When I meet Puran Chand, an activist in the forefront of the anti-Renuka dam struggle, he dictates from the two much-thumbed pages of his notebook the several objections he has against the government’s plan for the rehabilitation of people displaced by the Renuka dam. Here is a man who has repeatedly raised his objections and perhaps tired of repeating it. And who can blame him?
The idea of a dam in the Renuka valley in the Sirmaur region in Himachal Pradesh started taking shape as early as the 1960s when it was proposed that the Giri river could be dammed to produce electricity. In order to make this project economically feasible, first, a flood-control component was tacked on and then the proposal to store water to be supplied in Delhi. In 1994, when the Memorandum of Understanding was signed, the project had taken on the form of a 148-m-high dam with a 24-kilometre-long reservoir. This dam has been contentious since then, with the affected villagers protesting the submergence of land, of its impact on wildlife, of the fragility of the site, and the lack of an options assessment.
Rather than waiting till the impasse is resolved, a few farmers have taken steps to ensure their livelihoods. Durga Ram, a resident of Mahthu, has taken up mushroom farming. “I wanted to find some farming that I could do without land,” he says as he surveys his ancestral farm slated to be submerged if the dam is constructed.