Impacts of water regulation on Tenualosa ilisha in the Narmada Estuary, Gujarat, India

Hilsa, Tenualosa ilisha is a highly prestigious fish for esteemed delicious taste, high market demand and price. It forms an important fishery of funnel-shaped 72 km long Narmada Estuary. Rapid decline in hilsa catch has been recorded in the Narmada Estuary over last few decades. Hilsa catch was recorded 5180 ton in 2006–07 that reduced to only 419 ton in 2014–15. Pre-impoundment of dam showed that T. ilisha contributed to the tune of 977.1 to 3727 ton from 1974–75 to 1982–83 and the highest catch of hilsa was 15319 ton during 1993–94. Sardar Sarovar Dam started functional in the year 1994 which has impacted natural water flow of the river and resulted in a reduction of freshwater availability in the estuary; the development of sand bars at the mouth of the estuary also reduced the tidal ingress into the system; low depth, loss of breeding, nursery and feeding grounds, over fishing may be the most important factors affecting hilsa fishery in Narmada estuary. Catching of juvenile hilsa during winter by ‘Golava’ net (small meshed bag net) also led to a rapid decline in hilsa catch. To maintain the sustainable yield of hilsa, selective fishing and control of juvenile catch are the prerequisites along with maintaining regular flow from the dam.

Delhi will engage in brinkmanship over water

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.

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

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.

Anand Patwardhan’s Chronicles of Socio-political Realities

Probably India’s best-known documentary film-maker Anand Patwardhan, for close to four decades now, has been raking the country’s political consciousness through his films, which delve into the crux of India’s social and political lives. In this piece, the editors have put together, with Patwardhan’s permission, his writings from his blog ( http://patwardhan.com/wp/ ) on the state atrocities upon Dalits in Maharashtra, the protests through poems and songs by a young group of Dalit activists from Pune—the Kabir Kala Manch (KKM)—and the satyagraha for the freedom of expression by its leaders like Sheetal Sathe; on the Supreme Court judgment that failed the Narmada Bachao Andolan as well as the belief in the justice system, making irrelevant a whole body of evidence built by the Andolan over the years that underlined the huge financial and human costs of the Sardar Sarovar dam project; and on the whole climate of intolerance that was behind the attack on M. F. Husain for his depiction of Hindu goddess Saraswati. This piece also includes a commentary by Alex Napier on Patwardhan’s documentary of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, drawn from Patwardhan’s blog. These are important social commentaries of our times.