The Narmada River makes its run primarily through the north-central state of Madhya Pradesh in India. After the Ganges, the Narmada is the second most important river on the whole subcontinent.

What's happening to this great river and to the people who live and make their livelihoods along it is happening all around the world. The Narmada is a microcosm of the global tension between conservation and development, between peoples' rights and corporate interests. The issue of large dam construction symbolizes the struggle for justice and equality in Indian society.

The government of India plans to build 35 large dams, 135 medium size dams, and 3000 small dams along this one river! Supporters of this project insist that water for irrigation and the electricity derived from the dams is desperately needed to support development.

But one large dam can affect a river and its peoples by creating a reservoir several hundred miles long which may displace tens of thousands of people who live in villages along its shores and depend on the river itself and the adjoining fertile lands for their livelihoods. Along the edges of this new reservoir, silt deposits build up and can create a sludge so deep and treacherous that people and livestock can become stuck and die in it if they try to access the water. This silt, which would normally wash down from mountains to the ocean builds up behind the dam and creates all kinds of problems from destabilizing the actual dam to drastically decreasing the potential volume of water a dam can hold to generate electricity from. Stagnant water behind a dam can serve as a breeding ground for disease causing insects. Stagnant water also means whatever pollutants (human, animal, industrial) released into the river also build up, historically causing significant increases in health problems. And in India with lax environmental enforcement and a lack of proper sewage treatment facilities, this is a real problem. There are also large seismic faults that run near and under some of the proposed dam sites and the effects of a dam failure on the land and people downstream would be absolutely catastrophic. These are just a few of the problems with the construction of large dams along this river.

According to Friends of the River Narmada,

Opponents of the dam construction project question the basic assumptions of the Narmada Valley Development Plan and believe that its planning is unjust and inequitous and the cost-benefit analysis is grossly inflated in favor of building the dams. It is well established that the plans rest on untrue and unfounded assumptions of hydrology and seismicity of the area and the construction is causing large scale abuse of human rights and displacement of many poor and underprivileged communities. They also believe that water and energy can be provided to the people of the Narmada Valley, Gujarat and other regions through alternative technologies and planning processes which can be socially just and economically and environmentally sustainable.

So after being turned on to this struggle for equality and justice, primarily through a fantastic book by Arundhati Roy called The Algebra of Infinite Justice, I decided to investigate for myself and learn as much as I could. The issue is very complicated and would take a long time to fully explain here but what is clear to anyone who visits this region and talks with its inhabitants is that the poor and underprivileged are getting a very bad deal -- if you even want to call it that. Many tens of thousands of people will and are being displaced from their ancestral homes by the rising waters from the dams and are not being relocated to similar land elsewhere -- most are not being relocated at all. Most of the displaced peoples are labeled as adivasi -- indigenous tribal peoples. When we look at our own country's history, or that of many others, and we learn about the injustice that has taken place at the cost of native peoples, many difficult feelings arise. Well this is happening now. This history is part of the struggle that is modern day India (and China, and various parts of SE Asia, and Eastern Africa). This is a struggle that we can help with, that we can bring voice and collective power to make sure these injustices do not repeat themselves again.

What is remarkable is that many of these poor and underprivileged peoples have come together, forming a grassroots movement, primarily the Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the Narmada Movement), to halt and influence the government's plans. They are crusading for justice and the Right to Life for the inhabitants of the Narmada Valley.

What is being labeled as a project for "common benefit" or "national interest" is built on dubious claims. Additionally, the purported benefits don't even come close to the kinds of fundamental human rights that are being ignored here at the cost of -- of course -- the ones with traditionally the smallest voices, the ones without affluence, without power, without the potential for economic gain from this change.

Would you be surprised to learn that American and Canadian companies are leading the charge in India for these massive dams to be built? The privatization of water and of electricity means that it will only be available to those who can afford it. It also means big bucks to those who invest in thee projects. The benefits that come with this go to the powerful while the downfalls, hardships, and disasters will fall at the feet and submerge the homes of the "weak" and the ones without "loud enough" voices. Incredibly, the Narmada Bachao Andolan coalition has had some huge successes including the forced withdrawal by one of the dam projects leading backers THE WORLD BANK! This bank, or group of investors, is a force of evil that is responsible for amazing amounts of environmental and cultural destruction in the name of economic progress. You can learn much more about this without a whole lot of effort.

In 2003, I spent several weeks documenting what is happening along this river. At worst, in case these dams are built, I wanted to document the people and the relationships they had with this river before they are gone. I spent time in small villages that are in the already marked submergence zone. I stayed with families, interviewed land owners, photographed the kinds of agricultural work that are being done along this river that people do to make their livelihoods -- from sugar cane and cotton to fishing and manual (actually diving down to scoop up sand) quarrying from the river's bottom. I photographed villages, temples, and holy sites in submergence zones. I photographed people working on dam construction projects at the peril of their own future for the temporary sustenance of daily pay. Lastly, I tried to document the grassroots movement of people coming together to make their voice heard. This is going on all around the world. It's just that we never hear about it. But millions of peoples' lives are at a crossroads right now.

These are photographs of people that are being pushed around by large corporations and the corporate hands that are put into government to do the pushing for their own economic interests.

The images here are just a small piece of a much larger series that I hope will tell a story of some of the real experiences of folks like you and I who want the best for our families, who are struggling to make ends meet, who have a relationship with a place that is deeper than the pockets of corporate coffers.

Images:

Thanks for taking the time.