It has become rather fashionable of late to criticize the likes of Arundhati Roy as people who are bent on stopping ‘development’ of India. On the contrary, I think she makes a lot of sense. If not anything she brings up many points which no one, as far as I know, has effectively countered. The whole media circus over the recent NBA protest hides some very real issues that are being ignored.
For example, the promise of rehabilitation to the people displaced or being displaced by the dam that has not been delivered. The question of whether big dams, which result in changing the face of the surrounding environment and displacing communities are really beneficial when the world over everyone is moving away from such mega projects with even the World Bank, once a big supporter of such projects, agreeing that big dams are not what they are touted to be-the panacea for water troubles. The growing disconnect between the haves and have-nots, especially in rural India, with the have-nots being relegated to the margins of Indian society without a voice, ignored in the shiny image-making of a new India galloping to join the ranks of the developed world.
You can read her interview in The Hindu where she updates her older essay on the Narmada issue, The Greater Common Good published in 1999 in Frontline, in an interview with Shoma Chaudhuri here.