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I Perspectives
viewed, was to be used in a certain way
Imagining Rivers for the first time as if no one had lived
in the land and used the water before. As
if the river did not have a conscious past;
Humanbeings have oftenpersonified rivers. But the movefrom it was treated only as a figure in a land-
'mother'nature to 'obedientdaughter' river has been detrimental scape ratherthan an image related to time
and place. This is a kind of 'Newtonian
to humanwelfare. We need to see rivers as a content we live in and space' based on the predictable and or-
not as a resource we 'harness' and 'control'. derly movements of objects over an un-
differentiated space made visible for the
first time. In this space, the river is just
KUNTALA LAHIRI-DUTT with. He elaborated how heavy bulldozers like a 'thing' that can be modified, con-
were brought in to 'clean up land' since trolled and given a desired shape as per
5W That is a river? Is it only what thick jungles and ponds were hindering human wish through the use of 'superior'
we imagine it to be? Rivers do the survey of the area.Then 'heavy pumps scientific knowledge and techniques.
exist - they are 'embodied en- were used to 'dewater' the ponds, and the This view of rivers believes in durability,
tities' that can be seen, felt, touched and ridges between the ponds were 'derooted' stability and continuity, and believes
traced on a map. Their characteristics - to 'avoid damages to the tyres'. The soft, that modern science alone can give a
different and visible though they undoubt- deltaic, alluvial soil was hardened this consistent and systematic interpretation
edly are and have been - are lived out in way so that motor scrapers could be used. of all the phenomena that we see around
a physical body. Still we have a plethora Since the water table was very high, us.
of images and different discourses of 'the 'borrow pits were left for drying up for Ram Sarup's article also excellently tells
river' reflecting a confusion about what several days and machines had to fill the us, albeit in an indirect manner, something
the river is, what it should be, and what embankments in patches here and there about the ideological orientation of
needs to be done if, as a 'resource' we adjacent to their respective borrow area'. development in the post-colonial state as
want to get the best out of the water it Even then, the use of machines proved well as the political economy of water
carries. It is thus possible to see rivers in difficult as tractor scrapers got stuck and resource planning in India. It tells us how
different ways, and the fact attests to the 'had to be towed out with great difficulty'. rivers were represented in the 'official'
social and historical construction of Then a problem of soil shortage arose perspective 40 years ago when the DVC
rivers. As a student of geography which while constructingthe embankmentsalong built the dams and embankments in a bid
straddles the physical and social worlds, the Damodar, and 'some more land was to 'control' the river. If the environment
I have followed with much interest the acquired to meet the need for soil'. The is a social construction, then that society
rising emotions over the Narmada and the embankments, however, created another must be put in its time and place perspec-
issue of water resource planning in India problem in turn;they obstructed the tribu- tive. Through the representation of rivers
and have wondered if there is a right way taries to meet and the distributariesto take in a certain way, the state also generates
of imagining rivers. I am not attempting off from the Damodar. Thus, the Sali river a representationof itself as a controller of
to correct or supplement a false or incom- 'was closed by building embankments all the elements of the natural environ-
plete representation;there may not be an along the course of the main river'. Ram ment and endows itself with performative
ideal and right way of representing sarup's view must have been the 'right' power in terms of river control.
rivers. The focus of my discussion is on way to imagine rivers in an India aspiring Statements like 'floods cause tremen-
how rivers have been conceptualised, to capture the benefits of western science dous human suffering and economic loss'
and how the modernisation and develop- and technology. abound in government documents, then
ment agenda of the government has cre- Ram Sarup wrote his article 40 years and now. When a river floods, it is viewed
ated binary oppositions such as tradi- ago, at a time when environmental and as a 'menace'; and the state is supposed
tional vs developmentalist, anti-dam vs ecological effects of developmental ac- to have the responsibility of remedying it.
pro-dam, local vs global, biocentric vs tivities did not receive adequate attention The urban-based media too perceives
anthropocentric, and small vs large. in the world. But still, it reads as though floods as a 'disaster'. Floods in eastern
Let me begin with an example. In his all this was happening in a vacuum, a India and Bangladesh draw much atten-
article 'Problem of canal excavation in space created for the first time by modern tion in the nationaland internationalmedia.
Damodar Valley Corporation' published science and technology, and to be shaped Since they make good stories of human
in 1959 in Indian Journal of Power and by these very forces. As if suddenly the misery, the media plays up the 'disaster'
River Valley Development, Ram Sarup, an water flowing through the river turned angle as it does not have readily available
engineer of the Damodar Valley Corpo- into a 'resource', and any excess (or lack information on the causes of floods. The
ration (DVC) described how the constru- of it) became a constraint. When the water chain of events that follow a 'flood' -
ction work on canals progressed through of a river flowed into a sea, it was seen representing it as an aberrant behaviour
mighty problems, and how they were dealt as a 'waste'. The 'resource' as it was of rivers - invariably leads to a high-level