Narmada will actually give Gujarat considerable additional green cover. Six wildlife and marine sanctuaries are also being developed. The tendency to denigrate engineers and engineering projects as necessarily venal, exploitative and anti-poor is fashionable in some quarters. The SSP is a considerable engineering feat, and no crime for that. Rs 40,000 crore that Arundhati cites.
Costs have little meaning unless weighed against corresponding benefits.
These will be far greater on any count. It is not for nothing that the SSP has been labelled Gujarat s lifeline. Tribals, marginal farmers and women will be among major beneficiaries of the transformation it effects. Stipulated norms are being followed for rehabilitating 2,252 fully and partially affected families at a cost of Rs 130 crore. Here too, the NBA has taken to disruption and coercion.