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<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/a-visionary-on-water-issues/article7643393.ece">http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/a-visionary-on-water-issues/article7643393.ece</a><br>
<br>
“Rivers are not human artifacts; they are natural phenomena,
integral components of ecological systems, and inextricable parts of
the cultural, social, economic and spiritual lives of the
communities concerned. They are not pipelines to be cut, turned
around, welded and rejoined.”<br>
<div class="articleLead">
<h2>Ramaswamy R. Iyer, water policy expert who wrote extensively
for The Hindu , saw rivers not as pipelines to be cut and
welded, but as inextricable parts of the lives of communities</h2>
</div>
<p class="body">Ramaswamy R. Iyer passed away on September 9 in
Delhi after a severe bout of viral fever. The water policy expert,
who last held the position of an honorary research professor at
the Centre for Policy Research, earlier served as Secretary of
Water Resources in the Central government. Iyer’s passion for
water-related issues won him the Padma Shri in 2014.</p>
<p class="body">Besides being a policy expert, Iyer was also a fine
writer. He wrote several books, and the last one titled
<i>Living Rivers, Dying Rivers</i>
(Oxford University Press, 2015) signifies the very cause he wrote
extensively and indefatigably about. In the introduction to the
book, he explains the reason for the title, also adding a few
words of warning: “When the title was initially thought of, the
expectation was that the chapters in the book would highlight both
healthy rivers and sick rivers, though not in equal numbers.
However, it was found that most chapters tended to present grim
pictures of rivers in decline…Even the few ‘living’ rivers (for
instance, the Shastri river in Maharashtra and Tamraparni in Tamil
Nadu) are said to be under threat…Similarly the rivers of
North-East have remained relatively free-flowing and clean
(‘pristine’) because of the absence or limited nature of human
intervention, but that situation is changing. A large number of
hydroelectric projects are planned in the North-East and some are
already under construction….In particular, the most well known of
them, the Brahmaputra, is now the victim of project planning by
both China and India, with Bangladesh also involved in the
controversy as the anxious lower riparian…One shudders to think
of... the consequences of interventions in this river by the
state, whether Chinese or India.”</p>
<p class="body">The book was to be officially launched on September
7 at Vice-President Hamid Ansari’s house, but Mr. Iyer’s
ill-health stalled the programme. Personally, I know just how
deeply devoted he was to giving this book its shape and how
diligently he had worked on the idea (preceding the book, he had
given a lecture series at the India International Centre, Delhi).
Though he had been Secretary, Ministry of Water Resources, he was
unlike any average water bureaucrat. He consistently stood by the
idea — as he had written in his book,
<i>Towards Water Wisdom: Limits, Justice, Harmony</i>
— that in the Indian context the problem of water has been a
“crisis of gross mismanagement” and in the international context,
“a crisis of rapacity.” In the same book he wrote, “The theory
that ‘development’ entails ‘costs’ and that this is a ‘sacrifice’
that some must accept in order that others might benefit must be
recognised to be disingenuous and sanctimonious; it must be firmly
abandoned. Pain and hardship imposed by some on others cannot be
described as a sacrifice by the latter…‘Stakeholder consultation’
is another misleading and sanctimonious formulation. Both the
beneficiaries of big projects (farmers receiving irrigation in the
command area, industries and cities getting electricity, etc.) and
those lands, livelihoods, and centuries-old access to the natural
resource base are being taken away are lumped together as
‘stakeholders’ who must be consulted. In truth, the beneficiaries
are stake-gainers whereas the project-affected groups are
stake-losers, and the primacy of the latter over the former needs
to be recognised…”</p>
<p class="body">Again — “The engineering-dominated supply-side
approach meant that attention was focussed on what is referred to
as water resource development; the manner in which water was used
or managed received little attention… That view continues to hold
sway in the Indian Water Establishment. They see the problem in
terms of (a) spatial variations in the availability of water, and
(b) a crisis looming on the horizon… Their answer, once again, is
more supply-side engineering.” (
<i>Towards Water Wisdom</i>
)</p>
<p class="body">Iyer’s opinions on the Indus Waters Treaty, the
Cauvery water dispute, the Mullaperiyar issue, the interlinking of
Indian rivers project, are well-known. He was one of the
petitioners seeking a review of the Supreme Court order on
interlinking rivers project and he remained, until the very end,
one of its most vociferous critics. About interlinking rivers, he
had written: “Rivers are not human artifacts; they are natural
phenomena, integral components of ecological systems, and
inextricable parts of the cultural, social, economic and spiritual
lives of the communities concerned. They are not pipelines to be
cut, turned around, welded and rejoined.”</p>
<p class="body">Iyer was always prompt in replying to emails. He was
also encouraging of people. I was fortunate that he not only
penned one of the blurbs for my book, but also discussed it (along
with Professor Amita Baviskar) at an event at India International
Centre, on September 9 last year. While speaking on my book, he
shared his broader critique of the nature of development, placing
my book in the context of a longer debate on displacement and
relief and rehabilitation. Since the struggle of people affected
by the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) and other projects still
continues, I feel I must recount what Iyer said that day: “The
present…official and industry thinking seems to be that land
should be had for the asking. The average administrator…engineer
and expert think of the peasantry, the boatmen, the fisherfolk and
others, particularly tribal communities, as backward, needing to
be brought into the mainstream…They have no understanding of the
pain of the displacement that will remain in spite of the
rehabilitation package, however good it may be. From the
perspective of development as currently understood, Polavaram and
other similar projects are symbols of development. In that view,
the disappearance of traditional societies and their centuries’
old relationship with nature will seem inevitable and necessary
transition to modernity. A person holding such a view will have
little time or patience for the agony and anguish experienced by
the dispossessed…” About the river he added, “The engineer thinks
of it as a feature of nature to be subdued, controlled and
manipulated. Or pushed around (as remarked by a famous American
water manager); the economist thinks of it as a commodity like any
other, left to market forces. What is common to all these
perceptions is the reduction of the river to the water that it
carries. And an instrumentalist or utilitarian view of the river.”</p>
<p class="body">In a condolence message, several groups such as the
National Alliance of People’s movements , the Lokshakti Abhiyan,
the Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti, the Kisan Sangharsh Samiti said of
Iyer: “At Narmada Bachao Andolan, we still remember how, as a key
official in the Water Ministry, way back in 1993, he patiently sat
through the proceedings of the five-Member Review Committee and
worked as the Committee’s backbone, painstakingly trying to
understand and later convince himself and other members of the
costs and benefits of the SSP. The Report of the five-Member Group
is nothing short of a classic. We can never forget how Iyer
<i>ji</i>
stayed for the entire three days in the Narmada valley with his
family, during the mega events marking the 25 years of the
struggle, interacting and expressing solidarity with the tribals
and farmers in the hills and plains. As a petitioner before the
Supreme Court in the Narmada petition … he questioned the
unconstitutionally of displacement by offer of meagre cash
compensation to the Sardar Sarovar oustees…”</p>
<p class="body">
<i>(R. Umamaheshwari is</i>
<i>fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla.)</i>
</p>
<p class="body"><i><b>The theory that ‘development’ entails ‘costs’
and that this is a ‘sacrifice’ that some must accept in order
that others might benefit must be firmly abandoned.</b></i></p>
<br>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Gurumurthy Kasinathan<br>
Director, IT for Change<br>
In Special Consultative Status with the United Nations ECOSOC<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.ITforChange.Net">www.ITforChange.Net</a>| Cell:91 9845437730 | Tel:91 80 26654134,
26536890<br>
My search engine is <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://duckduckgo.com">https://duckduckgo.com</a>. Make it yours. </div>
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