Why I posted about the dams in India displacing 50mil+ people.....

[HysteryDiagnosis]

Because, in my mind at least... and certainly I could be wrong, but in my mind... many of the poor who were hit by the sunami (sp) should have been living in their fertile river valleys, the places they used to call home. They would have been far better off.

[bryant69]

1. You're probably right

But what can you do about it? India is a democracy, they decided to build those dams. It might not have been the best decision.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. But what can you do about it? India is a democracy

You believe? The U.S. is a democracy... and 50million people voted to change leadership... perhaps more if you take away the disenfranchisement, potential fraud and other GOP shenannigans.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/07/0413246
For more than a decade, people in India have been fighting the massive Narmada Valley Development Project, which involves the construction of thousands of dams on the Narmada River - considered to be one of India's holiest rivers. Spanning 800 miles through three states, India's fifth largest river runs into the Arabian Sea.

The project currently calls for 30 major, 135 medium and 3,000 small dams to be built along the Narmada and its tributaries over the next 50 years. Its centerpiece is to be the Sardar Sarovar Dam, stretching 4,000 feet across the river and rising to the height of a 45-story building - making it the largest water development project in India, and possibly in the world. The multi-billion dollar venture is intended to irrigate nearly 4.8 million acres of farmland and bring drinking water to 30 million people. Its construction would also uproot almost a half a million people living along its banks and in surrounding communities, many of them indigenous people known in India as the adivasi. Many of them are subsistence farmers and cattle and goat herders.

After numerous hunger strikes, demonstrations and lawsuits by local populations, the Indian Supreme Court suspended construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam in 1995. However, the Supreme Court lifted the ban this past February and also allowed the dam's projected height to be increased.

http://www.mindspring.com/~kimall/Reviews/costofliving.html
"The Cost of Living" consists of two essays by Arundhati Roy that challenge the image India projects to the world: that of burgeoning democracy and prosperity. Though her opinions are backed up with hard statistics, her writing is passionate and at times caustically sarcastic. Roy's almost casual style lends a coffee-table-chat-like air to her prose, as if your sensible aunt had stopped by with a bee in her bonnet to explain what was wrong with the world. But then it hits you just how serious these issues are, and you snap back to reality.

The first essay (though written second), "The Greater Common Good," concerns India's dam construction efforts. India is the world's third largest dam-builder, inspired by Nehru's speech of fifty years ago, in which dams were praised as "The Temples of Modern India." Depsite the construction of 3,300 dams (with 1,000 more in progress), 200 million Indians still lack clean drinking water and 600 million lack basic sanitation. Clearly, the dam-building is not going as well as Nehru and his enthusiastic corps of engineers envisioned.