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At What Cost?: Damming the Source of the Ganges
| Article
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10928 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1993 |
2,781 Words |
| Author
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Lalit Gambhir
Lalit Gambhir is a free-lance photojournalist affiliated with
The World & I Photo Agency. Based in New Delhi, he engaged in
field research in Manipur during September and October 1990. |
A few months ago, a death in Hari Singh's family meant more than just the painful loss of a relative. "There were few around to help me at the funeral of my uncle," says Singh. "No one could collect wood for the pyre, as there is no forest. I bought wood worth Rs.1000 (about $35) and for another Rs.1500 I arranged for transportation to the crematorium. I could not even cry over my own uncle's death." Public mourning is socially acceptable and is believed to be auspicious and therapeutic.
Singh is one of several Garhwali residents of a rehabilitation colony set up for persons displaced by a hydroelectric project under construction in the Himalayas of northern India. It is his second year there. To allow for the construction of the dam, Singh was forced to give up his land and home near the town of Tehri (Tehri-Garhwal is a district of Uttar Pradesh, the northernmost state of India.) His ancestral village will be submerged under a 70-kilometer-long reservoir created by the dam. In compensation he has been given a house and hectare of land (about 2.5 acres) in the colony, some 90 kilometers from his old home. But if Singh were in his old village he could have mourned his uncle's death respectably and without incurring any monetary liability. For him and for other oustees, the impact of rehabilitation has been far-reaching. The cycles of life and death, as they used to be, have ceased to exist.
"Communities are breaking up. Individualism is being imposed in the name of development," explains environmentalist Sunderlal Bahuguna, one of the foremost opponents of the dam. In the traditional community, says Bahuguna, "Events like marriage and death are essentially community occasions, not single-household affairs. Even house building is not a personal headache: The able-bodied fetch wood and slates for the roof. In a marriage, after the feast, even guests from the bride's side would wash dishes. In farming, each family in the village, in rotation, keeps watch over the crop during the night. [Often, monkeys are menace to standing crop.] Sometimes a neighbor is hired to do a job and is compensated with food. But with communities fragmented, resettled in far-flung pockets, such social security is over," he laments.
Newly resettled dam oustees also face threats to their families and property. Gold ornaments are an important feature of Garhwali culture, and comparatively large quantities might be kept in the home. In rural mountain areas, women studded with gold ornaments are a common sight, but in the lowland regions where the compensation lands are located, crime is escalating. Rural women now strongly resist being photographed or
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