Development and dispossession in the Narmada Valley

209 Pages·2010·3.261 MB·English

by  Judith Whitehead

Development
and Dispossession
in the Narmada Valley
ii | Development and Dispossession in the Narmada Valley
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Development
and Dispossession
in the Narmada Valley
Judith Whitehead
Delhi (cid:127) Chennai (cid:127) Chandigarh
iv | Development and Dispossession in the Narmada Valley
Copyright © Judith Whitehead, 2010
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The views and opinions expressed in this book are those of the author, and the
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or the views of the publisher.
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgements xi
1. Introduction: Th ematic Departures 1
2. Historical Contours of Place and
Space in Rajpipla 35
3. Narmada Narratives 77
4. Conservation and Accumulation
by Dispossession in the Narmada Valley 120
5. Submerged and Submerging Voices:
Repression and Consent in the
Narmada Valley, 1998–2001 139
6. Conclusions 171
About the Author 188
Index 189
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Preface
Th is book focuses on the resettlement and rehabilitation of people
displaced by the Sardar Sarovar Dam in south-eastern Gujarat.
Much has been written about the Sardar Sarovar Dam and its social
and environmental eff ects, both in India and abroad. Indeed, it was
possibly the most widely discussed development issue in India of the
1990s, and resistance to it reverberated throughout the world. Th e
obvious question that arises, therefore, is why should there be another
book on the Narmada issue? My answer is that there are hidden
aspects of the Narmada dams that have been largely ignored, i.e., the
role that dams play in a process of accumulation by dispossession, also
termed accumulation by encroachment, or ‘primitive accumulation’.
In fact, as I argue in this book, accumulation by dispossession is not
just an unfortunate side-eff ect of large dam construction, but may be
a core feature of large-scale infrastructural and industrial projects. If
that is the case, then debates concerning the Sardar Sarovar project
provide important lessons for future debates concerning neo-liberal
development in India and elsewhere, and for social movements op-
posing these policies.
As is also well known, the opposition to the dam and the Gujarat
government’s resettlement policies suff ered a serious blow through the
negative Supreme Court decision in October 2000 against the public
interest litigation of the Narmada Bachao Andolan. Dam construction
was allowed to proceed pari passu with the implementation of resettle-
ment plans, while the Narmada Control Authority was judged to be
performing a more than adequate job of monitoring the resettlement
process in Gujarat. Th is book is, therefore, not a heroic narrative of
a David and Goliath struggle in which a small but highly eff ective
non-governmental organization, the NBA, through two decades of
struggle, fi nally emerged victorious over its detractors. As a result of
the virtual defeat of the anti-dam movement in Gujarat, this book
viii | Preface
off ers a retrospective analysis of the relations between the NBA,
Gujarat civil society, displaced adivasis in Gujarat, and the state gov-
ernment in order to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the
opposition movement to state government policies.
For many people, the failure of the NBA to generate widespread
support in Gujarat is not at all surprising. Gujarat, in recent decades,
has been characterized as possessing an ‘authoritarian political culture’
in which political and business elites have successfully melded neo-
liberal planning with Hindutva identity politics. Indeed, caricaturing
the anti-dam movement as anti-Gujarat provided successive Gujarati
governments with a platform to unite upper-caste propertied groups
with backward castes and some Dalit vote blocs. Despite the repression
that the Narmada Bachao Andolan experienced in Gujarat, however,
a retrospective analysis of what might have been done diff erently
in the face of state repression can help to inform future movements
opposing processes of accumulation by dispossession in other parts
of the subcontinent and worldwide. It is in the spirit of a friendly
critique that I off er my political analysis in the later part of this book.
Th is book, and the fi eldwork upon which it is based, would not have
been possible without the help of NBA members in Vadodara, espe-
cially Nandini Oza and Shripad Dharmidakary. Th ey introduced me to
people in several submerging villages and resettlement sites and were
a great help in explaining the complex eff ects of dam construction,
not only on peoples’ lives, but also on the surrounding environment.
I expect they will disagree with some of my interpretations. However,
in applying Gramscian and Marxist analyses to dam construction and
displacement, I have been led to somewhat diff erent conclusions than
those held by many NBA members and supporters. Indeed, I now
believe that only by uniting disparate groups experiencing accumu-
lation by dispossession can a suffi ciently strong movement emerge that
would possess the possibility of achieving redistributive social change
and more egalitarian outcomes. It is also my hope that mainstream
left parties, such as the CPI and CPI-M, pay heed to the suff ering
created by accumulation by dispossession, and that a red-green alli-
ance will emerge in India (and elsewhere) to provide an eff ective
counterweight to prevailing neo-liberal orthodoxy in both social
Preface | ix
and environmental matters. As Nandini Oza oft en pointed out, the
transformative power of ‘speaking one’s truth’ is oft en underestimated.
I am only sorry that my ‘truth-speaking’ is somewhat diff erent than
that of the Gandhians.
Th is book is dedicated to the people of Chopadi, the submerging
village I studied, who I cannot name for obvious ethical reasons. It
is an oft -repeated truism today that ‘tribal’ societies no longer exist,
having been destroyed by the twin tentacles of markets and states. In
addition, the Rousseauian image of ‘noble savages’ or Marxist models
of ‘primitive communism’ are now oft en seen by many academics
merely as the vestiges of a western regime of power/knowledge pro-
ducing its romanticized ‘others’. To this learned and oft en accurate, if
somewhat cynical, critique, I can only off er the fragile counterweight
of my fi eldwork experiences recounted in this book. But it was one
that I found personally transformative. It is diffi cult to convey the
qualitative and emotional aspects of research, especially when the way
of life one is studying is, in fact, in the process of disintegration. Yet,
even in partially submerging villages, I was amazed by the viability
of subsistence production and surprised by the resilience of forms
of gift exchange and bride wealth. Th e sense of freedom from both
market and state that such production systems aff orded people also
surprised me. To be not bound by ‘time-bound market discipline’
and a hierarchy of deferring to one’s social and professional superiors
was a personally uplift ing experience. It made me more hopeful and
less cynical about the human condition in general. It was also a lot of
fun.
If ‘tribal’ societies have oft en been denigrated as obstacles to ‘pro-
gress’ and ‘development’, they have also been sources of utopian
imaginings and social critique. Such utopian imaginings undoubtedly
contained much of their writers’ cultural and psychological projec-
tions, but they also included some grains of truth. While ‘power’
may be present in all societies, I would now argue that its presence
is quite diff erent in small-scale societies where there are no great dis-
tinctions between owners and non-owners of means of production
and no group possesses a monopoly on the means of violence, or
the power of life and death, over others. And if ‘tribal’ societies are