Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian
Date: Wed,  7 Oct 1992 20:32:05 -0400 
From: Sudha Neelakantan <sudha+@CMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: NARMADA - WB defers decision till ...
	<Added.oeopV3600jZd1A2E5P@andrew.cmu.edu>

hemant@ihlpa.att.com (Hemant B Bhatt) writes:
> My parents were farmers in India. They depended upon and still
> all the farmers do depend upon rain for farming. There are wells
> but have to pay heavy price for the water and electricity is
> rationed everyday. I know people need water & electricity. So
> stop meddling with progress of India by raising some meaningless
> issues.

I did *NOT* say stop technology,
i did say that you should consider appropriate technology.
the solution may be to look towards smaller dams that don't hve as
much of an impact on the ecology and do not displace so many people
etc.  would your blind acceptance of this still be the same if it was
your parents being displaced?
and actually if you had read the world bank's report on that, their
experts did not even do a value based criticism of the project.  All
they did was analyse the indian govt's and the world banks
requirements of the social and other impacts that a project must fall
within.[these are accepted standards  supposedly adhered to by both
parties]  and they pointed out that the Narmada project failed to meet
these criteria.

which is probably why the WB actually deferred its decision inspite of
the political pressure etc.  i think the world bank is definitely
turning around in its policies and recognizing some of the blunders it
has made in the past -- In may the WB/IMF made loans to Brazil that
were sort of reparatory for the environmental damage caused by the
development of the amazonian basin that was funded by them[the
WB/IMF].  so i don't agree with that completely negative ad in the NY
Times either though it was certainly a competent attention getting
tactic.

I will reiterate, to stagnate by completely rejecting technology and
development is to again be exploited much as we were by colonialism,
and i definitely think that that's a bad idea, but we would also be
exploited just as much and more, when we blindly accept technology
imports that were developed as solutions to other countries and/or
other situations without the benefit of the knowledge we have now
about other negative impacts.  A local cachement area might function
just as well.  and perhaps realizing that an exponential increase in
population is also straining the water supply, would lead to a search
for answers that not only addressed symptoms but also the causes as we
can perceive them.  We may also just end up with more questions than
we can answer but that is not a bad thing either.  it would be much
worse to just jump into a solution and then we would need yet another
solution to fix the problems caused by our initial solution and so
on... in a self perpetuating chain of techno fixes.

Sudha

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<*>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
   Sudha K. Neelakantan     < Clouds come floating into my life,  
    The Heinz School of      \ no longer to carry rain or usher storm   
Public Policy and Management  \ but to add color to my sunset sky.
      Carnegie Mellon          >    - Rabindranath Tagore -
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Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian