Many a river runs through it: Contests of big dams in modern India
Abstract: The idea of big dams as symbols of progress and modernity was no means peculiar to India. But in the latter half of the last century the country emerged as one of the top dam building nation states on earth. At issue was not just the generation of hydel power, or water for irrigation or flood control, but engineering mega structures as emblems of state building and a new equation with nature. This drew on earlier idea of river re making in India's own history especially in the Deccan but much more so on perennial dams in North America and Europe.
The far reaching consequences in terms of human displacement and also of ecological consequences were to take centre stage from the 1970s on. But it is still necessary to place the phase of large dam building in its context and ask why when and how it unfolded. This then is less of a morality play and more about how people and places need to be seen in perspective. The critiques of such dams just as the briefs by those who were advocates were also diverse.
Just as the ideas of the nation are contested, diverse and open and hence enriched through debate, so too changing ideas of not just dams but rivers themselves. What a river means or does not mean to one or more than one set of persons could vary widely and even be mutually in contradiction. Bhakra and Nangal, Hirakud and Rihand each had a history in its own time and place. By looking at dam and nation, we uncover new ways of posing the series of events and processes that brought us to where we stand today. The past offers no lessons but it can give us deep insight into how to think about the future.
Unfortunately this talk was cancelled.
About the Historian
Mahesh Rangarajan has been Professor in Modern Indian History at University of Delhi (2007-2011) and also taught at the universities of Cornell and Jadavpur and at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru. He has also served as Director of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi (2011-2015). He has a BA in History from Hindu College, University of Delhi and an MA (Balliol College) and D.Phil (Nuffield College), both from Oxford University. He was a Rhodes Scholar (1986-89). He worked as Assistant Editor with The Telegraph, Kolkata (1993-94) and has been a Junior Fellow of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (1994-99). He served as Corresponding Editor, Environment and History (1996-2000) and was also on the Editorial Board of Conservation and Society (2003-2009).
Rangarajan is the author of Fencing the Forest: Conservation and Ecological Change in India’s Central Provinces, 1860-1914 (1996), India's Wildlife History: An Introduction (2001), and Nature and Nation: Essays on Environmental History (2015). He edited the books Environmental Issues in India: A Reader (2007) and The Oxford Anthology of Indian Wildlife, Volumes I and II (1999).