scholarly journals Nation-building, industrialisation, and spectacle: Political functions of Gujarat’s Narmada pipeline project

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mona Luxion
Keyword(s):  
Drinking Water ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Water Insecurity ◽  
Narmada River ◽  
Well Yield ◽  
Indian State ◽  
Pipeline Project ◽  
World Class ◽  
Sardar Sarovar ◽  
Sardar Sarovar Dam

Since 2000 the Indian state of Gujarat has been working to construct a state-wide water grid to connect 75% of its approximately 60 million urban and rural residents to drinking water sourced from the controversial Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada River. This project represents a massive undertaking – it is billed as the largest drinking water project in the world – and is part of a broader predilection toward large, concrete-heavy supply-side solutions to water insecurity across present-day India. This paper tracks the claims and narratives used to promote the project, the political context in which it has emerged, the purposes it serves and, following Ferguson (1990), the functioning of the discursive-bureaucratic 'machine' of which it is a product.The dam’s reinvention as the solution to Gujarat’s drinking water shortfall – increasingly for cities and Special Industrial Regions – reflects a concern with attracting and retaining foreign investment through the creation of so-called 'world-class' infrastructure. At the same time, this reinvention has contributed to a project of nation-building, while remaining cloaked in a discourse of technological neutrality. The heavy infrastructure renders visible Gujarat’s commitment to 'development' even when that promise has yet to be realised for many, while the promise of Narmada water gives Gujarat’s leaders political capital with favoured investors and political supporters. In conclusion, I suggest that the success of infrastructure mega-projects as a political tool is not intrinsically tied to their ability to achieve their technical and social objectives. Instead, the 'spectacle' of ambitious infrastructural development projects may well yield political gains that outweigh, for a time, the real-world costs of their inequity and unsustainability.

scholarly journals SCALE, PLACE AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: STRATEGIES OF RESISTANCE ALONG INDIA’S NARMADA RIVER

REVISTA NERA ◽  
2012 ◽  
pp. 96-113
Author(s):  
Pratyusha Basu
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
National Level ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Narmada River ◽  
Sardar Sarovar ◽  
Class Divisions ◽  
Sardar Sarovar Dam

This paper focuses on the struggles being waged by the Narmada Bachao Andolan, a rural social movement opposing displacement due to dams along India’s Narmada River. Building a comparison between two major anti-dam struggles within the Andolan, around the Sardar Sarovar and Maheshwar dams, this study seeks to show that multi-sited social movements pursue a variety of scale and place-based strategies and this multiplicity is key to the possibilities for progressive change that they embody. The paper highlights three aspects of the Andolan. First, the Andolan has successfully combined environmental networks and agricultural identities across the space of its struggle. The Andolan became internationally celebrated when its resistance led to the World Bank withdrawing funding for the Sardar Sarovar dam in 1993. This victory was viewed as a consequence of the Andolan’s successful utilization of transnational environmental networks. However, the Andolan has also intervened in agrarian politics within India and this role of the Andolan emerges when the struggle against the Maheshwar dam is considered. Second, this paper examines the role played by the Andolan in building a national movement against displacement. Given that India’s Supreme Court gave permission for the continued construction of the Sardar Sarovar dam in 2000, the power of the state to push through destructive development projects cannot be underestimated. The national level thus remains an important scale for the Andolan’s struggle leading to the formation of social movement networks and the construction of collective identities around experiences of rural and urban displacement. Third, this paper reflects on how common access to the Narmada river also provides a material basis for the formation of a collective identity, one which can be used to address the class divisions that characterize the Andolan’s membership. Overall, the paper aims to contribute to the study of social movements by showing how attachments to multiple geographies ensure that a movement’s potential futures always exceed the nature of its present forms of resistance.

Delhi will engage in brinkmanship over water

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Content Type ◽  
North East India ◽  
North East ◽  
Narmada River ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
Yarlung Tsangpo ◽  
Sardar Sarovar ◽  
Yarlung Tsangpo River ◽  
Indus Waters Treaty ◽  
Sardar Sarovar Dam

Subject Water disputes in South Asia and beyond. Significance China reportedly has ambitions to divert the waters of Tibet’s Yarlung Tsangpo river, which travels downstream to north-east India and Bangladesh as the Brahmaputra. India and Pakistan are in deadlock over their Indus Waters Treaty (IWT). India has plans for a river-linking scheme, designed to divert water from the flood-prone east to the drought-prone west. Impacts Indian-Japanese plans for an Asia Africa Growth Corridor, rivalling China’s Belt and Road Initiative, may worry Beijing. The Sardar Sarovar Dam on India’s Narmada river will attract further protests from environmentalist groups. Pakistan is likely to step up its rhetoric advocating a referendum in Kashmir.

scholarly journals Nutrient retention behind a tropical mega-dam: a case study of the Sardar Sarovar Dam, India

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Harish Gupta ◽  
S. Kiran Kumar Reddy ◽  
Mounika Chiluka ◽  
Vamshikrishna Gandla
Keyword(s):  
Arabian Sea ◽  
Inorganic Nitrogen ◽  
Nutrient Retention ◽  
Significant Loss ◽  
N Removal ◽  
Narmada River ◽  
Sardar Sarovar ◽  
The Impact

AbstractIn this study, we demonstrate the impact of the construction of a mega-dam on the nutrient export regime of a large tropical river into the Arabian Sea. Long-term (11 years) fortnight nutrient parameters, upstream and downstream to Sardar Sarovar (SS) Dam, were examined to determine the periodical change in nutrient fluxes from the Narmada River, India. During this 11-year period, the average discharge of the Narmada River upstream to Rajghat (35.3 km3 year−1) was higher than that of downstream at Garudeshwar (33.9 km3 year−1). However, during the same period, the suspended sediment load was reduced by 21 million tons (MT) from 37.9 MT at Rajghat to 16.7 MT at Garudeshwar. Similarly, mean concentrations of dissolved silica (DSi) reduced from 470 (upstream) to 214 µM (downstream), dissolved inorganic phosphate (DIP) from 0.84 to 0.38 µM, and dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) from 43 to 1.5 µM. It means that about 54%, 55%, and 96% flux of DSi, DIP, and DIN retained behind the dam, respectively. The estimated denitrification rate (80,000 kg N km−2 year−1) for the reservoir is significantly higher than N removal by lentic systems, globally. We hypothesize that processes such as biological uptake and denitrification under anoxic conditions could be a key reason for the significant loss of nutrients, particularly of DIN. Finally, we anticipated that a decline in DIN fluxes (by 1.13 × 109 mol year−1) from the Narmada River to the Arabian Sea might reduce the atmospheric CO2 fixation by 7.46 × 109 mol year−1.

scholarly journals Water insecurity, illness and other factors of everyday life: A case study from Choma District, Southern Province, Zambia

Water SA ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (4 October) ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A Marcantonio
Keyword(s):  
Drinking Water ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Water Resource ◽  
Water Safety ◽  
Water Insecurity ◽  
Water Storage Capacity ◽  
Southern Province ◽  
Spatially Distributed ◽  
Tightly Coupled ◽  
Specific Outcome

Recent reports from the UN find that 2.6 billion people have gained access to improved drinking water sources since 1990, but 663 million people still live without. Other recent work demonstrates that 4 billion people annually face severe water scarcity as a result of seasonal fluctuations in water availability and quality. How is it that, despite the significant development in water resource availability documented by the UN, literally billions of people are regularly experiencing water insecurity? To begin to understand how a lack of access to reliable water resources affects everyday life, I focus on a specific outcome of water insecurity: waterborne illness. Given the difficulty in linking illness to a particular source, this research focuses on perceptions of water safety. I ask participants about illness they perceive coming from their drinking water, conducting face-to-face surveys (N = 224) spatially distributed around Choma town, Southern Province, Zambia. In particular, I investigate how these perceptions affect everyday life and what intersecting factors are likely to increase or decrease the probability of a person perceiving drinking water as the source of their illness. Our findings demonstrate that individual perceptions of waterborne illness are tightly coupled with perceptions of water needs being met or not, water flexibility (water storage capacity and water resource type and number available), total water use, food security and distance to various services. My work identifies and qualifies intersecting relationships that are critical to the design of any policy or other means of intervention intended to reduce experienced and perceived waterborne illness and other everyday needs of subsistence farmers facing the challenges presented by climate change and other forms of environmental change.

scholarly journals Kerala: Temples and World-Class Universities

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Altbach
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Economy ◽  
Research University ◽  
The South ◽  
Hindu Temple ◽  
South Indian ◽  
Indian State ◽  
World Class ◽  
World Class Universities

A Hindu temple in the south Indian state of Kerala has located treasure work several billion dollars in its basement. This article proposes uses some of that money to build a world-class research university in Kerala to help boost its knowledge economy.

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