February 2000: There is a solution to the dispute over the Narmada dams. It is possible to build the dam yet prevent large-scale displacement and still provide water to parched areas of north Gujarat. This is neither a fantasy nor wishful thinking. Such a solution has been meticulously drafted by highly qualified engineers. This proposal has been around since 1995 as a book titled Sustainable Technology: Making the Sardar Sarovar Project Viable by Suhas Paranjape and K.J.Joy.

The Narmada shimmers in the distance.

Paranjape, a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology (Bombay), is the chief architect of this proposal. A one time activist of peasant organisations in Maharashtra, he has extensive exposure to the plight of people displaced by dams as well as those living in chronic drought areas. He is among those who are trying to fill the middle ground between the two extremes of either glorifying the dam as a life-line on the one hand, or rejecting it as completely destructive on the other.

The knowledge about this work has remained within a limited circle of people and thus the popular impression is that we have to choose between the human rights of those being displaced by the dam and the development of Gujarat. Is this because the alternative proposal lacks substance? Or is it falling victim to all the obstacles that often greet simple ideas that are strong on common sense?

The alternative proposal redesigns the delivery system of the project and calls for a reduction of the dam's height from the originally planned 140 meters to 107 meters. This would effectively mean submergence upto 90 meters. The results of these changes would be quite radical.

• The submergence zone would be reduced by about 70%.
• This would save almost 90% of the people now threatened with displacement.
• Lift-irrigation in the submergence zone would enhance productivity of the tribal lands and thus enable those are displaced to be rehabilitated with land in their own cultural milieu. In the original design there is no provision for a service area upstream of the dam.
• Gujarat would still get the 9 million acre feet (maf) allocated to it in the original plan.
• The total service area of the project would be increased to more than 4 million hectares, instead of the original plan for 1.8 million hectares.
• The critically dry areas of Kutch, Saurashtra and North Gujarat would get water on a priority basis.
• This proposal does however reduce electricity generation from the planned 3600 megaunits to 2600 megaunits. However, it more than makes up this gap through use of supplementary non-conventional means of generating electricity, relying partly on solar and bio-mass based devices.
• The new design ensures equitable access to water for all the families in the service area, including the landless. It also provides for a vast area with permanent vegetative cover.

In any case, Madhya Pradesh is not able to build many of the upstream dams on the Narmada which were intended to feed the Sardar Sarovar reservoir for a year-round high level of water. That is largely why the original design calls for a dam height of 140 meters.

But the critical importance of the Paranjape-Joy proposal is not merely reduction of height. The workability of this scheme rests on broadly three components.

• The distribution system would be built around natural water storages and not on holding water year-round in the SSP reservoir. The canals would be used primarily to carry Narmada water to local surface and groundwater storageAEs. In addition, it proposes a Saurashtra feeder canal system which would take water from the tail-end of the SSP main canal. It also advocates a tail-to-head approach in construction and scheduling of water deliveries. Otherwise, areas in the head reaches consume most of the water and very often the tail portions end up getting very little water.

• Regenerative and equitable use of water lies at the heart of this alternative restructuring. This component is drawn from the experiences of various grass-root level watershed development projects over the last 15 years. It is supported by an evolving body of scientific knowledge and technological developments all over the world.
  This part calls for local community mobilisation to develop the surface and groundwater resources before they receive exogenous water provided by the government machinery. It also requires that economic use of water is allowed only after the basic water needs of every family have been ensured. One third of the service area must, mandatorily, be brought under permanent vegetative cover, thus helping to afforest the countryside. Allocation of water and maintenance of the system rests with the community-based water users group.

• The plan provides for more than just basic livelihoods and assumes that people will aspire towards a steadily rising prosperity. And energy self-reliance is seen as the key to such sustained prosperity. This can be facilitated by processing biomass into industrial products with the help of energy generated through biomass- solar-fossil fuel cogeneration systems. The concept of these Integrated Production-cum-Energy Generation Units is again based on the success of various previous experiments, including the work of ASTRA at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Paranjape argues that there is no substitute for persuading the people of Gujarat and the state government that a modified SSP will not mean loss of prestige and reduction of benefits. The Centre for Environment Education (CEE), Ahmedabad, the publishers of this study, have since 1995 attempted to involve several key people in Gujarat to seriously consider this proposal and engage in a working out a solution.

Kartikeya V.Sarabhai, the director of CEE, had hoped that that this initiative would promote a process by which different viewpoints culminate in the development of viable technological alternativesoe. But this hope has so far not been fulfilled. In 1998 the CEE made another attempt to bring together the alternative experts with representatives of the Gujarat government and the Sardar Sarovar Nigam Ltd. (SSNL). But the meeting did not lead to any breakthroughs.

Jay Narayan Vyas, the Gujarat Minister for Narmada and Major Irrigation Projects, is himself an engineer who argues that while alternative development strategies have their relevance there is no substitute for the SSP as originally designed. At a recent press conference in Mumbai he dismissed the Paranjape-Joy alternative design on the grounds that it demands far too much electricity for pumping the water. Paranjape is now in the process of preparing an update which will counter this argument and provide fresh answers.

The odds against convincing the government and people of Gujarat about such alternatives appear grim at the moment. But there have been many positive developments in the four years since this proposal was first drafted.

• One, the need for sustainable development projects is now taken seriously by more and more people in the corridors of power.
• Two, given the increasingly rigorous work on alternative strategies they have become harder to ignore.
• Three, there is a growing awareness that both the irrigation and energy sectors in India are in a mess and at a dead-end unless they under-take radical innovations.

Proposals like this show that there are optimal solutions which engender a more rational and equitable model of progress. The political will to actually carry out these changes will not be born out of a miracle. It can and will be created by the full range of citizens who are worried about the present and eager to build a better tomorrow. And the Narmada conflict already holds the active concern of lakhs of such people all over India.