Women and Large dams

India’s first prime minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had called large dams 'the temples of modern India', little did he know that these temples can also have disastrous effects, especially on the lives of the marginalised. Large dams and huge hydropower plants are usually considered crucial in the development of any country. The main critique of this mainstream notion of development (which inevitably involves the construction of large dams) is that it is not equitable. Equity comes into play where some communities suffer disproportionate losses compared with those that enjoy the benefits of the development. Women are one such category that suffers. You might be puzzled, doesn’t displacement caused by the construction of large dams affect all the people who live in that river basin? Well, that is true, yet we are claiming that even among that community, women have to bear more brunt of the socio-economic impacts of these huge developmental projects.

Various studies have shown that women and men adopt different livelihood strategies according to geographical scales and climatic season. The man of the household usually holds the title of the land that belongs to the family. When the displacement and resettlement process takes place, it is he who gets registered as the 'beneficiary' of the compensation since the land is in his name. On the other hand, a woman who also loses her traditional livelihood (that which depends upon grazing land, non-timber forest produce, grass used for artisanal products) does not get compensated directly. That means, the woman loses out on her right to land, compensation for the lost sources of her income and the control over family resources & finances due to the power dynamics inside the household. It has also been observed that the men who received the compensation have spent the entire amount on alcohol or Jugaar leaving the women and other members of the family with absolutely nothing.

The displacement and resettlement process affects the family’s food security and direct access to water & sanitation - both considered being the responsibilities of the women of the household. Various project-affected women have reported ‘there being no drinking water pumps for the initial years of the resettlement process’ which meant that they had to spend hours and hours collecting water from lorry tankers. All these changes might affect a family’s health and their children may miss out on education because of the change in the place and worsening economic condition; in both cases, women are overburdened and blamed since household work and child care is considered as their domain in a patriarchal setup.

The compensation procedure by the state mechanism views only the loss of physical land, not the impacts associated with it. Let’s take the example of the proposed Chentikheda dam construction in the Kwari district of Madhya Pradesh. The dam won’t only take away lands from these people, it will lead to the loss of ‘double-cropped’ agricultural land, will deny them access to the forest produce, it will cut off the villages on the other side along with disrupting their trading activities. As compensation, the government is only offering them a piece of land. In many cases, even the land-for-land compensation is not given (as witnessed in the case of Sardar Sarovar Dam). The very few households who receive such compensation, get a rocky land instead of their earlier fertile one. This badly affects the agricultural sector and the people involved in it, many of which are women! They have to do all the extra hard work (without any payment) like tilling the rocky land.  (Attached here is the link to the documentary on the case of Kwari: The story of Kwari).

Women also suffer both socially and culturally as they have to get used to new and unfamiliar language, communities, culture, traditions, economy (including the marketplaces). The new settlers are seen as outsiders by the host community and tension is always present between the old and the new settlers over resources. Since women are in charge of collecting resources like water, firewood they are always placed in a difficult position.

It is interesting to note that the ‘integration model’ for development (also called the liberal integration model) believes resettlement is a blessing in disguise for women. It believes that resettlement itself may produce psychological and economic benefits for women. Like employment, it can stimulate new ways of thinking conducive to women's equality. It believes that moving women away from their traditional homes can help break the narrow boundaries that restricted their roles and aspirations. The model also predicts that women relocated to urban sites will enjoy significant improvements in the quality of their lives due to the greater access to modern health care facilities (O'Bannon, 1994).

However, in reality, as we saw earlier, the project affected households hardly get any compensatory land; let alone getting land in urban sites. Besides, the women from the project-affected households feel differently about this scenario. Rehabilitation sites are often located hundreds of kilometres from their ancestral homes, restricting the mobility of women and breaking them from their social network & support. Below is a quote by one of the women named Ushaben Tadvi belonging to the scheduled tribe. Ushaben was displaced due to the Sardar Sarovar Project and got involved in the Narmada Bachao Movement later:

“Here (in resettlement site), only if we have 300 rupees, 400 rupees, we can go to our maternal home. These days, it is not possible to go to my maternal home for 2-3 years. Whereas there (from our own village), we visited our maternal home every 2-3-5 days.”

These types of socio-psychological non-measurable impacts do not find mention in any of the government’s planning and compensation documents.

                        A photo of protesting women in Narmada Bachao Andolan

Along with the construction of new large dams, the older dam projects also create gender-differentiated impacts. One of the dangers they create is that of floods. Consider the example of Damodar Valley. There have been three major floods since the Damodar valley corporation dams came into existence after independence: in 1958, 1978, and 1998; mainly due to the release by the Damodar valley corporation of excess water into the canals during late monsoons to protect the dams. Now interestingly, even though a man is usually held responsible to protect his family, in case of such emergencies and disasters, women are the ones who are disproportionately burdened with the responsibility of finding means to survive, procuring food for children, and ensuring physical safety for themselves and their families. Women are forced to fetch water from distant areas as most of the tube wells are contaminated due to the flood. Losses of harvest and livestock have a high impact on women as nearly 58% of them rely on cattle and chickens for their cash income according to the research conducted by Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt (2012).

One of the biggest reasons behind all these unforeseen impacts of large dams and hydropower plants in India especially on women, as agreed by most of the scholars, is the lack of representation and inclusion of women within the institutional mechanisms such as the planning bodies and the hydropower industry. A gender lens and gender-sensitive planning have been missing in India’s development planning body for a long period of time. Gender-sensitive planning could include public consultations with women to better understand the power dynamics in the public and the private sector. It could also include assessments of sex-disaggregated data to develop a gendered project baseline.

The question is if this has been identified already, why isn’t it getting implemented? The answer lies in the societal as well as the working/organisational culture that has been in place for many years. For example, Engineering work in hydropower is perceived as highly masculine and immensely risky. In fact, the water sector itself has been identified as deeply masculine. The hydropower sector, in particular, symbolises ‘male’ capabilities to restructure and control nature (in this case, water) since it includes working in remote locations, blasting tunnels through solid mountains of rocks, stopping and containing the flow of mighty rivers etc. The notions of subordination and hierarchy (chain of command) within these institutions serve to perpetuate these gender power differences. These hierarchies within the organisation are found to limit access to information and opportunities for the staff working at lower positions in the organisation, most of which are women. This fact clearly communicates that it is not possible to promote gender equality in the planning and implementation of hydropower projects without addressing masculinities and the associated hierarchies within the organisational culture in the water sector.

Including women at the planning and decision-making level can be a key to reduce the severity of various impacts caused by these large developmental projects. As noted by Jha (2004), the 'freedom to make decisions' is central to the idea of participation! Apart from this, instead of treating the household as a homogeneous unit, the government should look at the gender-disaggregated impacts while designing the compensation policy where women will also be given their rightful share in the compensation and will be helped in finding an alternative livelihood.

However, I strongly feel that these solutions will only work as a bandage. To address the root cause, in the long run, we have no option but to search for alternatives to large dams and hydropower projects. The elephant in the room is, is that even possible? Can there be any alternative to large dams that doesn’t hamper the economic progress of the country? Well, that will be the subject of exploration of some other post.

Thanks for sticking around till the end, would love to know your take on this, reader! Please do comment below.