Temples of
Modern
India? Dam
Controversies
Past and
Present
Kathleen D. Morrison
Department of Anthropology
University of Chicago
Dams are the temples of
modern India, where I
worship…
--Jawaharlal Nehru, 1954. First Prime
Minister of independent India
Dams and the nation: independent India and the
official appeal of big dams
• Anti-colonial response
• Modernism and science
• Self-sufficiency in food
production
• Historical legacies
• Need for food
– India has a population of
more than one billion and
growing
– rainfall is highly seasonal
– Significant regional
variability of rainfall
– Large population living at or
below poverty line
• Need for power
– Growing proportion living in
cities
– Rural electrification and
agricultural uses
– No oil or gas resources
the present situation: polarization
• Contemporary India
“one of the most active
dam-building countries
on earth”
• Multiple large projects
currently underway
• Significant political will
shown at state &
national levels
• World Bank pullout
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Significant local protest
Court challenges
International pressure
Academic studies
The Narmada Project
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More than 30 major dams
Power and water to primarily benefit Gujarat
Displaced people and lands primarily in MP
Ousteees disproportionately poor and
powerless
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Ca. 1.5 million to be displaced
No environmental studies
No rehabilitation plan in place yet
More than 20 years in progress thus far
Protest against Narmada Project:
Narmada Bachao Andolan
Forms of protest developed during
independence
movement deployed against
government-led
dam projects in India
In response,government points to BhakraNangal Project
• Begun prior to
independence,
completed shortly after
• Located in HP, serves
Punjab , Haryana, and
Rajasthan
• Inundated extensive
lands esp. Bilasapur
state
Bhakra dam
• Highest concrete gravity
dam in Asia
• Hydroelectric
• Intensive production of
HYV wheat and rice
• Industrialized
production
• Punjab “breadbasket of
India”
Often credited with making India self-sufficient in food
Evaluating the arguments: historical
perspectives on dams in India
• Bhakra-Nangal and
Tungabhadra Projects
– 1940s-60s
• Middle Period
(Medieval) dams and
reservoirs of south India
– 10th-16th c.
• Reservoirs were highly
elaborated in Middle period
southern India and Sri Lanka
– both large and small reservoirs
continue in use
• The impacts of older
reservoirs were comparable
to those of modern ones
– Ecological effects
– Social effects
– Cultural logics of patronage and
rule
The Peninsular Interior:
Archaeology of an
Agrarian Landscape
• Contexts of patronage &
construction
– Elite financing
– Ritual associations
– Labor mobilization
• Histories of reservoirs on the
landscape
– Patterns of construction,
maintenance, and abandonment
– Siltation patterns, sediment inflow
• Regional Vegetation Histories
– Patterns of hillside erosion and valley
floor siltation
– Integration of Agricultural facilities
with settlements, road networks,
markets, etc.
Problems with large dams
• Environmental problems
– Submergence of forests and
other ecosystems
– Siltation behind the dam
• Loss of fertility downstream
• Loss of reservoir capacity
• Exacerbation of downstream
erosion
• Blocked passage for migratory
animals
– Microenvironmental effects
on climate
The Mahaseer is now threatened
in many Indian rivers
Middle Period Reservoirs
• In dry areas, could make dry
crops more secure, in wetter
areas allowed production of
rice and other wet crops
• High rate of failure
– Variable rainfall, often do not fill
– High evaporation rates
– High siltation rates
• Serious deforestation in
catchments
– High incidence of dam breaching
• Villages washed away
– Required constant maintenance
Problems with large dams
• Environmental Problems
– Possible tectonic effects
– Water pollution
• Algae blooms, pesticides
– Habitat for invasive plants
– Waterlogging of command
area
– Salinization of command
area
• Decreases in agricultural
production
Tungabhadra project
• Spread of invasive
water hyacinth
• Salinization and
waterlogging are
serious problems
– Marginal and poor
farmers most affected
– Has led to loss of
agricultural
The Bhakra command area, too, has
productivity
experienced salinization and waterlogging
Problems with Large Dams
• Human Consequences
– Inundation of land, villages, homes,
sacred places
• Displacement
– Unequal water distribution
• Exacerbates power differences
• Loss of rural employment
– Encouragement of commercial
production
• Loss of subsistence independence
• Loss of local jobs
Middle Period Southern India: Human Costs
• Inundation caused
displacement, loss of fields,
grazing land
• Perennially-watered areas
dedicated to cash crops,
commercial production
• Water flow rarely equable
• Construction and maintenance
highly political, even for small
facilities
– High degree of elite investment
– Changes in taxation associated
with new facilities
Bhakra-Nangal: human costs
• 50 years later, displaced
people still not fully
resettled
– Only landed compensated
• Loss of soil fertility means
crops cannot be grown
without chemical
fertilizers
– Subsistence farming no
longer possible
• Rural indebtedness
• Farmer suicides
Problems with Large Dams
• Safety and Public Health
Issues
– Vectors for water-borne
diseases
– Danger of catastrophic
dam failure
• Rampant corruption
• Excessive siltation
Area watered by both Middle period and
Tungabhadra project reservoirs
• Expansion of malaria into
this semi-arid region by 19th
century, if not before
• More recently, also dengue
and chikkungunya as well
– Mosquito-borne
Middle Period Southern India: dam failure
• Daroji reservoir, built 16th c.
– Still in use
– In 1851, the Daroji reservoir breached,
flooding and destroying Daroji village and
killing several people
• Virtually every one of the hundreds of
dams studied has breached
Breach in the Moolathara Dam near Chittur
in Palakkad district of Kerala. (The Hindu, Nov. 11, 2009)
Cultural Logics of Reservoirs in India:
Continuity & Change
• Reservoirs have special religious
valence
– “dams are the temples of India,
where I worship”
• Reservoirs have long been associated
with political power and legitimate
rule
Alternatives?
• Analysis of older dams and
reservoirs shows that many
problems are intrinsic to
these facilities
• Large dams have always
been power-laden
technologies, with unequal
benefits and risks
• Smaller-scale facilities can
work, but require significant
attention to watershed
protection and equal access
Cattle-power has been largely replaced
by electric pumps
15th century canal still in use
Discussion
• Critiques of large dams and
reservoirs
– Problems of these kinds of facilities
are not unique
• Vision of Sustainable alternatives
– Need more realistic sense of
“traditional” facilities
– Existing system as “facts on the
ground”
• Specific cultural contexts matter for
both the past and present
– Cultural logics of reservoir patronage
in South Asia
– Dams as signs of modernity and
progress, “big science”
Erosion near Bhadra reservoir
Colonial Reservoirs
• Pattern of failure and low productivity continued
– Rhetoric of a previous golden age when tanks all in use and in
better repair
– Mosse: British saw problems as a failure of traditional village
institutions, not as consequence of colonial disruptions of
political relations
• Parallel to “new traditionalists”
• Same arguments used in Middle periods, logic of restoration
– Complex variety of arrangements for control and maintenance of
reservoirs
What was the appeal?
• Political economy of prestation
– Gift-giving sign of legitimate rule
– Reservoirs: smaller “package size”
and resource mix than gifts of
canals, temples, villages
• Inscriptional analysis: Dual
pattern of patronage
– Pilgrimage Centers: Temples pool
gifts
– Urban Hinterland: Nayakas primary
patrons
Cultural logic of Reservoirs:
the Middle Periods
• Special religious merit associated with
the construction of a reservoir
– The “Sevenfold Progeny”
• Associations with temples
– Reservoirs evoke the Eternal Ocean
• Snakes, makaras, elephants,
lotuses
• Aesthetic of greenery, water, fertility
– Associated with power and order,
political and gender-based
British India:
Emergence of the “Imperial Tank”
Destructive potential of reservoirs of
interest from beginning
– Category of “protective” vs.
“productive” works
• Imperial Tanks
– Breach may threaten railways
– Madras Presidency
• 5 in 1884-85
• 87 in 1989-99
• Reservoirs have always been
power-laden technologies
The “New Traditionalist” Position
• Traditional irrigation was sustainable and nonexploitative
– Traditional facilities are small-scale
– Traditional facilities worked well and are sustainable
• Represent a “lost wisdom”
– Traditional facilities were community-managed
• Not associated with power or exploitation
• The cultural logics of traditional irrigation differ from
those of contemporary projects
– Latter are Western/Modern, former are
Indigenous/Traditional
New Traditionalism: False Dichotomies
Modern
• ecological
transformation
• failure
• inequality
• state power
• oppression
• monumental
Traditional
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sustainability
productivity
equity
local control
outside of politics
small
Environmental and Human Costs of Reservoirs:
Old & New
• Modern dams and
traditional tanks not
different in kind
– Faced many of the same
problems
• Transformed environments
• Associated with resource
inequality
• High rates of failure
– Scalar differences do exist but
old does not mean small
• Seasonality of supply
probably more critical
Discussion & Prospects
• Romantic image of traditional
irrigation detracts from
legitimate critique of modern
projects
• Long-term historical analysis can
lay foundation for realistic
assessment of the possibilities of
tank regeneration programs
• Contemporary rhetoric on dambuilding in India takes from both
western and Indian tropes