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MORE THAN 30 000 people from all over India descended on the small central
Indian town of Harsud last week to protest against government schemes which
they claim are ‘destructive’ and ‘anti-people’. Leading scientists, environmentalists,
economists, social workers and thousands of villagers and tribal people
swore to fight government projects which they claim will harm people and
destroy the environment.

At the core of the protest were government plans to dam the Narmada
river, build a missile-testing range in Balliapal, Orissa, and erect a nuclear
power station at Kaiga in Karnataka. ‘Most of us think it’s the beginning
of a mass protest – an awareness of something going wrong with development
in this country, development that leaves most people behind,’ said one environmentalist
from Delhi who attended the demonstration.

A coalition of more than 50 nongovernmental groups chose to focus the
demonstration on Harsud because the town is threatened by the Narmada (now
‘Indira’) Sagar dam to be built downstream. The Indira Sagar is the second
of 30 large dams planned for the Narmada river, and was granted clearance
a fortnight ago by the Planning Commission of the central government. It
forms part of the Narmada Valley Development Project, the largest and most
controversial river valley development scheme ever envisaged (‘Dam unleashes
India’s reservoirs of anger’, New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ, 11 March 1989).

Environmentalists estimate that it would cost 25 billion rupees (Pounds
sterling 960 million) to irrigate 5 million hectares. The scheme would submerge
600 000 hectares of land and displace more than 1 million people. In the
tradition of Indian protest, demonstrators brought soil from their home
states to form a sculpture which they pledged they would never allow to
be destroyed by flooding. Omar Sattaur