The points raised by Francois Gautier in `Learn Ecology from the West', (December 20) prompted me to write this piece. In the vanguard of the opposition to dams globally are three diminutive women Dai Qing, Medha Patkar and Christine Jean each arrayed against the projects on the Yangtse, the Narmada and the Loire respectively.Dai Qing has been fighting the largest dam of all The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtse River in China. For Sun Yatsen, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, the Dam was their vision of a resurgent China. The dream began to take shape when the project was approved in 1992. The dam will eventually be 185 metres high in a reservoir 500 km long.Dai Qing was a journalist on the Guangming Daily when she went to Hong Kong in 1988 and met Western environmental groups who were extremely critical of the project. She launched a crusade against it.For the 350 million downstream Chinese the Three Gorges Project represents salvation from the terrible floods of the Yangtse which during this centurytook a toll of 200,000 lives. Further, China is short of power for its program of rapid industrial expansion. Three Gorges will generate 84 billion killowatt hours annually of cheap pollution-free hydro-power. Campaigns by activists like Dai Qing has made global agencies reluctant to fund the project. But the Chinese are forging ahead.Medha Patkar was a Bombay-based social worker who came to Narmada in 1985 and stayed on to become the moving spirit behind the Narmada Bachao Andolan. She has identified herself with the 70,000 villagers who will be displaced by the Sardar Sarowar Project. Patkar also testified in 1989 against the World Bank loan of $ 450 million for the Project at a special hearing of the US House of Congress.Later the Bank, bowing to activist pressure and the independent reviews which followed, backtracked and imposed stringent conditions. India found the new conditions difficult to comply with and in 1993 withdrew from the Bank loan, losing $ 170 million of undrawn loan in the processas well as $ 440 million which were being negotiated.The Narmada project is designed to irrigate 1.8 million hectares, have an install-ed capacity of 1450 MW and provide drinking water to 40 million people in seriously drought affected areas like Saurashtra. The construction of the dam has proceeded despite the withdrawal of external funding.Christine Jean, an ecologist, heads a group called the Loire Vivante, which has been fighting the Serre-de-la-Ferre dam on the Loire, the `last wild river in Europe'.Besides, the Loire Valley is an intrinsic part of French culture. Christine Jean conducted studies which showed the serious damage the proposed project would cause. She achieved a major victory for ecology when the French government gave up Serre-de-la-Ferre in 1994.Dai Qing, Medha Patkar and Christine Jean have opened windows into the way in which three societies Chinese, Indian and French have dealt with opposition to big dams. The Chinese permitted the critics to leave the country and expresstheir opinions in international forums but did not let them hold up the Three Gorges project. The French took a considered decision to drop the Serre-de-la Ferre project.Of the three, India paid the highest price.
