreme Court judgement of 2000 further 
stipulated that, "Construction of the dam will 
continue as per the Award of the Tribunal," and, 
"Further raising of the height will be only pari 
passu with the implementation of
the relief and rehabilitation." Pari passu is 
defined as moving at the same rate or apace. The 
Court thus acknowledged the NWDTA's provisions as 
law, and further upheld the principle that 
submergence cannot precede
rehabilitation.

Thus, it is clear that the construction now under 
way on the SSP, and the destruction of lives it 
will bring with it, is in utter violation of the 
law, not to mention the human rights of the 
affected people. The failure of the state 
governments, Central Government, and Supreme 
Court to protect the legal and human rights of 
its people for the sake of political expediency 
has been made clear. The people of the Narmada 
Valley who will soon face the relentless flood 
waters as they are impounded behind the 110m dam 
will, will nonetheless continue to fight for 
their rights to just and fair rehabilitation.

M.K. Sukumar

Philip Mathew


_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on 
matters of peace and democratisation in South 
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit 
citizens wire service run since 1998 by South 
Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
The complete SACW archive is available at: 
bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/

South Asia Counter Information Project a sister 
initiative, provides a partial back -up and 
archive for SACW:  snipurl.com/sacip
See also associated site: www.s-asians-against-nukes.org

DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.

--