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For the past 28 years the people living at the confluence of the Bhagirathi and Bhilangana rivers have been resisting one of India's dam dinosaurs: the Tehri project. Situated in the Indian Himalayas about 200 miles north east of Delhi in the State of Uttaranchal, Tehri would displace over 100,000 people, flooding 107 villages as well as the town of Tehri with its many historic temples and palace dating back to the 18th century.

Now, Tehri is slated to become a test case for the export credit agencies with Germany's ECA Hermes currently considering an application for covering the export of equipment to Tehri by the company Voith Siemens Hydro. Tehri is a project that not only blatantly violates the key recommendations of the World Commission for Dams (WCD), it even fails to meet the minimal standards set out by the World Bank, who rejected the project some years ago.

It would indeed be difficult to conceive of a worse project: With a proposed height of 260 meters Tehri is a MEGA dam and it is situated in one of the most earthquake prone regions of the world, atop the Central Himalayan Seismic Gap. Both national and international experts have warned that Tehri is not equiped to withstand a major earthquake of the magnitude expected to occur within its lifetime. A resulting dam failure would endanger the lives of hundreds of thousands of people living in close proximity to the dam site.

From its inception, the project has been mired in controversy. Local protests have repeatedly forced a halt in construction and three high-level Government Commissions have examined the project to date. Two of these commissions (the S.K. Roy and the Bhumbla Commissions) categorically rejected the project, while the third review committee (the Hanumantha Rao Commission) confined itself to providing an extensive list of unsolved problems and further studies that need to be undertaken. The Bhumbla Commission Report of 1990 stated:

".... considering the almost total certainty that a strong earthquake of magnitude greater than 8.0 on Richter scale will occur in the region during the life of the dam, and considering that the dam design does not provide for such an earthquake, the Committee has no option but to conclude that construction of Tehri dam as proposed, involves totally unjustified risks.The magnitude of disaster that would follow, if the dam collapsed, strengthens the Committee's opinion that approval to the construction of this dam, as proposed, and at the present site, would be irresponsible."

Experts have also criticized the project on economic grounds and questioned its viability as the planning data it was based on was gathered in the 1950's and 1960's and does not meet modern standards of due diligence. A matter of fact, a cost-benefit analysis that was commissioned by the Indian Trust for Art and Culture Heritage (INTACH) came to the conclusion that the cost of the dam would be approximately double the expected benefits in irrigation and energy production. The project's pricetag is currently estimated to be over 2 billion US-Dollars and INTACH's Director of Natural Resources, N.D. Jayal has aptly termed Tehri to be "an enormous squandering of public money".

The local farmers, fisher families and townspeople have testified to the total failure of rehabilitation and compensation measures as promised by the Government. Indian newspapers regularly report that the project is mired in corruption and that monies designated for rehabilitation measures, instead wandered into the pockets of Government officials and local contractors. On March 30, 2000 about one thousand villagers occupied the dam site carrying signs saying "Land for Land" and "No Dam without Land" and halted construction for 3 weeks. On April 23 and 24 police however, in un unexpectedly brutal maneouvre, beat and arrested the peaceful protesters. Those arrested included one of Indias's most renowned Ghandian activists, the 75 year old Shree Sunderlal Bahuguna. who has taken up an indefinate fast against the dam. Bahuguna's last fast against the Tehri project in 1996 lasted for 74 days and ended only when India's Prime Minister conceded to install a new Commission to review the project. Subsequently however, the Commission's findings were ignored and construction on the dam resumed.

The Tehri Project is a recipe for disaster. Germany's Hermes (and any other ECA) will have to answer to the international public if it puts corporate profits before the safety and the livelihoods of hundreds and thousands of Indian citizens by providing a guarantee for this project.

Contact: Heffa Schücking (Urgewald e.V., Germany),
Phone: +49 (0)2583 1031; Fax: +49 (0)2583 4220
Email: urgewald@koeln.netsurf.de
Website: http://www.urgewald.de

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