The ‘Tragic Heroes’ of India’s Environment Sector

M. Dinesh Kumar and C. D. Thatte

Tragic Hero is ‘A man who is not eminently good and just yet whose misfortune is not brought by vice or depravity but by some error of frailty’, Aristotle

According to the Greek Philosopher, Aristotle, the ideal tragic hero, should be, in the first place, a man of eminence. The actions of an eminent man would be, as Aristotle puts it: ‘serious, complete and of a certain magnitude’. Further, the hero should not only be eminent but also basically be a good man, though not absolutely virtuous. A tragic play portraying the sufferings, fall and death of the protagonist must produce ‘terror and compassion’. The hero of a tragic play should neither be a villain nor a wicked person, for his fall or his death would please and satisfy our moral sense without generating the feelings of pity, compassion and fear. Therefore, the ideal tragic hero should be basically a good man with a minor flaw or tragic trait in his character.?The entire tragedy should begin from this minor flaw or error of judgment of the hero, and thus his fall, suffering and death would certainly generate feelings of pity and fear. So, Aristotle says: “For our pity is excited by misfortunes undeservedly suffered, and our terror by some resemblance between the sufferer and ourselves.” Finally, Aristotle says: “There remains for our choice a person neither eminently virtuous nor just, nor yet involved in misfortune by deliberate vice or villainy, but by some error or human frailty; and this person should also be someone of high-fame and flourishing prosperity.”

The words of Aristotle would resonate in our minds if we look at the lives of some environmental activists of eminence who have fought fiercely for several decades for the cause of environment and people, through non-violent methods in contemporary India. They were passionate and emotional to the cause for which they stood steadfast and uncompromisingly till their last breadth, and were un-disputably sincere to the core. They could ignite the minds of millions of passionate, educated-youth, mostly from the middle class, who became their ardent followers. There was nothing unusual in this phenomenon, as the people whom they worked for were voiceless and underprivileged, living on the margins, and the speechless animals which they wanted to save were some of the most beautiful creatures on the Earth. Their voices became instant hits in the emergent ‘environment’ sector of the 1980s. Those days, working for the ‘environment’ was the most glamorous job a youngster could think of, though less paid. No doubt, some of them were most committed and highly talented.

It was a time when almost everyone believed that at the pace at which deforestation was taking place, the Amazon rain-forests would disappear in a few decades, and the Earth would become a desert; the rate at which fossil fuel was being used, oil reserves would get exhausted soon; the pace at which the poachers were hunting down wild cats in the deep forests, the beautiful Royal Bengal tigers would soon vanish from the face of the Earth; and with the construction of the proposed hydropower project in the Silent Valley in Kerala, the lion-tailed Macaque, found only in the rain-forests of western Ghats, would become extinct.?

It was not just a coincidence that the fight of these environmental crusaders, most often, was against large Water Resource (WR) projects. While their contention was serious--that dam building involved displacement of people, large-scale felling of trees and forest submergence, destruction of wildlife habitats and significant land acquisition and therefore should be stopped--, they also received support from several international agencies and powerful groups that mushroomed all over. Many of them were from countries that had finished the agenda of dam-building in the late 1930s and became major exporters of agricultural commodities to poor countries of Asia and Africa. In India, some of these groups fought tirelessly against the Tehri Dam project in Uttarakhand; in the case of Sardar Sarovar project in Gujarat, many national and international NGOs and movements participated in the resistance; and the Silent Valley project in Kerala witnessed a people’s movement led by a forum called the Shastra Sahithya Parishad.

We were taught that the rain-forests bring heavy rains in the Amazon (and not that because of the rains occurring throughout the year, the forests thrive); planting trees would bring more water to the hydrological system. We were also told that the building of high dams would mean the death of the rivers, and the cutting of trees in the catchment for creating reservoirs would eventually result in accelerated siltation with eventual silting up of the reservoirs.

A chorus was growing internationally in support of these the movements. Special columns were written in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian, highlighting the ‘plight’ of indigenous people and those displaced by the dams and canals. The (Bradford) ‘Morse Committee’ report on Sardar Sarovar Project was celebrated by the anti-dam activists all over the world. The much-touted report of the World Commission on Dams (WCD) that was rejected in its entirety by the developing countries was a further cause of celebration for these activists and groups. Hence, the war against dam and dam builders was won! Overnight, the social and environmental activists became ‘heroes’ The proponents of the large dam projects became ‘villains’, no matter how profound and true were their arguments in support of such projects. It was as if no one in the country appreciated their logic behind proposing such projects, though they were top-class water resource/irrigation engineers, economists and planners who had worked tirelessly to plan and design those projects.

But the concerns of protecting the rights of indigenous people and the environment, as raised by those activists, appeared so genuine that nobody was interested in seeing the other side, to know how many millions of thirsty people living in remote rural areas would benefit from drinking water supply, how many million farmers who suffered from chronic droughts and floods, would be able to produce crops, and how much of clean energy could be produced for the nation, if such projects are completed. It should also be mentioned that many of these activists had fair enough credentials in their respective fields, viz., ecology, environment, social work and protection of rights of indigenous communities. Probably, what they failed to do is to appreciate the fact that in many arid tropics like India, large dams are inevitable, and that our effort should be in designing such projects with minimum adverse environmental effects rather than stopping them.

The fierce opposition from such activists led to temporary halting of the construction of two large dams and total cancellation of the plan for one. The country lost many billions due to time and cost over-runs resulting from the delay in construction of the two dams. For a couple of decades, it appeared as though the era of large dams was over and a new paradigm of WR Development and Management was on the horizon for the developing countries. Sadly, the activists never looked at: the problems faced by farmers in the drought-prone regions; the hardship of women who had to walk long distances to fetch water for the family during the summers when all local ponds and wells dried up. The peasants were labelled as ‘capitalist farmers’; the acute drinking water shortage in such areas was attributed to the government’s criminal neglect of ‘already-dying’ traditional water bodies.

It is indeed well-established that large dams play a very important role in human development of countries like India, and there is really no other choice. But attempts were made by these interest groups to downplay the grave situation arising out of a scenario of not investing in large water infrastructure projects in the form of stagnated agricultural growth & rural development, food insecurity and high unemployment. They propagated a few myths to argue that viable alternatives to large water projects did exist, or agriculture would stop being a major claimant for water in future. These myths crippled healthy debates on water management solutions. Volumes were written on how watershed management would solve the problem of rain-fed areas; and how rainwater harvesting even in the most-severely drought-prone areas could be a magical wand to get drinking water during peak summer. Needless to say, the proponents of watershed management and rainwater harvesting became great celebrities.

As part of a larger narrative to gain legitimacy for the ‘alternatives’, a section of the Civil Society demanded a new outlook on water management. The following views characterized this outlook: i) any WR project involving submergence of forests and human displacement, should be avoided; ii) rather than augmenting water supplies, water use efficiency in irrigated agriculture should be enhanced significantly to manage the demand for water in that sector and to enable allocation of more water for other sectors; iii) sufficient flows need to be maintained for environment in all rivers; iv) the performance of new schemes should be assessed rather in relation to their ability to improve equity in access to water than augmenting water supplies; and, v) new irrigation schemes, if at all required, should meet the growing needs of the farming enterprise, rather than contributing to the country’s grain basket.

However, the situation changed soon with the sudden turn of events. The anti-dam movement suffered major setbacks when these activists and groups lost their case for stopping the construction of Sardar Sarovar dam in the Supreme Court (SC) of India. The Court, having heard the arguments, recognized the need for building such large storages to secure water for all and at all times, in the drought-prone regions, while taking cognizance of the concerns of the project-affected people (PAP). The people who supported the cause of large dams stood vindicated when the SC allowed raising the height of the Sardar Sarovar dam in stages, subject to environmental clearance and lawful rehabilitation of the PAP. Not only that these dam projects were successfully built, the benefits from such projects soon started flowing in abundant measure that everyone could see. The people in the country could once again see the positive developmental outcomes of these projects.

Many of these noble men and women, who dedicated a precious part of their lives for a cause and tirelessly worked for it, are no longer amongst us. They have gone into the annals of history. We should salute them for their commitment and we do. However, while tens of tributes are written about them praising their lives and works, it will be unfortunate if no one tries to reflect on what went wrong with the anti-dam movement in the country; the huge cost the country had to pay in terms of the lost benefits from them and the cost escalation of these projects.

In spite of having the privileges of having their voices heard through a somewhat friendly media, they failed to propose a model of WR development that works. The concerns they raised about the adverse impacts of large dams, which they opposed, were by and large found to be incorrect. The alternatives, which they espoused, probably do not exist. They were actually driven by passion and emotion, and believed in a strong anti-development ideology, and had less faith in science and technology-driven development. They probably indulged in extremism, and failed to seek a ‘middle path’ in order to strike a balance between development and environment. They had too little trust in governments and the officials who worked for them, especially the WR engineers. Today, the people who continue to fight against dams and other large developmental projects believe that those ‘once-iconic’ figures represented the true voices of the people they worked for and understood their real developmental needs, and that that the official stand was always ‘anti-people’. For us, they are the ‘tragic heroes’ that Aristotle talked about around 24 centuries ago.

M. Dinesh Kumar is Executive Director of the Institute for Resource Analysis and Policy (IRAP), Hyderabad. Dr C.D. Thatte is former Secretary General, Int. Commission on Irrigation and Drainage, and former Secretary-Water Resources, Govt. of India. The views are personal. Email: [email protected].