The Narmada project, widely projected today as a triumphant symbol of development, did not emerge as a settled or inevitable achievement. Its origins lie in uncertainty, contestation and repeated re-imagination. The earliest vision of harnessing the Narmada dates back to 1946, when Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel asked the eminent engineer Bhaikaka to explore the possibility of constructing a 300 feet dam on the river.
Bhaikaka’s proposal, later known as the Bharuch Scheme, envisaged a dam downstream near Bharuch, primarily for limited irrigation and hydroelectric power. The plan was modest in scale and benefits, intended largely for southern Gujarat, and was submitted to the then Bombay Government. After Patel’s death in 1950, the proposal lost political momentum and remained dormant for several years.
The project resurfaced in the mid-1950s, when Bombay State proposed a dam of around 161 feet near Goraj village, downstream of today’s Sardar Sarovar site. Jawaharlal Nehru laid the foundation stone of this Bharuch–Navagam project in April 1961. At that stage, the project was estimated to irrigate about 1.1 million acres and cost roughly ₹33 crore.
However, new hydrological studies revealed that the Narmada carried a far greater volume of water—approximately 28 million acre-feet annually—than previously assumed. This discovery fundamentally altered the project’s ambition and political consequences.
With the formation of Gujarat as a separate state in 1960 and the merger of Kutch and Saurashtra, the demand to use Narmada waters for drought-prone regions intensified. Gujarat engineers and planners argued that to fully utilise the state’s share of water, a much higher dam—up to 510 feet—would be required.
This marked the turning point when a regional development plan became a major inter-state conflict. Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra opposed the higher dam, citing submergence of forests, agricultural land and villages, particularly affecting Adivasi communities. What followed was nearly two decades of political deadlock, failed negotiations and competing technical claims.
To resolve the dispute, the central government constituted the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal in 1969, vesting it with Supreme Court–like authority. After extensive hearings involving engineers, economists, lawyers and administrators from four states, the Tribunal delivered its award in August 1979.
It confirmed the total flow of the Narmada at 28 MAF and allocated 18.25 MAF to Madhya Pradesh, 9 MAF to Gujarat, 0.25 MAF to Maharashtra and 0.5 MAF to Rajasthan. Crucially, it fixed the height of the Sardar Sarovar Dam at 455 feet, allowing Gujarat to use 7 MAF directly, with the remaining 2 MAF to be released later from upstream reservoirs. The award also mandated detailed rehabilitation and resettlement obligations for affected families, particularly in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.
Legally, the Tribunal’s decision closed the chapter on inter-state water sharing. Politically and socially, however, it opened a far more contentious phase. From the 1980s onward, opposition shifted from state governments to civil society.
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| Prof Joshi |
Supporters of the project responded with an equally detailed defence. Drawing on more than 40 commissioned studies, they argued that submergence would affect less than two per cent of the total command area, that the dam would generate 1,450 MW of hydropower, irrigate nearly 18 lakh hectares, and provide drinking water to over 8,000 villages and more than 130 towns.
They also pointed out that Gujarat’s irrigation and rehabilitation planning incorporated lessons from earlier failures of large dams elsewhere in India, emphasising volumetric water supply, participatory irrigation management and comparatively generous resettlement packages.
Yet, even decades later, many of the original questions raised in the Gujarati account remain unresolved. How effectively has irrigation capacity translated into actual irrigation? Have water users’ associations functioned as envisioned? Has rehabilitation ensured not merely compensation but restoration of livelihoods? And, crucially, has political appropriation of the project erased the long history of debate, dissent and sacrifice that made its completion possible?
The Narmada project’s true legacy does not lie only in canals, turbines or reservoir levels. It lies in the uncomfortable truth that India’s development choices are never neutral or purely technical. The project passed through constitutional tribunals, mass movements, courtrooms, expert committees and street protests precisely because it sat at the intersection of federalism, ecology, social justice and economic growth. To reduce this history to a single leader, party or narrative of unqualified success is to deny the complexity of democratic development itself.
The strongest lesson of the Narmada project is therefore not that large dams are inherently good or bad, but that development without sustained public scrutiny becomes authoritarian, and resistance without engagement risks stagnation.
Remembering the project’s contested journey—from the abandoned Bharuch dam proposal of 1946 to the fiercely debated Sardar Sarovar—forces us to confront a larger question: whether India is willing to acknowledge that progress must be measured not only by what is built, but by who bears the cost, who decides, and who is remembered once the waters rise.
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*Veteran sociologist, former vice chancellor of Bhavnagar University
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