River of Perceptions

The childhood joy 

In 2012, on the banks of Mahanadi at Sambalpur, we started a campaign called ‘Children Have Right to Play in Clean Water.’ Children from the city, along with adults, formed a human chain and wrote a letter to then Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh. The idea was to draw government attention to the growing pollution of the river.  

When I was a child, taking a plunge in my Mother River was a joy. There was no fear. We swam in it for hours. Now also many children, mostly from poor families living in the informal cities, take a plunge daily. But the water is not safe anymore as most of the bathing ghats are polluted with sewer water.   

Cities have turned rivulets, which feed the river at various points, into drainage lines. Children of the coal mining belt about 100 km upstream, are no better. They have a different problem. They bathe in highly toxic water that drains mining discharges.

But these children, born in a different era, have lived with polluted rivers all their lives. They don’t distinguish between clean water and polluted water. I have tried to understand the river from their perspective, and they are not bothered by the pollution, but their parents are. The joy remains but the water has gone.

Where dam is the river

Mahanadi is more in the news for the Hirakud dam, completed in 1953 and inaugurated in 1957, once touted as Asia’s longest earthen dam. It has supported a vast area forming Odisha’s rice bowl, helped generate hydropower, and most importantly in the last three decades, monumentally increased water supply to mining, thermal power plants, and other industries that have developed around the dam because of its water and coal availability. It also supplies drinking water to nearby cities.

Sadly, Hirakud has been the bone of contention between two major riparian states: Odisha and Chhattisgarh. When I was a youngster, the dam was celebrated by the city of Sambalpur, as well as the entire state, for preventing floods like those seen by the historically flood-prone zones of the deltaic plains.  

But the displaced people upstream who lost everything – geography, culture, education, farms, jobs, identity – still curse the dam. People at Sambalpur have, since 2008, started to blame the dam as it floods homes and destroys their peace during peak monsoon season, when managers find it difficult to manage the floodgates. Extreme weather events are changing the way we see our rivers.  

Extreme weather events are changing the way we see our rivers.

But the new generation seems to be more attracted to concrete structures built on the riverbanks instead of free-flowing natural common space. Independence of the river flow, the fish’s freedom to move, and the floodplains’ survival are no longer in anyone’s perception. ‘Riverfront developments’ are the new words for ‘river conservation.’   

The fisherfolk’s river

Fishing in the river is fast reducing to few pockets in its stretches. At the beginning of the millennium as I recall, fisherfolk dotted most of the areas in Mahanadi. Now it’s restricted to a few places. The fisherfolk’s children are either changing their way of fishing or changing profession. “Everybody loves eating fish, but no one loves the fish,” said an octogenarian from a fishing community 50 km downstream of Hirakud.   

The dam has changed our catch, and the lifestyle of city dwellers has forced our children to resort to unethical means. “The river remains our land and farm field, but the approach to farming is in a way like the pesticide-laden cropping styles of the Hirakud command areas,” another fisherfolk rued.   

Hirakud dam saw a drastic reduction of fish catch downstream. The fish diversity also reduced to almost half over the period from the 1950s–2010s. The younger generation of these communities, who still prefer to stick to their traditional profession, don’t adhere to traditional ethical practices, using poisonous substances and blasting dynamite to catch fish, mostly during festivities when cities demand more fish, and the supply of farmed fish falls short. The respect for the rivers is lost!  

Dams are a major reason for the fragmentation of habitats of freshwater fish. The migratory fish population has declined by 81% since the 1970s. But who cares?

Dams are a major reason for the fragmentation of habitats of freshwater fish. The migratory fish population has declined by 81% since the 1970s. But who cares? Fish, like the rivers, must be put to our service. The fact that we are just one component of the ecosystem is not taught in any societal syllabus.   

The invisible stakeholders 

Hirakud is now more contested than ever as the two major riparian states engage in a conflict over their shares of the river’s waters. But the poor, farmers, fisherfolk, indigenous communities, and people affected by coal mining that impacts the river badly are not considered in these government-level fights; as if governments are separate entities and people are a different thing altogether. 

The fight is about the flow of the river’s water conceptualized between two lines within which flows the major share of water. The riparian buffers, floodplains, fish, trees, grasslands in riverbeds, migratory birds that visit this river, and almost every living being connected to the river is immaterial. The river is remembered when it floods and becomes a dumping ground for waste when it dries up. 

Once I asked a few farmers from Chhattisgarh who eke out a living from river-bed farming when the river dries up – as most tropical rivers do – whose river is this? They said it was primarily their river. They are landless people, and the river is their land. They work on other people’s fields when the river flows during the monsoon and shift to the riverbeds during the summer. They felt threatened by an upcoming dam.  

Their farmland, gifted by the river, is not considered a ‘right’ in law books. Fisherfolk downstream of Hirakud shared the same apprehension towards a proposed dam. Their land and the river will be swallowed by the dam if it ever comes up, and there will be no compensation or rehabilitation.   

If the dam-building plans succeed, these communities will vanish from both the riverscapes and our minds.

As the competition to build more dams increases, these communities stare at a bleak future. If the dam-building plans succeed, these communities will vanish from both the riverscapes and our minds. As such, they face challenges due to changing water flow regimes, disruptions by dams, and climate change.

Unless our water policies and plans shift towards ecosystem-based approaches from the current grey-infrastructure-based development models, more of these riparian stakeholders will become refugees in their own lands.

Mahanadi is not just a land mass, it’s a civilization – of various species including humans. To live in harmony with the ‘Great River,’ we need to understand the perceptions of various generations and geographies who interact with the river daily with their own understandings of, and relationships with, the river.