In February 1999, the Indian Supreme Court lifted a four-year legal stay that had stopped construction of the vast Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada river , which flows westward through the central states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Gujarat into the Arabian Sea. The dam is a major feature in the Narmada Valley Development Project, a grandiose plan to build as many as 3,200 dams, both large and small, along the Narmada and its tributaries. Despite what Roy has called one of the most spectacular nonviolent resistance movements since Gandhi s time, work on the most controversial dam project in the country s history was about to resume. The Narmada dams have been fought over for decades. Politicians of all parties say they are necessary for irrigation, for power, and for drought relief.
Dams are development.
Dams are progress. It will provide minimum power for at most a few decades, and will cost billions of rupees that the Indian government doesn t have. A miserably familiar story, in other words, of dams versus people, development versus democracy. A story that Roy the novelist soon began trying to help rewrite. With help from a team of contributors that includes Ira Glass, Barbara Ehrenreich, Mark Harris, and Debbie Stoller, the March-April issue of Utne Reader will help you rediscover the lost secrets of play.