Dams and Development: Evolving Frameworks For Decision Making: A forethought

When India joined the race to Development soon after attaining independence, it relied heavily on western technological advances and capital-intensive projects as a means of doing so. These projects were seen as symbols of technological progress and patriotic pride. Large investments like dams were made as a part of the nation building exercise. The focus was primarily to secure economic security. It was assumed that, the larger economic development and security of the nation would then trickle down to the people, ensuring prosperity and reducing social disparities.

However, fifty-four years hence, in the face of increasing environmental degradation, poverty, unemployment and migration, this pathway to development needs to be re-examined. There is an emerging need to reconsider the promises of development and evaluate the choices before us.

 Developmental projects like dams epitomize the crisis in development. About 50 years ago, dams were hailed as harbingers of economic prosperity. At first, large dams were simply regarded as engineering structures - that is, in terms of their usefulness for generating electric power and improving the management of water.

Then in the 1960s, cost/benefit analysis became accepted as the standard criterion for the justification of large dams. (A large dam is defined by the dam industry as one higher than 15 metres - taller than a four-storey building. The majority of large dams are built for irrigation and almost all the giant major dams are built for hydropower. Dams generate nearly one-fifth of the worlds electricity and have also extended irrigated areas, thus substantially increasing cropping intensity and yields of major food crops.

The rate of dam-building has declined in recent decades from around 1,000 a year in the 1950s to around 260 a year during the early 1990s. Issues of displacement, rehabilitation and environmental degradation have emerged as deep concerns associated with the building of dams. In fact, the dam-building era in Western countries has largely come to an end as the economic, social and environmental costs of large dams have become more apparent and public opposition has increased. The accelerating deterioration of the world's river ecosystems was being largely ignored, while other global environmental problems, such as the destruction of the world's forests and the depletion of ocean fisheries, have been the subject of much concern and debate. The declining health of almost all the world's major river ecosystems is a key factor in many of the most important symptoms of the global environmental crisis, from the major decline of coastal fisheries to the spread of waterborne diseases; from steadily worsening flood disasters to the deterioration in drinking water supply; from eroding shorelines to the loss of wetlands; from the extinction of river dolphins to the pollution of estuaries. In addition, in countries like India, the issues of lost livelihoods, increasing poverty, unemployment and Today, we are at the crossroads of an important but difficult proposition the question of following a balanced approach, which respects the rights of people while making decisions to construct or decommission dams. Similar options in decision-making is evident in other developmental projects like highways, thermal or nuclear power plants, ports, mines and industries. Who makes the decisions to plan and implement developmental projects, how are these made and why they are made are emerging as very relevant and important questions in the development sphere. This is because answers to these questions are beginning to determine the successful completion and functioning of a project. More importantly, the issue of 'who and how' today reflect the social and ecological indicators of progress. There have always existed various frameworks of decision-making. These have included formal policy processes like the cost- benefit analysis and more informal process related community dynamics like caste, region and gender. The most recent attempt at evolving a new framework for decision-making was made by the World Commission of Dams (WCD).

The WCD was set up in 1997 to evaluate the performance and impacts of large dams, assess alternatives to dams and analyse the planning, decision-making and compliance issues that underpin the construction, design and decommissioning of dams. An independent body, the WCD constituted members representing a cross-section of interests, views and institutions, the first collaborative effort in dam history of the proponents and opponents of dams. In its final report, the WCD has proposed a framework of decision making called the Rights-and-Risks Approach. This approach to options assessment and planning of dams (development projects) presents a framework to determine who has a legitimate place at the negotiation table and what issues need to be on agenda. It thus empowers decision-making processes based on a pursuit of negotiated outcomes, conducted in an open and transparent manner, thereby helping resolve many complex issues. The general effort was to move from a traditional top-down, technology focused approach to advocate significant innovations in assessing options, negotiating and sharing benefits. The two-day seminar aims to highlight various frameworks and value bases for decision making in the development sphere. It will include exploring experiences in existing decision-making processes of various developmental projects, while also delving into decision-making concerns that lie outside the existing public policy domain. Using dams as the epitome and the rights and risk approach as the base for discussion, the effort is to highlight the bases of various existing laws and policies, recording recent trends and loopholes in them, voicing of various concerns that need to be incorporated and reconsidered, and exploring how these new ideas regarding decision-making processes for developmental projects can be translated into action.