The message of the Narmada and Bhopal struggles is that defenders of people's rights must collectively fight to halt the neoliberal juggernaut in India.
THIS is turning out to be a season of great protests and indefinite hunger-strikes - over the raising of the height of the Sardar Sarovar Dam (SSD), justice for the victims of the Bhopal gas disaster, and against the arbitrary sacking of hundreds of workers of Kamani Engineering International in Jaipur. All three struggles are led by some of India's most inspiring social activists, all with a decades-long history of dedication to their cause, including Medha Patkar and her colleagues from the Narmada valley, Satinath Sarangi and Rashida-Bi from Bhopal, and D. Thankappan of the Kamani Employees' Union and New Trade Union Initiative.
It is an unprecedented coincidence that all three struggles should occur simultaneously, cutting across concerns and agendas such as environmental protection, resistance to displacement, workers' rights at a time of an employers' offensive, and fight against corporate criminality. The impressive solidarity they have generated with one another and with kindred movements is even more unprecedented.
This is for the first time that Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) activists were joined in their indefinite fast by a national-profile member of the Communist Party of India (Kamal Mitra-Chenoy) and activists of the CPI(ML)-Liberation. Polit Bureau members of the CPI(M) identified themselves closely with the agitation, lending full-throated support to the demand to halt dam construction until rehabilitation is completed.
Equally remarkable is the active support the NBA receives on a daily basis from such diverse groups as victims of evictions from different cities, slum-dwellers, agricultural labourers, forest workers, environmentalists, feminists, right-to-information activists, civil-liberties campaigners, global justice activists, progressive lawyers, peaceniks, and students even from elite colleges and schools. There have been sympathy fasts in more than 10 cities.
This massive expression of solidarity is one of the greatest gains of India's many progressive movements for social transformation. It signifies their advance and intensification - albeit in adverse circumstances. The single biggest achievement is the evolution of a common focus in the form of opposition to elitist "free-market" policies.
As the first two struggles enter their third and fourth week respectively, there are few signs of resolution of issues. Only the Kamani dispute has been referred to compulsory arbitration thanks to the Union Labour Minister's intervention. Medha Patkar's health is sinking as I write this on the 15th day of her fast. The Cabinet has done well to convene a meeting of the Review Committee of the Narmada Control Authority. But it is not clear what this will yield and whether the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government will muster the courage to halt the raising of the SSD's height.
The issue is not whether one is for or against the SSD, but whether extremely vulnerable flesh-and-blood people will be rehabilitated in keeping with the Narmada Disputes Tribunal's award, confirmed by Supreme Court orders. This mandates that rehabilitation of people liable to be displaced by the dam must be completed before its height is raised from one level to the next - in the present case, from 110.64 metres to 121.92 metres.
Yet, construction is proceeding furiously round the clock despite solid evidence that the oustees have not even been resettled, leave alone rehabilitated. Thousands of families in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh have not received land-for-land. Many have not even been "declared" (identified) oustees. A group of Ministers visited the affected villages and was besieged by complaints and protests. Although the contents of its report are not public, the review decision suggests that it admits that rehabilitation is inadequate.
At the time of writing, the Supreme Court has not heard the petition filed by a displaced people's group. Irrespective of the court's verdict, one hopes that the government will not sacrifice its legal, moral and political obligations to the people and surrender to the blackmailing tactics of Narendra Modi, who has launched a hysterical counter-agitation demanding that the dam's height be raised - no matter what the human cost. The dam has acquired mystical or divine importance in the Gujarat elite's irrational way of thinking.
The Bhopal victims have heroically fought for over two decades to demand accountability and justice from Union Carbide (and its successor, Dow Chemicals). They are demanding the criminal prosecution of Warren Anderson and other executives of Union Carbide and its subsidiaries, in keeping with Supreme Court orders. They also want Dow to clean up the polluted Bhopal plant site and a water supply contaminated by a host of toxic chemicals produced, stored and released from the pesticides factory. This too was mandated by the Supreme Court in 2004. But the government has shown no will to ask Dow to do this.
It bears stating that a Dow official is on the Indo-U.S. Chief Executive Officers' Forum, which figured prominently in George W. Bush's recent visit. The Bush-Manmohan Singh Joint Statement commits itself to the economic agenda laid down by the Forum. Inaction on Dow is of a piece with the despicable treachery of successive governments in India in failing to serve an arrest warrant on Anderson on the ground that he is "untraceable" - although his address in a posh New York suburb is public knowledge.
Sardar Sarovar is at a critical stage. If its final height is reduced from the original design, there will be no loss in its Gujarat irrigation potential (9 million acre-feet). But the gain in averting displacement - over 60 per cent of the project's total - will be huge. The reduction can only happen if design changes are made now. Once the height is raised, it would be too late.
Suspension of construction offers a superb opportunity to prune the project's size and cut losses. The SSD is a white elephant. It has bled Gujarat's treasury, while sending irrigation costs sky-high, so high as to make agriculture unviable without massive subsidies. Halting construction would be in keeping with a 1981 agreement between the-then Member of Parliament and Gujarat Chief Ministers Arjun Singh and Madhavsinh Solanki. If the UPA government squanders this chance, it will have shown itself to be a slave to giganticism and callous developmentalism that crushes people's rights - in keeping with neoliberalism's dictates.
One stark truth emerges from all three struggles and solidarity movements. Neoliberalism "with a human face" is an oxymoron. This avatar of capitalism must alienate people from their means of survival and life resources, uproot them from their habitat, grind their rights into the ground, and impoverish, marginalise, disempower and disenfranchise them. Neoliberalism is irredeemably, extremely, predatory and cannot countenance public control even over gifts of nature like water, land and forests. It eviscerates governments and undermines democracy.
Every major policy and scheme of the UPA government (with the honourable exception of the Rural Employment Guarantee Act), and most of its plans, whether in urban development, transportation, telecom, retail trade or health care, increasingly bear a neoliberal impress. As does it macroeconomic approach. Whenever the government meets with popular resistance to its policies, it takes recourse to devious means. Among the most devious is the proposed creation of special economic zones (SEZs), scores of which are on the anvil.
There is a strident demand that SEZs be exempted from labour laws, including regulations on working hours and minimum wages, and with total freedom to hire and fire workers. These will become nightmarish zones of labour enslavement. They must be resisted. The trade union movement and the Left parties have a high stake in doing so. So do all those who stand for democratic freedoms and rights.
Contrary to propaganda in the corporate media, such resistance is not part of some retrograde, outmoded, backward-looking agenda. On the contrary, it is part of a modern, contemporary, forward-looking sensibility. The French students' successful mobilisation of millions in mass demonstrations against the obnoxious hire-and-fire "first employment contract" bears eloquent testimony to this.
Similarly, defending the rights of the thousands who are being evicted from our cities to facilitate the construction of shopping malls and Commonwealth games villages is part of a foundational democratic agenda. The time has come for all progressive movements and parties to develop a sharply focussed collective charter of demands - against neoliberal policies and for people-centred alternatives. Such alternatives exist, at least in embryonic form. They need to be fleshed out and integrated into people's movements. This task can no longer wait.
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