How the Sardar Sarovar Dam Displaced Communities

The Sardar Sarovar dam that supplies the water is huge. However, this hugely ambitious project has an enormous drawback. So far 245 villages have been submerged and more than a million people displaced.

How the Sardar Sarovar Dam Displaced Communities Narrator: On the 28th of August 2002, the Chief Minister and the dignitaries of the Indian State of Gujurat in Western India gathered together for a ceremony of the head of the Narmada Main Canal. The blessings of the gods are invoked and milk offered signifying the release of water into the canal for the first time. This is the Narmada main canal. The people came and they are hundreds to cheerfully celebrate the inauguration. The canal is the largest in the world, 450 kilometers long. They can move more than a million liters of water per second. Down at the bottom, it is 73 meters wide and the water will be nearly eight meters deep when it is full. It will supply drinking and irrigational water to more than three and a half thousand villages and 1.9 million hectares of agricultural land. The water comes from the massive Sardar-Sarovar Dam. When completed in 2005, it will produce 14, 050 megawatts of electrical power. The reservoir behind it stretches back more than 200 kilometers. The amount of water it holds is huge, almost a million hectare in meters. In the process, 245 villages have been submerged and more than a million people displaced. The plan is to raise the dam even higher. The Narmada River is the fifth longest in India. It is already being dammed in several places but the main dam, the Sardar Sarovar is closest to the sea. The creation of the reservoir will allow water to be diverted north through the system of canals creating an agriculture breadbaskets for 40 million people in three Indian states. Nestled close by the Narmada River just a couple of kilometers from the dam itself is the village of Kevadia gone. The villages, smallholders live by farming. Although that village was not flooded by reservoir, the project has dramatically affected their lives. Govind Keshu: I have more than 15 acres of land which is with the government now and the government has used this land in making the project. My forefathers were told that the prime minister, Jabar Harlal was in displaced and hence, they have removed all the crops from the land and for that, the government paid them around 60 rupees per acre for the crops and then they were not paid anything else. Jaimini Devta: Sixty rupees means less than a pound and is equal to around one dollar. Narrator: For most of the villages, the only work available is only dam and that is only until it is completed in three years’ time. Suman Naarsingh: I go as a laborer at the cement factory which makes demand for the construction of the dam. I own around 300 rupees for 30 days.