The modernization of India and the need for electricity and irrigation systems to sustain economic growth fueled the plan to create up to 30 large dams on the Narmada River. The construction of the biggest one, the Sardar Sarovar Dam (SSD), started in 1961, yet the proposed benefits were met with significant costs to locally affected residents who would be flooded out of their homes and villages, and forced to relocate to cities or other villages. While the initial estimate was 40,000 affected families, more realistically the dam would immediately uproot 80,000 families, change 600,000 livelihoods, and ultimately affect 15 million people negatively. After many years of resistance by the Narmada Bachao Andolan (the “Save Narmada Movement” won the Right Livelihood Award in 1991), and significant international pressures to reevaluate the costs of the SSD, the World Bank finally pulled out of the project in 1994 after investing $450 million.
Contributed by Travis Batiza
Course: Modern Global Environmental History
Instructor: Dr. Wilko Graf von Hardenberg
University of Wisconsin–Madison, US
- Routledge, P. "Voices of the Dammed: Discursive Resistance amidst Erasure in the Narmada Valley, India." Political Geography 22, no. 3 (2003): 243–70.