The Price of Development
THE PRICE OF
DEVELOPMENT
INSIDE HYDEL PROJECTS IN INDIA
In his 1954 speech, during a ceremony commemorating the Bhakra-Nangal dam project, Jawaharlal Nehru famously referred to dams as the “temples of modern India.” A few years on, he revised his opinion, saying that such developmental projects reflect "a disease of gigantism." More than sixty years since then, the history of dams and irrigation projects is marked by stories of development—benefits for people, irrigation, and agriculture—that are eclipsed more often than not, by stories of social and ecological conflict, displacement, disaster, and corruption.
Join us on this interactive tour and chart the discourse on multipurpose river valley projects in India.
The history of multipurpose river valley projects and dams in India can broadly be understood in three phases: the period of political thought emphasising development and self-reliance in the years following Independence (1950s-1960s) under Nehru’s leadership, scaling up of dam construction in various parts of the country in the 1970s and 1980s aimed towards varying uses such as flood prevention, drought relief, irrigation for agriculture (green revolution), water security, and electricity generation, followed by organised protests against projects primarily on grounds of ecological and social impact starting in the mid 1970s.
The conflict over dams and multipurpose river valley projects is only one example of a range of conflicts over natural resources in contemporary India involving largely two stakeholders: industry/commerce and subsistence farmers. The most significant movements have been the struggles led by the Narmada Bachao Andolan in Madhya Pradesh (MP) against the Narmada river valley project, the opposition to the Tehri dam and the Vishnuprayag project in the Garhwal Himalayas, and the protests by tribal groups against Koel Karo dam in Jharkhand in the 1980s.
Under the present neo-liberal market-driven paradigm of development, hundreds of irrigation, industrial, mining, and infrastructure projects are being proposed. As and when they materialise, the social, cultural, and ecological landscape of both urban and rural India is likely to be permanently transformed.
Despite this, the debate on dams has not really become part of the policy discourse in India. What are the different positions in this debate?




Curated by Sohnee Harshey
Editorial inputs: Abhishek Shah and Shruti Jain
Design inputs: Vishnupriya Bhandaram and Gulal Salil