-->
Sacred Rivers: Energy
Resources and People’s Power
Susan Visvanathan
The question of water and
land have become the politically most sensitive questions today. Rivers are
recognised to be ancient embodiments of the gods as well as sites of
civilisation. The last hundred years have transformed the way we think about
rivers and embankments. In Kerala, the Mullaperiyar, with its source in the
border of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, which was once called Madras Presidency faced
many public battles regarding not just the use of the water, but the age and
viability of the dam. The Malayalis have seen apocalypse in the eroding dam and
have led processions and marches till they received assurance that the 19th
century Mulla Periyar would be repaired, and a new dam built further downstream
by their own state government. Anand Pandian writes of a colonial engineer
called Major John Pennycuick who
built the dam, and to whom a Tamil ode has been written, extolling his virtues
in changing the drylands of Madurai into a silken quilt of green, where women
previously used to famines, now bedeck themselves and dance like peacocks and
swans. Major Pennycuick who
invested his own money in the building of the dam, and requisitioned finances
from local people is also thought to have thrown his second wife, pregnant with
child into a crack, to seal the dam. There is a famous tantric tradition of
human sacrifice to stabilise the
new building, which the colonist seems to be implicated in, by which he
becomes the cultic embodiment of
the artificially created fertility
of a once dry area. Is this to say that no sacrifice is sufficient when it
comes to the building of dams? Pandian writes,
“The severe famine of
1876-’78 temporarily suspended any administrative attention to the project, but
the Famine Commission consitituted in its wake specifically recommended the
plan to help secure grain production in the hard –hit plains of Madurai. Major
John Pennycuick was ordered to assume full responsibility to the proposed
project in 1882, and in the same year he submitted a detailed plan that was
ultimately sanctioned. The plan called for a thick rubble masonry dam that
would eventually rise 176 feet above the riverbed to impound its waters in a
large reservoir - water held here would be led through a tributary stream-bed
to a mile-long tunnel blasted through the granite mass of the Western ghats,
emerging east to tumble down to the plains of Madura. An agreement was signed
with the Government of Travancore to lease the necessary lands in 1886, and
work on the dam commenced in 1887. The first waters passed out of the tunnel in
1895” (Pandian in Baviskar 2003:14) Interestingly, this is very close to the
time the Vice-Regal Lodge in Shimla was electrified after much debate, since
the question of coal and gas was being discussed and electricity was seen to be
an urgent substitute. (Visvanathan 2006) Anand Pandian uses A.T. Mackenzie’s History of the Periyar Project (1899) to
describe the making of the dam. There were tropical forests, wild animals and
leeches, half the year was monsoon, and malaria and cholera killed off
thousands of workers who found working at 3000 feet tiring enough. “Hundreds of these laborers perished
due to accidents, contagious diseases and climatic exposure – camp hospital
registers tell only part of this story as many sick workers went back to their
native villages never to appear again at the construction site.” (ibid 14-15)
Pandian comments that the British commemorated their own dead with grave
stones, but the Indian workers graveyard remains unmarked and overgrown with
scrub. Ecologically, it is significant that many lower caste communities buried
their dead in the land allowing for the earth to rejuvenate. In 1964, Yashoda, the family maid
servant, told me that they buried dead ancestors in the yam gardens, and I
thought, then, from a eight year old’s perspective that was great proximity
indeed. My father’s brother’s wife laughingly said that our jackfruit tree
produced such excellent fruit because it was fed from the water of not just the
Pamba which flowed by our field, but
by the trapped rain water that passed the adjacent graveyard, which had
been land gifted from my grandfather’s property to the church. This contiguity to river and water is what
makes farmers families so alert to
the warp and weft of life and death, to subsistence and continuity which are
such essential tropes in green movements. India has never stated the problem
ideologically as “agriculture vs industrialisation” till very recently, for
Gandhi’s influence in Nehruvian real politic is very well known. Secularism had its own enchanted
spaces. Nehru’s fascination for Buddha and Advaitism in the same breath is
worthy of analyses. Diana Eck quotes Nehru,
My
desire to have a handful of ashes thrown into the Ganga at Allahabad has no
religious significance, so far as I am concerned. I have no religious sentiment
in the matter. I have been attached to the Ganga and the Jumna rivers in
Allahabad ever since my childhood and, as I have grown older, the attachment
has also grown. I have watched their varying moods as the seasons changed, and
have often thought of the history and myth and tradition and song and story
that have become attached to them through the long ages and become part of
their flowing waters. The ganga, especially, is the river of India, beloved of
her people, round which are interturned her racial memories, her hopes and
fears, her songs of triumph, her victories and her defeats. She has been a
symbol of India’s age-long culture and civilisaion, ever-changing,
ever-flowing, and yet ever the same Ganga. She reminds me of the snow covered
peaks and the deep valleys of the Himalayas, which I have loved so much, and of
the rich and vast plains below, where my life and work have been cast.” (cited in Eck In Baviskar 1993:30,31)
One of the most brilliant
depictions of the Ganges is the work of
Michael Aschauer, the Austrian photographer, who had done river length,
slow motion studies, of the Danube, the Nile, and went on to photograph the
Sacred River in Benaras, using a stably placed camera on the roof of a boat as
it travelled, along the rim of the holy city.
In Benaras, the questions
raised about river pollution have been steadfast. Sacred concerns and
scientific ones are mutually supportive, and the activists and the human rights
petitioners have used shared resources to fight their battle. The question of
Narmada too has always been read as a political and spiritual battle: there has
been no conflict in understanding the support that believers receive from
secular intellectuals. (Baviskar
The petition has been one of
the most important ways in which the battle over the future of India with
regard to waterways has been fought. Along with this are people’s meetings,
confrontation with Banks, including the World Bank, and representatives of the
Nation state, as well as the use of internet technology and the impact of
personalised or collective web dissemination through the Blog has been
considerable. Clearly, the penultimate forum is the Court, and the belief that
petitions can be formalised and submitted to the judges for coming to a
resolution.
The Ganga has always been a
site of myth and riverine subcultures, it’s reach so phenomenal, that even it’s
tributaries are considered sacrosanct. Diana Eck wrote compellingly about the
myths of the Ganga, showing that these myths evolve because of love and
attention that people give to the river, and that nature worship integrates the indigenous yaksha and naga
tradition.
It
is a view in which the universe, and by extension the land of India, is alive
with interconnections and meanings
and is likened to a living organism. There is no nature ‘worship’ here, but a
sacramental natural ontology. In an excellent essay, Betty Heimann writes: “In
India the veneration of Nature has never been discarded as outdated and
primitive. On the contrary, primitivity is here appreciated in its productive
ambiguity with inexhaustible
potentialities. Nature cult is the fundament of the earliest form of Indian
religions and remains the basis of even the highest and most exalted
speculations of Indian philosophy.” (Eck in Baviskar2003: 33)
However the enthusiasm with which pilgrims throw plastic into
the river, or factories their effluents is perhaps the greatest detriment to
River cleaning efforts. In their report, Emerging Contaminants in Ganga River
Basin with Special Emphasis on Pesticides,
Manoj Babu et al argue that,
The active ingredients in a number of PCPs (personal care products)
are considered bioactive chemicals. This implies that they have the potential
to affect the flora and fauna of soil and aquatic receiving environments. In
some cases, bioactive ingredients are first subject to metabolism by the
consumer and the excreted metabolites and parent components are then subject to
further transformation in the receiving environment. Personal care products
differ from
pharmaceuticals in that large quantities can be directly introduced into
receiving environments (air, surface and ground water, sewage, sludge and
bio-solids, landfills, soils) through regular use, such as showering, bathing,
spraying, excretion or disposal of expired or used products. Because of this
uncontrolled release, they can bypass possible treatment systems. As a result,
PCPs are referred to as pseudo-persistent contaminants (Barcelรณ and
Petrovic, 2007). (pg 3 of J. Manoj Babu report)
The authors also detect
steroids in the municipal wastewaters and livestock farming and streams which
flow into the river. On a visit to Mathura in 1994, my daughters and I were
astounded to see the filth that flew through the streets into the sacred river.
Two pundits accompanied us, and one of them jumped into the boat that we took,
and then casually took water for us to drink with a cupped palm, exhorting us
to drink it, filled though it was
with ash and sludge. It turned out he was one of the petitioners in a court
case demanding the cleaning of the river in Mathura. All over India, there are
people who petition the court to hear their case over the most dramatic of
cases, and the spirituality of these places is never denied, though the law is
secular. Bharat Jhunjunwala, a former Professor at the Indian Institute of Management,
was attacked early this year for petitioning against damming the Ganges, and
his activist colleague Vimalbhai
has been to jail and on release, has started a website. In Kerala, sand river
mining has become so acute, that the rivers are drying up, and the reclaimed
land is silting up rapidly with foliage and trees, so that people used to
bathing and worshipping at the sarpu kavus or snake groves, now find that they
are literally without a river in the summer months. That rivers have holy value
is a visible aspect of our geo-morphology. People of all religions accept this
quality, and infact their own stories of origin are related to the sacred
river. The St Thomas Christians of Kerala have many stories of floods, floating
crosses, and establishment of churches and Christian hamlets wherever such holy
emblems were found, as in the case of Niranam where St Thomas is supposed to
have made his first Brahman convert. Farming communities have a long history of
living in contiguity with each other regardless of their religious
differences. Kalpathy River, a
sacred river to the Hindus in Kerala has an annual festival where Muslim and
Christian traders have been setting up shops for several centuries according to
tradition. Sacred rivers are not only physical manifestations of the divine
spirit cleansing people of all castes and religions, for the flowing water does
not carry the weight of distinctions, but it also reproduces on its embankments
the architecture of it’s mythic representation. So Kalpathy temple in Pallakad
Kerala, recreates the steps of Benaras, because the origin of the temple is
from the 14th century when it is believed, a Brahman widow walked to
Kashi with her husband’s ashes and brought back a stone lingam from there, and received the King’s patronage
in the establishment of a temple at the site where she placed the lingam. Kalpathy, which is
now a heritage village, is also a settlement of Smartha Brahmans who lived by
their traditional occupations of Astrology, Ayurveda, Accounting, Temple
Management, Music and Mathematics, Vedas and its dissemination and ofcourse a
very rich food culture. They were not tillers of the soil, so when the land
distribution occurred in Kerala, in the 1950s, they lost much of their wealth
and property, and since they had
been the backbone of the colonial clerical and bureaucratic structures in the
Presidency towns, they were able to enter the professional enclaves of modern
India very early.
For the farmer, however, the sacred river stands for
agricultural prosperity. An activist has summarised the Neeri Report of 2005 to
say that, The Tehri dam “is also likely to capture around 65% of the total
sediment carried by Ganga at present.”
In his summary, the Report is thought to valorise the quality of the water for a specific utilitarian
purpose, without taking into account how the destruction of algae and phage. I now provide the summary of the Neeri Report sent by Dr Bharat Junjunwala.
·
Twenty sampling points were identified in the stretches from Gomukh
to Rishikesh and from Badrinath to Devprayag. Maximum five sets of samples were
collected from identified sampling points of the rivers (Bhagirathi,
Bhilangana, Alaknanda, Mandakini and Ganga) during September 2002 to August
2003 for assessment of different abiotic, biotic and microbiological
parameters.
·
Application of water quality index (WQI), which is based on nine
parameters, viz. DO, pH, BOD, temperature, total solids, turbidity, total-P, NO3
and fecal coliform, at various stretches of the river water revealed
that water quality of the river between Tapovan and downstream of Uttarkashi
was good (index value 70 – 90) throughout the period of study, while water
samples of other areas were ranging medium and good during the same period. An
exercise further revealed that WQI values would have been excellent (90 – 100)
throughout the study area, if fecal coliform values were eliminated from the 9
parameters used for WQI calculations.
·
Based on the irrigation water quality classification, water quality
of all the sites of the entire stretch was determined and found to fall under
the desired category of C1S1. The irrigation quality of water having C1S1
category is beneficial for growing plants like: Eucalyptus robusta, Acacia
nilotica, Casuarina sp., Prosopis
tuliflora, Dalbergia sissoo,
Azadirachta indica etc.
· It has been observed that water samples from different rivers contained
specific types of phages. Different types of hosts were required for their
detection. The
experimentation done at NEERI revealed that Ganga/ Bhagirathi sediment has the
capability to adsorb coliphages and induce their proliferation. The coliphages
adsorbed to the sediment appear to be responsible for predating coliforms in
the overlying water column when the sediment and water co-exist in a container
under static condition. The Bhagirathi water to be stored in a dam mimics such
static condition and, therefore, shall in no way deteriorate the water quality
of the river downstream of the Tehri dam.
· The release of copper and chromium under static condition and the
synergistic effect of chromium on the bacteriostatic/ bacteriocidal property of
copper appear to be the factors which keep the water free from coliforms and
other bacteria responsible for putrification of water when left for a long time
under static condition.
· Quantification of U3O8, ThO2 and percent
K in sediment samples and comparison of these parameters with those present in
other river sediment samples and freshwater lake sediment samples show that
Bhagirathi/ Ganga sediments collected between Gomukh and Rishikesh are more radioactive
than others though it could not be established as to whether the radioactivity
observed could be bacteriocidal. However, possibility of existence of
synergestic effect of radioactivity on the antibacteriocidal activity of Cu and
Cr, in combination, cannot be ruled out.
·
It can be concluded now that the
uniqueness of river Bhagirathi/ Ganga lies in its sediment content which is
more radioactive compared to other river and lakewater sediments, can release
Cu and Cr which have bactericidal properties and can harbour and cause
proliferation (under static condition) of coliphages that reduce and ultimately
eliminate coliforms from the overlying water column. This is possible as the
dam is going to retain practically all the sediment load of Bhagirathi as
particles of size of >0.01 mm are likely to be retained in the dam. Thus,
Tehri dam is not likely to affect the quality or self preservation property of
river Bhagirathi/ Ganga, as it mimics a static container which is conducive for
conditions responsible to maintain the water quality.The
NEERI study has honed in on coliphage as the source of the self-purifying
capacity of River Ganga. There are two types of bacteria in the river
water—coliform are harmful bacteria while coliphage destroy the coliform and
are beneficial bacteria. Usually a particular species of coliphage destroys one
particular species of coliform. There are innumerable species of both coliphage
and coliform. Speciality of Ganga lies in the fact that the coliphage are
‘wide-spectrum’—one coliphage destroys many species of coliform.
This helps keep the river self-purify itself more easily.
Bharat Jhoonjhoonwala’s comment on the Neeri report
is useful:
The
coliphage are absorbed in the sediments after having been created. They lie
dormant in the sediments—even for many years—and get revived when coliform
enter the water. NEERI has found that coliphage are present in the river water
downstream of Tehri Dam up to Rishikesh. Moreover, NEERI has assessed that 10
percent release of sediments from Tehri Dam, plus sediments being added by
Alaknanda River at Dev Prayag, will be sufficient to supply the sediments
required for the coliphage to survive and multiply hence there is no negative
impact of Tehri Dam on the self-purifying capacity of the Ganga.
The
special quality of Ganga waters is also due to minute (but high) levels of
Thorium, which is radioactive, and high levels of copper and chromium in its
waters:
It can be concluded now that the uniqueness of River
Bhagirathi/Ganga lies in its sediments content which is comparatively more
radioactive compared to other rivers and lake water sediments investigated, and
can release Cu and Cr which have bactericidal property and can harbour and
cause proliferation (under static condition) of coliphages which reduce and
ultimately eliminate coliforms from the overlying water column (NEERI 2004:
107).
These
beneficial elements—Thorium, Copper and Chromium—enter the river water from the
rocks against which the water rubs during flow:
The metal ions, originally derived from breaking of
rocks, are
controlled by several river valley conditions—physical as well as chemical
(NEERI 2004: 74; NEERI 2011: iii).
This
absorption takes place in two ways—chemical- and mechanical weathering. Rain
water contains miniscule amounts of acid. This acid breaks the rocks and
loosens the metals therein which then flow into the river. This is called
chemical weathering. Secondly, metals are directly absorbed in the river water
as the water dashes against the rocks containing these metals. The difference
in metal composition of the river is said to be due to this difference in the
weathering regime:
The striking feature of the radium isotope data is the
distinct difference in the 228Ra and 226Ra abundances
between the highland and lowland rivers. The lowland waters are enriched in 228Ra,
while the highland waters contain more 226Ra. This difference mainly
results from the differences in their weathering regimes (NEERI 2011: 169).
The
problem is that if upstream river is diverted into tunnels for generation of
hydropower then the water will not rub against the stones and not absorb the
beneficent metals. It is to be noted that bumper-to-bumper dams have already
been made upstream of Tehri Dam except the uppermost 135 km; and are planned on
the entire 300 km flow of Alaknanda except the lowest 30 km stretch. Thus it is
likely that the coliphages will be deprived of the sediments on which they
survive. The metals loosened by chemical weathering due to the rains may seep
into the dry river bed and also not get carried by the river.
Conclusion
is that the single project of Tehri Dam may not adversely affect the sediments
because the sediments have already been created during the upstream flow or are
being added from other rivers. However, a cascade of projects which prevents
weathering in upstream reaches will prevent absorption of the beneficent
elements in water and remove the base on which the coliphages survive. The
conclusion that Tehri Dam will not affect the self-purifying capacity of Ganga
waters may possibly be correct on a stand-alone basis; but this cannot be
extrapolated to other projects especially when a cascade is being built which
will almost totally divert the upstream river waters into tunnels and prevent
weathering.
Creation of coliphages
The
NEERI study does not give any indication of the reasons of creation of the
wide-spectrum coliphages. There is an oblique suggestion that this may be due
to the miniscule amounts of beneficent radioactivity on the river water.
However, this is not substantiated. If this were so, it should be possible to
replicate their creation under laboratory conditions by exposing water of other
rivers to same small levels of radioactivity. NEERI agreed to this suggestion
for further research but expressed inability to undertake this in absence of
another sponsored project (NEERI 2010).
It is
possible that the vibrations of sages in the area may be leading to the
creation of these coliphages. Or a unique combination of flow velocity,
weathering, algae, temperature etc. may be leading to their creation. It is
wise to apply the ‘precautionary principle’ until we know the precise
conditions under which these special coliphages are created. It is best to
leave the river in its pristine conditions till then.
Algae
River
water has small micro-organisms that are food for bacteria. These are called
‘phytoplankton’. The quality of aquatic life substantially depends upon the
availability of variety of phytoplankton. NEERI has calculated the diversity
indices of phytoplankton in Ganga waters. These are reproduced below:
Table:
Average Density, Diversity and Composition of Phytoplankton at different
Sampling Points of the Rivers/Tributaries in the Study Area (September, 2002 to
August, 2003)
Sl No
|
Sampling Location
|
Counts/ml
|
Shannon Weiner Diversity
Index (SWI)
|
Palmer’s Index
|
7
|
Tehri upstream (Bhagirathi)
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
8
|
Tehri upstream (Bhilangana)
|
46
|
1.55
|
2.0
|
9
|
Tehri downstream
(Bhagirathi)
|
22.75
|
0.68
|
0.75
|
Source: Table 17, NEERI 2004.
A
reading of above table shows that the Tehri upstream shows complete absence of
phytoplankton and diversity Index of 0. This may be due to upstream hydropower
projects which cause almost all the water of the river to flow through tunnels, deprive micro-organisms of sunlight and air
that are necessary for their development.
The
table also shows a major decline in the count as well as the diversity index
between upstream Tehri (Bhilangana) and downstream Tehri (Bhagirathi). These
data indicate a negative impact of Tehri Dam on micro-organism. NEERI has not
assessed the implications of this decline. ( all
material in italics is from an
activist’s Summary of the Neeri report, used with permission )
It is interesting that the role of the
phage as available in sediment, is the most emphatic aspect of a river’s life
and sustenance. Ravi Nandan Singh, in his path-breaking work on Benaras and the
river Ganga (unpublished theses submitted to JNU 2010) writes of these phage as
disappearing because of the irrevocability of plastic, both as reality and as a
metaphor, which replaces the theological idea of the immortal soul. Singh
writes that the Ganga Action Plan was set up in the domain of a particular
affectual politics where Rajiv Gandhi saw his role as expiatory after the
assassination of his mother in 1984 and the criminal elimination of five
thousand Sikhs (the number is disputed by activists who believe the number to
be much larger) in the capital city of Delhi. To quote from Singh’s doctoral work, submitted to JNU in 2010
and titled Representations of Death in
Benaras,
The
extent of the river’s pollution cannot be gauged by the abstract quantified
measures of scientific results of chemical experiments or moral-religious
damning of the people. The extent of the pollution can be properly estimated by
locating how people’s lives have been failed by liberal democracy in certain
domains, water being one major component of it, but not the only one. Badiou
similarly does not consider the liberal humanitarian capitalistic democracy
itself as to be the evil. He argues that what is evil is that it is posed as
the greatest possible Good. He also argues that Evil could only be conveyed
when Good is clearly represented. Thus it would be useful to locate both these
idioms in Badiou’s own words. In delineating Good he poses event, fidelity and
truth to be the three registers:
The
event, which brings to pass something other than the situation, opinions,
instituted knowledges; the event is a hazardous, (hazardeux) unpredictable
supplement, which vanishes as soon as it appears; the fidelity, which is the
name of the process; it amounts to as sustained investigation of the situation,
under the imperative of the event itself ; it is an immanent and continuing
break; the truth as such, that is, the multiple, internal to the situation,
that the fidelity constructs, bit by bit, it is what the fidelity gathers
together and produces (2001: 67-68) ( Badiou cited in Singh 2010:181)
Singh uses the work of Veer Bahdra Mishra,
the mahant, who combines his religious belief with scientific principles to clean
the Ganga . He writes that,
He (
the mahant) observes that the machineries installed at the ghats do not work,
so the only way to ‘save’ Ganga would be to apply a plan which runs without
electricity. In his plan of ‘Integrated Wastewater Oxidation Pond System’ based
on ‘biological control’ it is a ‘return to the bacteria. (Singh 2012:214)
Singh traces the history of the discovery of autophage to
Felix D’Herelle and others such as Ernest Hanbury Hankin and Frederick Twort.
(ibid 220) Singh quotes D’Herelle’s
1921 work,
The
difficulties of exposition of the subject will readily be comprehended if we
realize that up to the present time Bacteriology has been considered as a ‘problem of two bodies’, bacterium and
medium, whether the medium be the organism parasitized or a culture fluid. And
this problem of the two bodies has been indeed complex. But it is of necessity
much less complicated than the “problem of three bodies” with which we must now
be concerned, where we must recognize the interactions between the
medium-culture medium or oganism parasitized, - the bacterium parasitizing this
medium, and the ultamicrobial bacteriophage parasitizing the bacterium (D’Herelle 1921:6) cited in ibid 221)
The interesting problem for the Sociologist
is ofcourse that the relationship of the State to it’s people has changed
dramatically. T.K Oommen’s work “From Mobilisation to Institutionalisation” was
concerned essentially with the way in which land reforms could make a
difference to how the poor benefitted, or did not benefit as much as was hoped,
from bhoodan and redistribution. The problem of land displacement has been
foremost in the minds of social scientists for the last several decades. For
the generation that grew up with the idea of dams as the symbol of a secular and rational
citizenship, the real problems came with the questions around the latter. Amita
Baviskar writes in Riverlines (2003) that,
Dams
and bombs stake out the territory of Indian modernity; Nehru’s temples now
serve to glorify the Hindu rashtra (nation), trailing displacement and death in
their wake.
Sacred
rivers have been profaned in more ways than one. How can one talk about Indian
rivers without acknowledging their appalling pollution? Far too many of them deserve Huysmans’s
condemnation of the Bievre in Paris:
That
strange river, that dumping-ground of filth, that bilge which is the colour of slate and melted lead..starred
with muddy spittle… The river is nothing but a moving dung-heap. (Baviskar 1993:xiii)
Rashid C.A has in his Mphil dissertation,
titled “Industrial pollution and people’s struggle: a case study of Eloor,
Kerala” (JNU 2010), argued forcefully for riverine rehabilitation. In a note he
prepared for circulation, he says
that,
For the past two
decades, social anthropological research on environmental issues has been part
of a broad public sphere that has witnessed a sharp increase in environmental
decay like, contamination of ground water, degradation of flora and fauna,
genetical disordering and livelihood problems e.g decline of fishing wealth and
the fertility of agricultural land, on the banks of the Periyar river due to
large-scale emission or affluence of manufacturing, biochemical industries. The
associated people’s struggle and industrial and state discourses attract
sociological investigation.
Sustainable development is the bases of the
people’s movements on the banks of the Periyar in Kerala, and following the
pioneering work of T.K. Oommen, Rashid C.A believes that people’s movements are
essentially innovative and creative. My work on the fisherpeople in Allapuzha
in the 1990s showed that river and sea movements were becoming linked across
India, as fisherpeople believed that they had the right to protect the earth:
Tom Kocherry and the nuns and priest of the radical liberation theology movements
essentially believed that they would link up with Medha Patkar in order to
provide a catalyst to the Ecological movements of the 90s to give a framework
within which grass root leaders could represent the occupational choices of men and women in the country.
(Visvanathan 1994, 2000). David
Harvey in the “Spaces of Capital” (2001) argues that ideology defines the way
in which space is transformed in the relationship established by migration,
between town and country. He writes,
The history of cities and
of thinking about cities has
periodically been marked by
intense interest in the transformative role of urban social movements and
communal action. Such movements get variously interpreted, however, depending upon
historical and geographical conditions. The Christian reformism culminating in
the social control argument of Robert Park and the Chicago School of Urban
Sociology (evolved during the inter-war years in the United States and exported
around the world in the post war years as standard fare for urban sociologists)
contrast, for example with both the pluralist ‘interest group’ model of urban
governance favoured by Robert Dahl and the more radical and revolutionary
interpretations arrived at (mainly in Europe and Latin America) during the
1960s and the 1970s (culminating in Castell’s magnum opus on The City and the
Grassroots.) (Harvey 2001:188)
Harvey suggests that, “the sense of
possibility and desire for change in political and intellectual circles, often
expressed as utopian dreams of alternative city forms on the one hand and the
need to identify political agents – such as proletariat or urban social
movements – capable of realizing such dreams on the other” represent potential
points of disjunction. (ibid 189) While the bourgeouisie represent Commonwealth
Games and Walmart as the symbol of their consistent desire to be westernised,
the farmers’ movements have essentially located the earth and their articulate
position on it, in the use of symbols, as their anchoring point. When Khandwa
farmers immersed themselves in their inundated fields for a fortnight till
their MPs and Chief Minister responded we see just such heroism, unrelenting
because farming was their life. Gandhi wrote in the 1920s and 1930s in Young India, that the poor are
committed because they have nowhere else to go. Patriotism then becomes the
very lifeblood of such movements. While Germany and Japan have said No to
nuclear energy, the Indian Nation State pulverises the survivors of the Tsunami
in Kudankoolam, but the protest of the fisherpeople is essentially about water, pollution and right to life and
work. Whether it is the 48 rivers that flow into the sea in Kerala, or the
state of the Coovam as it represents the sludge of Chennai, activists have made
rivers the essence of existence for both town and country. The rivers are the
veins of the cosmic egg, the seas the inner waters, as Diana Eck reminds us.
Was citizenship a basic human right? The
difference between the rhetoric of the 50s and the loss of dialogue in the 21st
century is because there has been a radical shift away from the redistribution
model to the idea of the liberal economy, where the bourgeousie get to make the
rules, regardless of political
party. The obstacle to a shining India, or to the development paradigm are
the farmers, , the rural
stakeholders in agriculture. The State’s interest in agriculture then,
unfortunately for such people, as farmers with small land holdings, becomes
represented as Food Security, Scientific Temper, Industrialisation of Agriculture,
Bt technology. The ideology of capitalism then locates itself in the questions
of ruling the masses, the so called 80 percent of our population, which now is
drawn into the cities as cheap labour during floods, famines and drought. The
riverine economies which are ancient and self sustaining are now problematised
as essentially out of sync with the real ambition of Indians, which is
colonisation of extra terrestrial
space, and missile warfare, as the art of
hoarding,self defense and power mongering.
In a talk given at Centre for Historical
Studies, JNU on 14 September 2012, at the Sarvapalli Gopal Memorial Lecture,
Christopher Bayly spoke of the friends of Nehru who influenced him, and these
were G.B Pant, A. R Gadgil, Mahalanobis and Radhakrishnan. Pant
brought the sense of village India,
influenced as he was by Malviya and Gokhale; A.R Gadgil believed that
co-operatives were a mid way towards industrialisation; and differed in this
from Gandhi, who believed that rural development was an end in itself;
Mahalanobis was concerned with the ethnographic role of the State, and
Radhakrishnan thought that Vedanta could bring people appreciably closer.
(Bayly 2012) There is another map, though, I wish to argue, and that is the way in which we understand
how the Congress Socialist party in the 1930s, brought about a great
dialectic in the way we think
about peasantry. This was essentially to use associations and the printing
press during colonialism to actually work a new map of rights and duties for
the farmers, which would include wages, prices and consumption. These kisan
sabhas as Acharya Narendra Dev saw
it, were an integral part of the vision of how the peasantry would define it’s
own place in the birth of the nation. In a paper written for presentation at
the Benaras Hindu University at
the Exclusion and Inclusion Cell in 2009, I argued that today, the farmers need
to define their orientation to land, water resources and food in terms of the
debates which make them
representative stake holders, in how India is perceived by them. (See Visvanathan 2009)The theoretical
premises which were discarded in the tension that arose between the CSP and the
Congress during the freedom movement have to be re-visited. An intelligentsia
of the people, which is essentially what activists are, have to present the
very terms of the argument in terms of the practicality of their world views.
(Freire )
The right to life, and the right to speech
is one of the key areas that the activists who fight for Gangajee and the free
flow of her waters define as the primary aspect of their struggle. However,
given the vested interests of the MPs, MLA, traders and their goons, the
activists who wish to oppose the building of dams for Hydroelectricity have a
very hard task. When Bharat Jhunjhunwala was attacked in his home, the activist
Vimalbhai sent out a petition, on June 26th 2012. His first language is Hindi, in
which his blogs are written, but for the benefit of English speakers who do not
read Hindi, he wrote as follows,
Dear
friends
as
you know about the attack on Bharatji by goons of dam company. as many of us
are active and doing something in different way. now i think there is need of a
coordinated
effort.or divide the work. I have some thoughts in my mind which i am sharing
with you.
- Petition to NHRC on
the roll of state govt. (need to make a draft, i am trying to find out
possibilities form lawyer)
- mass letter writing to
CM and to PM my letter is with you, English translation can be done.
- Delegation to power
Ministry--demanding black list the company and
contractor
- Delegation to MOEF
asking them to follow their own rules and committee recommendations.(on a
larger issue related with dams on gangaji we can work on that)
- letter or a Delegation
to PM as he is the chairman of NRGBA with all the member of NRGBA
- statements form
different district of Uttarakhand (i am doing that and some other groups
are also active)
best
vimalbhai
The blogspot matuganga.blogspot
communicates the urgency of the matter. In 1942, when Gandhiji came out of
jail, he communicated that the cotton farmer could survive only if he/she
learnt to multi-task.(See Visvanathan 2009) They would have to be spinners, weavers, dyers and also
learn to sell their cloth. The activists of the River protection communities
are essentially learning that if their concern with wholistic living is to be
the signature of their life and work they will have to be visible, not just
numerous. The interesting aspect of the bourgeoisie is that they cannot see the
people, except as functionally in servitude to them. Popular movements dispel
the idea of the invisibility of the masses, as the peasants of Khandwa and the
fisherpeople of Tamilnadu have
shown with regard to nuclear energy which potentially and vehemently changes
the horizon of their daily lives. The Gandhian prerogative of “doing without”
becomes the leitmotif of these movements… It is a choice they make, and as
citizens they have a right to those choices. When America returned Bharat Jhunjhunwal, a former faculty member
of the IIM, and who chooses to live in
a village in Uttarakhand, writes to intellectuals, he says,
Many dams on Ganga River have been held up because the Supreme
Court has asked for a study of cumulative impacts of dams on river ecology.
Now Ministry of Environment and Forests has given a study to IIT Roorkee. Our
study indicates that this study will be a whitewash.
We have written a note on the topic which is attached for your kind perusal. We
intend to circulate it widely among all faculty members of IIT Roorkee, and
more. We have sent a similar note to Ministry of Environment and Forests
already.
We would be very happy if you would endorse this petition and also help us
obtain endorsements by academicians - past and present- and persons who can
help us.
JP Debral, one of the
intellectuals who was asked to mediate between World Bank officials and activists’ opposition to WB loan wrote on 7.4.2012
Come
what may. We will have to accept reality. RR issues will remain the most
important issue for the affected people. This is also sure that once they get
the money many of them will not oppose the dam. But then they have nothing to
loose if they oppose the dam after getting the compensation. Let us keep this
opportunity open. Let them say what damage has happened or is likely to happen
after taking the compensation.
We cannot be choosers at this stage. We will have to continue to fight at every
front. Those who are opposing the dam at the ground should be encouraged to do
so. The dam authorities or the government must face resistance from every
quarter. We cannot be selective here. If Bharat Bhai wants to interact at the
policy level we must encourage and support him. He is doing it at the Rajya
Sabha, Planning Commission, Courts, WB and Government levels. Every level has
to be dealt with.
I think Vimal Bhai, Madhu Kishwar, Bharat Bhai and Thariyalji have already made
their positions clear. Let us respect their commitments. I do not want to pitch
the wisdom of one against that of the other.
Together we can think of bringing change. A few inches gained by each of them
will make a feet of progress. What is important that in the end the policy
changes.
Regards
JP Dabral
Activists have their perspectives which
arise from their orientations and training. Biographically, they may have
points of departure. The energy
that one person has is a result of many hundreds providing him/her with a
stabilising position. Weber’s
theory of charisma as a form of social action is useful for us to understand,
since activism often depends on the power of the collectivity to recognise this
as a catalyst for social change. The networks that form may run in time span of
decades, as in the case of Tehri, including in its fold, new members according to context. On December
10th 2011, an activist wrote that,
We
had filed a Writ Petition in Uttarakhand High Court, regarding the Dhari Devi
Temple, which is to be uplifted for Srinagar project. The High Court asked us
to approach Archaeological Survey of India. If ASI fails to protect the
monument then we may approach the HC again. The temple is not currently
protected under the Ancient Monuments Act. Please let me know if you know
someone in ASI who can help.
Elsewhere, in my work “The Children of Nature” (2010) I have
shown how secular scholars and
devout believers have engaged with the question of the greening of the Annamalais
and specifically the Holy Mountain,
called Agnisthal or Arunachala, in Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu. The
Madras High Court has accepted petitions on behalf of Arunachala, thought to be
the embodiment of Shiva and Parvati in unison. So also, the concern that
believers have shown in the protection of Ganga is allied with the concern of
Ecologists, Scientists and activists of various political hues. When Bharat
Jhunjhunwala was attacked, the noted activist Vimalbhai sent a letter to share the pain of the event, on 25.6.2012
Dear
friends
You might know on 22nd June 2012, a mob of about 40 people including employees
and contractors of JVK, a company building a large hydropower dam in
Uttarakhand, India, barged into the house of Environmentalist Dr Bharat
Jhunjhunwala and threatened him to withdraw his legal representations against
the dam. This is a breach of personal safety, freedom of speech and democracy.
The Government of Uttarakhand must ensure that perpetrators of this attack are
brought to courts and tried. The administration so far has taken no initiative
to arrest them. Law and order in the state remain at the mercy of Political
leaders and powerful police officers. Daughter of Dr Bharat Jhunjhunwala,
started a online petition to gather support for his right to lead a knowledge-
based agitation in favor of his beliefs.
We all friends of Bharatji support this petition.The support from all the
concerned citizen is not only solicited to support and declare solidarity
to Dr Jhunihunwala but also the cause to protect the fundamental right of
"Right to Speech".
The attack against the Bharatji is not only against
that particular individual but in fact this is an attack to suppress the voice
of the people in favor of environment and peoples rights by the dam builders. The
attack shows the attitude of total disregard of environment issues and peoples
rights and the dam builders want to construct the dam with any hook and crook.
http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Action_against_attack_on_Environmentalist_Bharat_Jhunjhunwala/?fRgZjdb&pv=0
Vimalbhai & Rajendra Negi
--
Matu
Jansangthan
Visit our
blog<matuganga.blogspot.com>
some films on youtube, just type --bandh katha
For Correspondence only:-
D-334/10, Ganesh Nagar, Pandav Nagar
Delhi-110092
We associate with National Alliance of Peoples' Movements
(http://napm-india.org/)
The whole process of
building opinion to save sacred rivers takes time, energy, money, and involves
legal help and publicity. Yet, those who care about the legacy of a five
thousand year civilisation, often feel they have the time and the commitment of
the people who dwell in these riverine communities. In that sense, they are
optimistic, because their notion of time is not apocalyptic, it is essentially
ordered by their faith either in the divine or in the rational secular order of
the Constitution as it is enshrined in the common knowledge of ordinary people.
Susan Visvanathan
CSSS/SSS JNU.
