Proposal for research and public meetings on large dams and alternatives - FAQ

    It is normal in the AID project approval process for volunteers to ask questions about a proposed project before making a funding decision. FAQ may become the medium of choice for future presenters to clarify doubts regarding a project. In this case FAQ is being used because of the somewhat complex nature of this project, involving a large number of village organisations and individuals. Also, it is the first such venture in coordinating efforts across the country towards a well defined goal and in that sense a new prospect for AID volunteers and AID fellows to get involved with.

    After 1 year of working on the field in India, if we had brought back a proposal to implement water harvesting and experiment with generating energy from biomass and solar sources in one or a few villages, we could easily have gotten support of up to Rs. 1 Lakh from AID. But you would have expected more than this. You have every right to expect more from people who have spent one year in the field. Not only would you expect more, but the other committed workers on the field in Indian villages would be disappointed if we in 1999 started where they started 5, 10 even 30 years ago when the forests began disappearing below survival level in so many parts of India.

    We might, ourselves or with others, think of visiting a number of dam affected zones, study a number of projects in water harvesting and power generation from solar and biomass sources. We might have studied the reports by non profit research organisations like Kalpavriksh or Prayas Energy Group, tried to follow all the suggestions given in the pathbreaking Citizens Report on the Environment: Dying Wisdom: Rise, Decline and Fall of India's Traditional Water Harvesting Systems published by Center for Science and Environment. The title itself is a call to action, the kind of action that can give life to this wisdom at a time when it is critically needed.

    As water and power are two of the most pressing issues for development in India it is inevitable that sooner or later we would be thinking of ways to make the efforts which are going on independently in so many villages come together to gain strength through collaboration and also make impact at the policy level. Currently Ralegaon Siddhi of Anna Hazare is the only such success story known to many people. It is an example quoted so often that policy makers tend to say, "the only case you can cite is Ralegaon Siddhi. Therefore, the type of village development you suggest cannot be viable at a large scale." Those who favour large projects such as dams often accuse NGOs of offering no alternative. In order to make our kind of village development more effective and more recognized, we would need a determined effort to research effectiveness of large dams and their alternatives in power and water. This is the proposal that we have before us, and the FAQ is designed to answer questions people may have regarding its components.
 

    These meetings will involve NGOs and individuals who have a depth of knowledge, experience, and committment to village level work in areas like water harvesting, biomass and solar energy, field studies of land, water, flora, and fauna, as well as community organising and defending peoples rights in matters concerning large dams. Many of these people and village level organisations have a wealth of information based on generations of experience in matters concerning the land and water in their region, as well as techniques for harvesting water and power at the local level. Many have been working at such a local level that they have not tried to replicate their methods or conferred with others working in the same area, simply due to tremendous pressure put on the limited time and money and human power they have for this kind of work.

    Meetings have so far been held in Mumbai, Pune, and Calcutta. The Calcutta one on water issues in West Bengal had 100 attendees and a number of dams including the Damodar valley were the focus. Following meetings are planned in the near future:

1. Bengal/Bihar for eastern region on reviewing water and power projects. Their economic, social and environmental appraisal. Medha said it will be like a workshop where people/NGOs will also get training on how to make these appraisals and submit their own reports (to WCD and in general).
2. In west India, Koyna valley region. It is planned for 25th april but might be rescheduled.
3. In South in Wynad, Kerala.
4. In the Himalayas.

These meetings will also help link field workers, activist groups with experts and government people. They will be interdisciplinary and will also have participation of some project affected people.

    Ravi asked Medha tai if the other commissioners were also having similar meetings with diverse groups of people. She looked at him like he was out of his mind and said, who else will have them? Most will just sit in their offices. Maybe some of the NGO commissioners will go to the field, but not sure. She said, "We are having them because we want to really build the grassroots network". AID must keep this in mind -- she is also doing something very long term, beyond WCD, in trying to make these grassroots networks. So it is very interesting for AID to fund.

    AID Fellows Ravi and Aravinda will be involved in many stages of this process and will attend some of the meetings themselves.  These meetings will include but not be limited to those convened under the name of WCD itself and the associated NGO body, International Commission on Dams, Rivers and People (ICDRP).  Aravinda has already attended the first public hearing of the WCD as well as the meeting of ICDRP preceding it, where the need for this kind of NGO effort was emphapsized by all the participants. Also we will receive reports from Medha tai.

    Surely there have been numerous efforts, but rarely at this scale. Quality wise, the kind of knowledge, insight, respect, dedication, honesty and sheer energy that Medha tai has towards this work are unparalleled and it is one of the best possible opportunities to contribute the time of AID volunteers as well as the financial support of AID. Also it is the first opportunity for AID to work with the winner of prestigious international human rights and environmental awards. Both these areas are an integral part of development work.

Steady support with growing momentum:

Networking initiated by AID:

Networking initiated by Medha tai:

Sustained collaboration between AID and NBA have grown from close communication, trust and response among many members of each of the two groups.  It has also facilitated collaboration with other groups.

    First, the work that goes into this preparation will go on far beyond the 2 year period of WCD. Second, WCD is a unique experiment in conflict resolution and attempts to bring together all sides of the debate on dams and water resources. Its 12 members include CEOs of a dam companies, national water resource ministers, an environmentalist, a leader of a development organisation, and several others. (See WCD site for full info) Since development in India is often a global issue, this commission is an opportunity to make known at the policy making level the reality in Indian villages on matters of concern to the commission. In this sense it should be viewed as not something intended merely to benefit the villagers, but a way to facilitate villagers participation in civil society and its decision making, which is the responsibility all of us share.

    Although the majority of AID volunteers are familiar only with Medha tai, those who have met NBA in India have seen the other workers, like Sanjay Sangvai in the AID conference, who are as committed and as involved in every aspect of work and decision making as Medha tai. NBA itself makes every effort to get the wider public to relate not only to Medha tai but to those from tribal villages. For example when NBA received Right Livelihood Award, it was Keshav bhau from Nimghavan who accepted it in Sweden, while Medha accompanied him. Four villagers from Nimad attended the hearings in Colombo as observers and were involved in every meeting Medha tai had with people from other NGOs. Once people saw the effort Medha tai makes to keep all people involved, they also pitched in by, for example, offering to translate (a woman from a Pakistan NGO translated for the Nimadi villagers) and immediately the burden was not all on Medha tai any more to mediate between the villagers and the rest of the people.

    In the present case, villagers including women and tribals have been participating both in gathering data as well as speaking in public forums. Medha tai could easily have styled herself as an expert on tribal society and served her role as commissioner. Not only the prestigious awards that come in her name but even her actual level of knowledge and direct experience in tribal societies would have supported such a claim. But her work would have no value beyond the commission had she done this. She sees the chance to present before the commission not merely an opportunity to state what she already knows, but to as a catalyst to pool even more knowledge, more experience and involve more voices.

Here are the names of those who presented papers on India for the South Asia regional consultations of WCD held in Colombo.
Professor Ramaswamy Iyer, Center for Policy Research (past Secretary, Ministry of Water Resources)
Girish Sant, Prayas Energy Group
Ashish Kothari, Kalpavriksha
K.R. Datye
Himanshu Thakkar, Center for Water Policy

Professor Ramaswamy spoke at the AID India conference in Chennai and several volunteers have corresponded with him since then.  Professor Datye has met with Balaji and Ramani and Balaji has been receiving valuable insight and on the ground training from him.  Himanshu Thakkar will be directly involved in the India and South Asia work of the ICDRP including the work of this project.
 

    Governments come and go, and also change their minds. The first public meeting of WCD was to be held in Bhopal and Delhi in September 1998. Though invitation had been extended by the Indian government to WCD to hold the meeting in India, this meeting was cancelled at the last minute by the Prime Ministers office. Any number of civil servants were co-operating with the WCD process, and the former Union Secretary for Water Resources, Professor Ramasawmy Iyer, has welcomed the WCD process as a positive step both in conflict resolution as well as a forum with strong potential to utilize and recognize the knowledge and experience of NGOs and ordinary villagers regarding large dams and their alternatives in water and power. See for example Ramaswamy Iyer, Water Resource Planning: Changing Perspectives, in Economic and Political Weekly, 12 Dec 1998 pp. 3198 ff.

From the point of view of government in India WCD has these advantages:

1. will increase the voice of people in managing their natural resources, and therefore contribute to democracy and development at all levels of governance
2. to the extent that WCD achieves its goals of mediating the conflicting viewpoints, it will reduce the conflict between people and state in India as well. In the long term, the efforts to develop the information on large dams and alternatives in power and water will bridge the communication gap which exists at so many levels where matters concerning village life are concerned. This will be an asset to any government in India. After all, government is all of us. We also have to communicate our priorities to the government and thereby strengthen people’s politics.

    The research that will take place in the next 16 months will serve purposes far beyond WCD. The kind of collaboration and empowerment that results from these meetings will only grow and gain in potential for further action in implementing methods of local water harvesting, ecological power generation, and defending rights of villagers. The particular meetings that AID could fund will give rise to sustained active collaboration between many groups. Material such as computers will be used by NBA even after the WCD work is over.

1. It will strengthen the contribution that individuals, people’s movements and village level NGOs can make to the framework in which decisions are made at the panchayat, block, mandal, district, state and national level.
2. It will demonstrate that the successes of locally managed water and power systems are not limited to isolated cases and deserve serious implementation by governments and not only NGOs.
3. It will facilitate effective and long term sharing of information by NGOs involved in this work in diverse geographic areas and with diverse approaches.
4. It will train people (on-the job) in documenting their work, systematizing their research and presenting their experiments and results in public.
5. It will serve as a fundamental step necessary to revive and sustain traditional water and energy harvesting systems of India, facilitate many more such steps and inspire more people to keep the wisdom living and thriving.

    Because we have spent more human hours face to face on the field with NBA and TNSF than all other projects of AID over all the years combined and since these are organizations that are

AID India has given these the status of Focus NGOs.

    Since both organizations are involved in several districts we have to figure out in how many districts we can get involved at the Focus village level depending on the AID funds available etc. These are decisions that AID has to make in future. By considering these as Focus NGOs Aid-India feels that it is committed in a long-term sense to both these groups and we are trying to develop proposals as partners which have flexibility and cooperation. While drawing the focus village plan we had the usual NGOs as examples. Both of these happen to be people’s movements. Owing to this they don’t accept foreign funds but we are finding ways of getting involved even financially with proposals like this.

    One of the very interesting insights that motivated the Focus Villages part of AID-plan was that problems and solutions in each village are peculiar to that region and so we should work with local groups and inputs rather than impose a "right idea" of development from the above. In the Nandurbar district and in the villages along the Narmada valley, the biggest problem according to the people is of displacement and violation of human rights – not, say, lack of education. So we are working with the best groups on this problem in these villages, to forward the AID-plan of trying to establish FVs based on local problems. In the Nemeli block, displacement is not what people in villages feel is their biggest problem. AID-Plan also requires that the NGO not be too closed minded -- like education alone, or health alone etc though it has its area of expertise. The fact that Jeevanshalas (schools from 1-4) are running in Narmada villages, and there are efforts for water-shed development, herbal medicine etc demonstrates that NBA is involved in all areas.

    AID due to this sensitive planning is not an organization that is going to give the prescription that these villages should shift to the resettlement sites and accept education, health etc that we can arrange to give -- this would be analogous to "one solution package" regardless of local problems. This would show a lack of appreciation of what these village people want to do, which is to fight to stay and question the motives behind moving them. So the approach followed by AID in these villages is for right to information, right to peoples participation in government planning that affects them and struggle against corruption, bending of rules and violation of tribunal awards, right to preserve their culture, forests, right to their river for fishing instead of exclusive right being sold to companies, etc and to seek with the village people an alternate decentralized solution to water and power.

    Another insight in the Plan is that we have to work with groups interested in spreading their expertise from Focus villages to district and rest of the nation. Our plan is that in Focus efforts where there is lots of expertise, AID would fund networking and training of other NGOs and organizations interested in this expertise.

    Thus taken together the plan is to develop local solutions to problems, (roughly one Focus effort in every district), and bring them all into play by spreading them where applicable, and achieve an inter-dependent, holistic effort on the multi-faceted problems.

    The above are why this proposal is at the heart of the AID-plan and they also help give you some idea of progress we are making in India towards this plan. For it is when such proposals come, and action happens that we get the opportunity to exchange information with each other to understand and further develop the plan from theoretical work to actual implementation.

    The name WCD may be considered a shorthand in the sense that WCD is the catalyst that makes pooling all this knowledge and experience timely. The collaboration that begins here will have far reaching results. If a tree falls and no one hears it, does it make a sound? WCD is now hearing it, so it is imperative that we make a sound in as coherent, clear and audible manner as possible.

    We no longer refer to this as the WCD proposal because the goals of this project far exceed the goals of WCD which is a 2 year commission. When the WCD was formed, NGOs interested in environment, human rights and development issues around the world formed a group called International Commission on Dams, Rivers and People (ICDRP). Though it has no office or office-bearers, it is a concerted effort to facilitate peoples participation from all corners of the globe in the WCD process and beyond for processes pertinent to other levels of governance, as well as processes initiated by people themselves. It is a good faith effort now so that 2 years down the road the same NGOs will not find that crucial perspectives were absent from WCD process and that whatever progress the WCD manages to make will have the chance to involve more concerned people of the "world."

    As a commissioner, Medha tais method of research involves listening to people and visiting the sites of action. Therefore the work that she is doing to support her inputs to the work program and methodology of the commission naturally involves teaching the commission how to hear the voices of the people as well as teaching the people how to collect data and present it in a manner that will be received by the commission.

    Therefore the determined effort to research large dams and their alternatives in power and water in India is something that is valuable to people with or without WCD. WCD is a chance to make the results of the research have more impact on a certain important sector of decision making. But once the information has been developed to this degree, the people’s movements and NGOs will be making use of it at every opportunity.
 

    Ever since Medha tai spoke to AID volunteers in Maryland (first in October 1997 and again in May 1998 when WCD was formed), we have been asking her for ways we can support her work. Initially some AID volunteers wrote letters on issues of concern to people in villages and studied legislation affecting the poor such as Land Acquisition Act, etc. When AID fellows in India began visiting the Narmada Valley and learning about the Narmada Nav Nirman Samiti (Alternative Development programs of NBA) we thought of innovative ways to support them. AID volunteers from many chapters collected sweaters for the schoolchildren in the cold hilly areas. People have also collected educational toys for use in the schools. At the same time AID volunteers asked us if there was not something more systematic we could do to impact on the fundamental issues of the Narmada villages, preferably coming through our usual route for project support.

    AID cannot make any donation towards NBA. NBA accepts funds only from within India, and is very strict about this. Because the current phase of research is international by nature, there is no restriction on accepting foreign funds. There is also very significant involvement of NBA volunteers and network in WCD work. When Ravi and Aravinda first learned that more funds would be needed for work associated with WCD we urged Medha tai to consider AID for support.

    She feels more comfortable with AID than with other organisations which may be equally interested in her work but simply have not spent the kind of time and energy getting involved. Balaji, Ravi and Aravinda have made special efforts in India to present AID as not being just a funding agency, but that which is concerned about field issues, peoples movements etc. and is sensitive to realities on the ground. This is also the image that we have been trying to convey from USA over the years and this is why Medha trusts that AID is a good organization to take support from.

    In many projects we first fund and then find ways to get involved personally. In this project Ravi, Aravinda and the occasional AID volunteer visiting Mumbai have been involved for a long time before asking for a proposal. In fact the quality time being spent on NBA and TNSF by AID fellows and Aid-India volunteers in India has officially made these two groups the Focus NGOs of Aid-India as was presented in the progress made in AID-Plan session of the AID conference in January. Accordingly AID-Fellows have looked for getting involved in funding as this is a strong-point of AID. We have earned the trust of NBA and TNSF volunteers and have developed a very intimate and informal working style with them. They now know that we are not "foreign funding," that though AID volunteers are outside India and want to give funds, we are Indians concerned at every level and that funding is a level we are taking on only after visiting, raising awareness, writing letters, documenting meetings, pitching in with important on-field contributions (like the "I will report honestly" video) and initiating some alternative development activities such as the recent jeevanshala camp with Ashok of Vidnyan Vahini.
 

    The budget is marginally higher than some other AID projects (with a significant number at $4000 a year), considering it is distributed over 1999 and 2000. And AID could decide to fund a portion of it before deciding it is worthwhile enough to provide more support.

    The budget is higher because it involves such a large and diverse group of people. While AID should certainly support efforts to harvest water and energy in villages, it must also think of investing in the research and policy making level, as it will reap benefits of a long term nature. This proposal comes with a budget larger than a budget for a specific project in a specific village, but it gives such projects exactly the kind of support they need to survive and make an impact in the development framework in which they operate.

    Ravi and Aravinda have not met personally with the various NGOs involved in researching dams and their alternatives. Aravinda met some of those who presented in the first WCD hearing in Colombo, Sri Lanka. They are people like Ashish Kothari of Kalpavriksha, an action and reserach group founded by students of IIT Delhi, now based in Pune. Or Himanshu Thakkar, formerly with Center for Science and Environment, now running a research NGO called Center for Water Policy in Delhi. Or Girish Sant and Sripad Dharmadikari, both of IIT Bombay. AID volunteers would be only too excited about the way they have been able to combine their field experience with their technical knowledge and be very eager to get involved in their projects. And those are just the English speaking people. There are many others who may not speak English, and although we do encourage people to submit proposals to AID in their own language, we know it would take a long time for us to translate them. As you can see, even if all of this is achieved, the funds involved would be much more than for the coordinated effort.

    More fundamentally, one of the most salient features of this proposal is that it is a coordinated effort, a step beyond supporting 50 odd separate projects by 50 odd separate groups. Also it would be difficult to decide which were "the most important NGOs" and in the current project we will be working with more than NGOs but also individuals who have been very active and effective in village development.

    Even though we are not working with each of the NGOs or persons individually, AID Fellows Aravinda and Ravi in India will work to make sure that detailed reports of the meetings and resarch results are conveyed to AID in the US, and that any opportunity to be more closely involved with one of the cooperating NGOs or persons is certainly brought to light.

    She could easily have applied to IDS and they might have felt obligated to fund since the entire cash award from NBA’s Right Livelihood Award was given to IDS. But she would never dream of using such things.

    She is comfortable doing this with AID because she feels direct involvement, understanding and a deeper relationship should come before funding and this is true in the case of AID. Also AID has requested Medha for such an opportunity. Medha doesn’t think the proposal will be rejected and so she has given it exclusively to AID. In case it is rejected then she may consider other agencies or decide simply to continue to use part of NBA’s meagre funds for WCD work as she is currently doing. Some of the meetings and items may then get compromised.

    Certainly organizations like International Rivers Network or Environmental Defense Fund have offered her support in the past, but she hasn’t accepted them (as far as we know) owing to them being foreign agencies.
 

    No commissioner is dependent on WCD for funds.  In fact commissioners of WCD also raise funds for it. So far Medha alone hasn’t helped with this due to shortage of time. Also other commissioners have offices, staff, infrastructure and so on as they do not belong to a very grassroots movement like Medha tai and so work like well-funded NGOs (then of course the pro-dam commissioners are like capitalists who have lots of facilities). So there is much help that other commissioners get from their existing groups and contacts to raise funds or facilities to use for WCD work, but Medha being in the position of not accepting foreign funds for NBA and not having specific fund-raisers really has to spend enormous time to raise funds, which she doesn’t have.

    What the commissioners present as their budget has relation to what they raise from funding agencies and what they want to do. Medha is low (zero so far) on the first and probably the highest on the last, which makes it necessary that she has budget that needs support from funding agencies she herself finds.
 

    Medha tai didn’t put these in the proposal on her own. Ravi and Aravinda felt that these were important for Medha tai’s work since she (and NBA) handle several press releases, faxes, affidavits, court petitions, communications with ministries etc on a daily basis. But the total computers NBA has for example is around 3 (Baroda, Badwani and Medha tai’s lap-top) of which 2 are pretty old. There is no computer in the WCD office in Mumbai and there is access to computing here only when Medha tai comes with her lap-top. After 2 years, these infrastructure items can be moved to Baroda or Badwani office or if by then NBA continues the Mumbai office in its name then they will be useful there itself. This was Ravi and Aravinda’s logic.

    Medha accepted to put these on the budget after pursuasion by Ravi, Aravinda, and Joe and Sanjay Sangvai of NBA. She herself feels that field-work is more important and therefore NBA always cuts corners when it comes to infrastructure, people eating enough food, or even taking their honorariums of Rs 800 pm.

    AID has a background in infuencing Medha’s infra-structure in a positive way, For example her internet account came only after she began by using dishaa@bom3. Her first lessons on her lap-top were from Sudhakar himself. Seeing the success of the camcorder in the recent Nandurbar campaign, Arundhati of NBA (and ASHA) said that she will procure a camcorder for NBA. Even the camera that Medha tai uses has been gifted by Kiran and company.

    Since AIDers in India from Infosys etc were trying to obtain computers we asked Shripad (IIT-Mumbai graduate and NBA full-timer since more than 10 yrs) for computer needs of NBA. His mail is attached at the end. However we have not been successful in getting the computers from Infosys etc.

    Even small NGOs nowadays routinely ask for computers. For example the Srikakulam savings group we started asked for one, and we are not recommending that to AID. Likewise the Keshav Gore trust in Mumbai (supported by Blacksburg) that works with slum children requested one and we didn’t forward that request to AID-USA but asked if Infosys people can help get free ones. Infrastructure is not bad per se but we have to decide where it is really necessary.

    Anyway the latest on this item in the budget is that it is Medha tai’s last priority. Ravi met her 2-3 days ago and she enquired about the status of the proposal since she needs to inform WCD head office etc. He said it is still pending, and Medha thought maybe we are short of money and hence haven’t decided. So she said we don’t need the computer, printer, fax machine etc. Please ask AID whatever money they have should support the rest of the budget and only if there is more should this item be even considered.

    There is no question of this research being vital to some commission out there, as the commission itself will live regardless of what we do. This research is vital to us as people sharing the goal of developing the knowledge and paving the way for positive developments in India.

    WCD process is nothing more and nothing less than what the 12 commissioners agree will be the process. Medha tai has singlehandedly transformed this commission from something that would have simply studied documents and talked to highlevel officials to a commission that is seeking better ways to hear the voices of the people. The idea of having site visits by commissioners in regional consultations (such as Colombo) was proposed by Medha tai, now all the commissioners see its value. The format of a public hearing which was followed in Colombo was also suggested by Medha tai, met with great skepticism, but judged a resounding success after the Colombo hearing. 2 years is too short a time for Medha tai to wait at every stage for the rest of the WCD to catch up to her methodology. In any case it is more efficient for the commission as a whole to work this way, leaving each commissioner with maximum independence from the central secretariat.

    All commissioners were asked to submit their budget for the two years. Medha tai has already gone through the process and the budget supports part of her work. However, WCD has indicated shortage of funds and is not keen on the commissioners expanding their budget.

    Further, the public hearings and meetings are unique to Medha’s work and as such not part of the budgets of other commissioners. Since she is attempting a special approach, Medha tai does not want to go back to the Commission for additional funds in these directions. She also sees the work as going beyond WCD, and as something she and her colleagues will anyway do with whatever support they can get and not depend on WCD. The question for AID is whether AID wants to be a resource that will be helpful for such work, given that no other alternative source (WCD or otherwise) is being explored except having the common people bear the costs themselves.

    This work is supplementary to her function as Commissioner and other commissioners would normally handle such supplementary work through their respective organizations. Each commissioner will have resources to draw upon for their organizations, and for Medha tai, AID is in a position to be such a resource.

    Moreover, If WCD provided funds for Medha tai for preparatory work, they would have to provide to the others as well. As their budgets would be several times that of Medha tai (as they meet in more posh settings) it would be out of the question for WCD.

    Also please see the already stated bit on commissioners also raising funds for WCD and Medha not raising any yet and hence the need to get outside-WCD funds.

Research and meetings come first.

    The other commissioners are from large corporations such as ABB, large universities such as Stanford, or large NGOs such as Oxfam & Environmental Defense Fund. They will view these meetings as part of their organisation’s work and fit it into their budget, publish it in their next annual report, and it will be accomodated by their usual fundraising mechanisms.

    Medha tai’s organisation is NBA. She has already been using NBA funds and human resource for WCD work, just as other commissioners would use the infrastructure of their respective organisations. NBA donors also appreciate WCD work and some have donated towards it. Villagers from the fertile Nimad region of Narmada Valley attended the WCD hearings in Colombo at their own expense. People are contributing however and whatever they can.