Narmada Dam Project
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The Narmada Dam Project, known officially as the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP), is a project involving the construction of a series of large hydroelectric dams on the Narmada River in India. The project was first conceived of in the 1940s by the country's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. The project only took form in 1979 as part of a development scheme to increase irrigation and produce hydroelectricity. Of the 30 large dams planned on river Narmada, Sardar Sarovar is the largest. With a proposed height of 136.5 m, it's also high on discord between the planners and the Narmada Bachao Andolan. The government claims the multi-purpose project will irrigate more than 1.8 million hectares - most of it in drought prone areas like - Kutch and Saurashtra.
The Narmada dam is India's most controversial dam project and its environmental impact and net costs and benefits are widely debated. The Narmada Dam has been the center of controversy and protest since the late 1980s.
Local protests taking the form of a genuine peoples movement, known as the Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save Narmada Movement) have been led by Medha Patkar. The World Bank was a funder of the SSP, but withdrew after an independent review in 1990. Indian writer Arundhati Roy has protested the Narmada Dam project.
Spanner Films's documentary Drowned Out (2002) follows one tribal family who decide to stay at home and drown rather than make way for the Narmada Dam.
Why the dam is required ?
Jawaharlal Nehru once had stated that dams are temples of Modern India. The proposed increase in height would make water available to 4000 more villages. Gujarat is a dry and hot land. Without irrigation agriculture is impossible and a large percentage of the poor in gujarat still depend on agriculture for their livelihood.
Height of Concern
- In February 1999, the Supreme Court of India gave the go ahead for the dam's height to be raised to 88 metres from the initial 80.
- In October 2000 again, in a 2 to 1 majority judgement in the Supreme Court, the government was allowed to construct the dam upto 90 metres.
- In May 2002, the Narmada Control Authority approved increasing the height of the dam by another five metres.
- In March 2004, the Authority allowed another raise - this time to 110 metres.
- In March 2006, the Narmada Control Authority gave clearance for the height of the dam to increased from 110.64 metres to 121.92. (This comes after the Supreme Court of India had refused to stay the height of the Dam again in 2003)