U.S. Water News Online
NEW DELHI, India -- The India Supreme Court has cleared the way for construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam in central India, rejecting concerns of environmentalists and rural aid groups that it will flood villages and displace 20,000 people.
The $4 billion project has been stalled for four years as the Save Narmada Campaign and other groups fought a legal battle to stop it.
Construction on the dam began 10 years ago and $1.74 billion has been spent on the project.
The court in a 2-1 judgment said it was satisfied by the relief and rehabilitation steps taken by the government to resettle thousands of villagers displaced by the project.
The Save Narmada Campaign called the judgment ``a most illogical, dangerous and anti-people verdict.''
``The court seems to have done a disservice to the Indian constitution, Indian democracy and Indian people,'' it said in a statement. ``The judgment is unjustifiable, reactionary and hence, unacceptable.''
Medha Patkar, who heads the campaign, said the government had done nothing for the poor people hit by the project. She wept at a press conference in Bombay and said her organization would ``fight against this injustice.''
However, she ruled out violent protests to stop the construction. In the past, thousands of protesters had courted arrest and staged sit-in protests near the construction site in Madhya Pradesh state, 450 miles south of New Delhi.
The protesters included author Arundhati Roy, who donated to the campaign $35,000 of the 1997 Booker Prize money she won for ``The God of Small Things.'' She suggested alternative ways of achieving the government's goals, such as rain water storage, building irrigation canals, and finding other power-generating sources.
Authorities said the dam proposal will bring drinking water to 40 million people, irrigate land, and generate electricity.
The level of water in the Sardar Sarovar Dam was raised to 289 feet in February, and the Narmada River crept within 10 feet of villages in three Indian states since then. But officials say power cannot be generated until the dam is at least 360 feet high.
The Supreme Court said the government could raise the dam's height up to 415 feet.
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