Pipri village in Badwani district of Madhya Pradesh, which is in the submergence zone of Sardar Sarovar project, is a living disproof of official claim that there are “zero” people left to be resettled and rehabilitated, an eminent panel of experts found out in a series of public hearings conducted over Wednesday and Thursday (June 2-3).

While the village life is in full swing at Pipri, hardly a handful of families have been shifted to the resettlement site. No alternative land for farming and plots for building houses have been made available to the people, who run the risk of being submerged any day the Monsoon rain falls particularly heavily, Shantabehen, a local woman, tells the panel led by AP Shah, a retired judge, who held the post of chief justice at both Delhi and Mumbai high courts.

“We may part with our loved ones, but not with our land,” Sajjanjiji, another outspoken woman of the village, tells the panel, called 'independent people’s tribunal on environment and human rights', whose other two members are Devinder Sharma, researcher and agriculture policy analyst, and Jaya Sagade, a professor with Indian Law Society, Law College, Pune.
Pipri is just one of the scores of villages in Madhya Pradesh where people live as they have always been despite being officially “submerged”, giving a lie to all claims made by Narmada Control Authority (NCA) and Narmada Valley Development Authority (NVDA) that the project-affected persons (PAFs) are being resettled and rehabilitated.

There are 193 villages in Madhya Pradesh that are in the submergence zone, which means they officially fall in a region that can be inundated and destroyed any time there is heavy rainfall and rise in river waters; their residents should long have been resettled to safer places and provided with compensatory land. Thirty five of these villages, inhabited by the Adivasis, have actually been submerged without the majority of the affected people being given compensatory land.

In the Adivasi village of Pichhodi, over 100 people, who have been affected by the dam height going up to 90 m, tell the tribunal that the state has miserably failed in purchasing and providing them cultivable land and plots of houses. 
“We are agriculturists and nature-based communities. A few thousand rupees cannot feed our families and sustain our livelihoods for a lifetime. If the government cannot give us land and livelihood, it has no right to displace and submerge us,” is the common complaint in all the adivasi villages where the tribunal holds the public hearing.

At Chilakda, another village in the submergence zone, a 'mashaal juloos' greets the tribunal. The project-affected people (PAF) tell the tribunal how government officials and touts have corrupted the entire R&R process as is evident in the discovery of at least 2,000 fake registries.
“Crores of rupees had been wasted due to corruption in allotment of house plots and livelihood grants and payment of compensation to undeserving people,” a project-affected person complained.

The state government’s pathetic R&R performance, allowing the presence of entire villages in the submergence zone without rehabilitating the project-affected people, is in clear violation of the Supreme Court orders directing the government to provide land for land lost and rehabilitate the affected people before increasing the dam height.
“When the judiciary can punish an individual for even a slightly indiscreet remark, why is the state, which is in gross violation of the Supreme Court orders, not being punished? Is the judiciary not concerned about contempt of its judgments when they concern the rights of thousands of marginalized people,” says Bhagirath of Chikalda.

At Khaparkheda, Kadmal, and Nisarpur villages also, the tribunal is told that Madhya Pradesh government was ready to submerge the people without land and without rehabilitation.
Dozens of adivasis living in Alirajpur and Bhadal, who have been losing their lands since early 1990s without ever being compensated, farmers of Nimad, who have a right to agricultural land and house plots, and fish workers and potters, whose only source of livelihood is the river and land close to the river, deposed before the tribunal; they sought implementation of the Narmada tribunal award, rehabilitation policy, and various judgments of law-courts.

“The state has always been pushing the project by cheating and looting us with false promises of rehabilitation,” says Bava Mahariya. After all these years, the Madhya Pradesh government has not shown the political will to purchase a single square inch of private agricultural land to establish villages for resettlement while it has thousands of acres of land for SEZs, companies and religious institutions, he adds.

Noorji Padvi and many other adivasis from the submergence-zone villages of Maharashtra also deposed before the Tribunal on Thursday, asserting that there were still hundreds of families in their state awaiting rehabilitation, while corruption in the land purchases was on the rise.

Adivasis and farmers affected by the Indira Sagar and Omkareshwar canals tell the tribunal that their well-irrigated lands must be saved at any cost from massive building of canals. Adivasis affected by Jobat project in Alirajpur district presented their case before the tribunal and sought full rehabilitation in line with the R&R policy.

At canal project-affected villages of Pandhania (Dharampuri tehsil) and Mandil (Rajpur tehsil), justice Shah and other panel members saw large chunks of prime irrigated land in river-bank villages excavated and destroyed. “Why our well-irrigated land should be destroyed for the sake of building irrigation canals,” local farmers complained. The tribunal was also informed of the numerous illegalities in the process of land acquisition, such as forced signatures on ‘consent letters’.

The canal project-oustees also demanded that the Madhya Pradesh government discharge its constitutional duty to save their prime agricultural land and minimize displacement, which was also the mandate of the National Rehabilitation policy and the directive of the MP high court.

Some social activists brought to the notice of the tribunal other pressing issues, such as gross violation of the environmental regulations and wondered why the dam and canal works should not be stopped, as recommended by the Devender Pandey expert committee.
When the current height of the dam has failed to deliver the promised benefits of irrigation, drinking water and power, why not freeze the dam at the present height? Why should the communities in the Narmada valley face further submergence, they questioned.

Despite being invited, none of the officials of Narmada Control Authority (NCA) and Narmada Valley Development Authority (NVDA) attended the public hearings.
The tribunal, drawn from a national network of over 500 judges, lawyers, human rights activists and people’s organizations, is slated to release its full report on the 23rd or 24th June, 2010, in Bhopal.

The main terms of reference of the tribunal are to hear the concerned parties (project-affected people, the government, Narmada Bachao Andolan) and make its observations on:

(a) Whether raising the height of the SSP dam beyond the current height of 122 m is consistent with law, policy and Supreme Court judgments, when gross non-compliance with R&R and environmental measures is established and the entire costs-benefit equation of the project is in doldrums?

(b) Whether the network of Indira Sagar and Omkareshwar canals should be reviewed to exclude the irrigated river-bank villages, minimize displacement, and save the best of agricultural land; can and should the land acquisition and excavation of canals proceed any further without the full plans, complete data and guaranteeing full rehabilitation?