Building Dams, Ignoring Consequences: The Lower Suktel Irrigation Project in Orissa

Abstract

Dams have often been built without adequate assessments of their adverse social impacts. The Lower Suktel Irrigation Dam Project in Orissa provides one more such example. Prior to the commencement of building this dam, no assessment was made of its likely impacts on people living in the project area. Later, when a UNDP study, undertaken as part of preparation for a resettlement policy, found that the consequences of this dam would be disastrous, the government had another opportunity to take its findings into consideration. Rather than consider an alternative plan that this study suggested to reduce displacement and save the livelihoods of many poor people, the government preferred to ignore it, and according to the latest reports the dam building is going on oblivious of its severe displacement and impoverishing impacts on the affected people.