Eerie feeling of Tehri

(Dear friends, because of the issues with bandwidth, I will not be able to upload any photographs along with the blog post. Please bear with me till I get access to broadband connection.)

Yesterday as the last part of our learning, Manoj ji took us to the Tehri dam. As we started getting closer, I saw a gorge filled with greenish water. As I followed it, I saw a green lake making its way through several such gorges and stagnating there. This lake is called ‘Tehri Jheel’ and is the result of the dam. As we proceeded further, I spotted the mountains between whcih the dam is constructed. Amidst the mountains that are filled with greenery, these two looked like dead one with patches of concrete over their entire body. Between them was the large earthen mass with three flood gates at the right side. The road led us just above those gates and we stopped to take a look at the massive structure. When I took a closer look at the structure, I recalled my journey with my parents to Badri and Kedar in 2005. The dam was still under construction then. It was flooded in 2006 and since then one can easily see the mark on the mountains up to which the lake rises.

Tehri Dam is one of the most ambitious and controversial projects of the government. The dam was conceptualized in 1972. Several governments changed power at the center. But no government wanted to re-think about the project. Year by year the water and power scenario in Delhi started to worsen. May be it became more and more clear to the government to submerge as much of land as possible to generate 2400MW of power and supply water to thirsty Delhi. But many people I met believe that the power that is being generated is 20% of the promised capacity. One quoted reason for this was the massive silting. I don’t know whether it is true. But one thing I witnessed was that the villages around Tehri don’t get any good electricity though the dam supplies it to cities hundreds of kilometers away. The lights at Rakesh’s house never lit up to their complete brightness and fans rotated with a very low speed. We took few photographs and chose to head back to Rakeshji’s place at Saboli.

Today morning we started from Rakeshji’s house to go through Tehri dam and further to Ghansyali. As we crossed the dam and took a right turn, we saw two townships of New Tehri - houses that looked more like cloned concrete blocks. Till then our journey thorugh every town was filled with variety in the type of construction - whether it could be the type of materials used or the shape of th houses. But at New Tehri everything looked homogeneous. The interesting part is, second township is at the top of a mountain. The resettlement from 3000ft to about 7000ft has resulted in government spending Rs.9.36 to pump a liter a water for upper community. Most of the times these people don’t get water as there will be some or the other problem with motor, pipe, etc. First you displace people who lived by river side to a new height to provide water to people in distant cities and then deprive the new township with water - I don’t know what kind of strategy this is. But I recollected the words of our first prime minister - “Dams are the temples of modern India”. May be the gods of these temples need some or the other kind of human and ecological sacrifice.

Crossing the townships we went downwards to have a look at the other side of the dam. We saw the tunnels from where the Ganga gushed out with much less intensity. All her momentum had been converetd into electricity coneverting her into a silent stream. We crossed this stream and started moving upwards. The road towards Ghansyali leads us through the catchment and the part of the reservoir that gets submerged in monsoon. Soon we hit a diversion. The board read something like - “Take the new road. This road has been submerged by ‘Tehri Jheel’”. I was about to take the new road but the driver of the vehicle behind me asked me to continue on the old road. I don’t know why was he there at that moment. I took the old road.

I started to drive slow as the quality of the road was bad. As we descended, I saw a clear transition in vegetation - I came across dead trees and shrubs. A clear line separated the vegetation - The submerged region had dead grey vegetation while the portion above it had green lively vegetation. As we moved further, we came across damaged hamlets and earlier green paddy fields now filled with weeds. We were riding along the roads which would get submerged in about two months only to re-appear in summer. All along the way I was trying to locate the spot where ther river would join the lake. Slowly the green water started to turn grey and within few hundred meters it turned muddy. I knew that the spot is very near. I took a turn to left and I spotted river - It was almost without energy. I saw the amount of silt that it was carrying with it. It was joining the lake hesitantly as if it had no option. As we moved upwrads towards Ghansyali, the depth of the submerged portion of the mountains started to reduce and finally disappeared. But the ride through the submerged region made us feel as if we were riding through a burial ground. We can never forget this eerie feeling of Tehri.

The region around the dam has already suffered an earth quake. The dam has been build on a siesmically active area. It is alleged that any damage to the dam would cause severe floods up to Rishikesh. We had a flat tyre soon after Ghansyali. I put my wheel in a Trax. Along my way to get the wheel fixed, I spoke to the drivers and fellow passengers. None of them were sorry for the people who were affected by the dam. They all thought that those people were greedy and wanted more money and land from the government than what they actually deserved. Few of them were even proud. One of them said - “Earlier nobody knew Tehri. Today Tehri is known all over the world. It is the second largest dam in Asia. See, if you want development, there has to be some kind of damage and sacrifice.” For me it looked like an ideal demonstration of how man can tamper with the natural cycles of nature.

I agree that development requires sacrifice. But the great question remains - who gets to choose whom for this sacrifice?