Observations of a fucked up Indian - 1

A few days back, the Supreme Court has taken a decision on the Sardar Sarovar Dam. The construction has been allowed. It doesn't matter to the court that in a few days, one lakh Indians will be peregrinating to a place that they have never set their eyes on, the Indian towns. Just imagine yourself in the position of the tribal/rural folk of Madhya pradesh, who are to be rehabilitated. Just imagine that god has given you a very meagre Intelligence Quotient and an extremely minute amount of exposure to the world outside your own village. Imagine yourself inheriting the naivety of an average Indian rustic. You work for nobody other than yourself. You are the sole person responsible for your family. Most importantly, you are happy the way things are. Now you are, out of the blue, forced to vacate your house and shown a new house, most probably in the slum of an average Indian town. What do you do now? Get yourself, your wife and your children hired as a labourers? Or drink away all the rehabilitation damages paid by the government, and when you're done with squandering everything away, with the last few rupees you have managed to save, buy yourself and your family a bottle of poison and do the penultimate. You might find it strange that these are the only two choices that I have given you. You might ask me 'What are the banks for?'. If you do, you are not empathizing.

You now put yourself out of the rustic's shoes and question the governement about the happenings. It will reply, 'Government stands for the greater commong good!'. Now India is one of the densest country in the world, in terms of population. If you decimate India, you will be left with enough free space for the world to live happily for at least another 100 years, without any space problems. Would you proceed? What happened to the greater, common good? Has it suddenly gone down to your throat and digested by your already busy intestine? Now the government vomitted the phrase 'Greater Common Good', publicly, for two reasons: For the irrigation of the agrarian Suarashtra and for supplying drinking water to Gujarat. Take any state in India and make a list of common problems they face. It wouldn't be surprising at all that Water tops the list. It's strange how a single chemical runs the whole world. By running, I not only mean physically but also mentally. You raise the issue of water and the sentiments of the people in a whole state (Gujarat, in this case) flare up. There is a common phrase used all around the world, mainly in movies that goes like 'Indians are sentimental fools'. The phrase hasn't become famous for nothing. When sentiments are raised, the thinking capabilities are automatically stopped. The situation would have been much better if the people in Gujarat would have taken a deep breath (thats all the time it takes to think doesn't it?) before carrying out their protests. First of all, Both the reasons weren't documented when the idea of the multi-purpose dam was brought out. Wily Government ours, we must say. Secondly, Saurashtra is at the end of the water line (canal) and the government and most engineers working on the same project are usnure of whether the water would reach that far. The reason being that the canal runs throuh major cities like Vadodara and Ahmedabad before it reaches Saurashtra. Now name one city in the world that doesn't use up or dirty all its available water resources. Here, we are talking of two major cities. Now what would the people in Saurashtra irrigate their land with? Mud?

It would take me another article to talk about the financial aspects of the Sardar Sarovar Project. The gist however is that dams are bad. It is a means used by the already developed nations to fuck the developing nations. They developed nations charge the developing nations heavily for the technology transfer. This, added to the huge operational costs makes it extremely expensive to build dams. If they would have invested the amount elsewhere in rural developmental programs, India would have been much better of. Dams stagnate the soil around the dam. In scientific terms, they cause 'watter logging'. The once-fertile area around the Sardar Sarovar Dam is now showing signs of salinity. The fact is that most of the dams in the developed nations are being blasted out because of their detrimental properties.

A Dam fucks up the soil, it fucks up the people around it and it fucks up people like me in the inside.
Damn the dams.