On Water and Dam Building

Disturbed by the Indian Government's repeated purusal of the inter-linking of rivers at the cost of much of the forest area and dislocation of many communities, an environmental activist approached one of the leading Hindu Guru. When he enquired whether it is correct on the part of the government to build large dams to generate electricity. The Guru made a brief observation, "One of the fundamental principles of the Indian civilisation is outlined in the saying, "jalam dharyena veeryasi", i.e., water is potent only when it flows". Implying that any move on the contrary would be against one of the fundamental precepts of the Indian civilisation. This conversation took place when the government of India was all out to promote the inter-linking of rivers (sometime early 2003).

In November 2004, Pawan Gupta of SIDH(www.sidhsri.org), Mussorie narrated an anecdote which he said gave him an insight into the thinking of the ordinary people of India. He said how during the early days of establishing the SIDH centre in Gharwal Himalayas (this is a beautiful centre promoting a beautiful concept of localised form of education, more about it some other time), how he had to walk to the centre from the village as there were no good roads. During his walks he always used to find that the public tap was always found to be open and water running down. He used to make it a point to turn it off. Once during an interaction with the local villagers, he enquired about the reason why they don't close down the water once they take water for their homes. A village women replied, "but, water is meant to flow, not stopped/curtailed". Though one may dismiss this as an attitude which could result in wastage of an increasingly valuable resource, Pawan points out how that this provides an insight into the Indian way of thinking.

Couple of years before that a Japanese scientist had released a group of pictures with water's micro-structure photographed after being subjected to different forms of human intervention including that of flowing river water and dammed water. His analysis (to be found on the web in references to Masaro Emato, www.masaru-emato.net) is interesting and seems to be in line with what the Guru claims and what the village women feels is fundamental.

from notes: Dec 2004