The DAMMED: documentary on Narmada Valley struggle: KQED 10PM tonight

[Guest guest]

.... while you put yourself in the shoes of Luvharia Shankariya &

family & thousands like them (who usually go barefoot anyway...)

facing submergence in the Narmada Valley in India.

Watch "THE DAMMED" on PBS Thursday night.

 

For Bay Area, watch it on KQED at 10 PM, Thursday night.

The Dammed

Thursday, September 18

Producer/Director: Franny Armstrong

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/about/film_s2_f10.html

 

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On the banks of the holy Narmada river, farming families have

lived for centuries -- illiterate and using traditional herbal

medicines, but self-supporting in small village communities. One

young village healer, Luhariya Shonkariya, now faces an

impossible choice:

"Government officials came here. They said they are constructing

a dam and water will come. 'So your village will be drowned.'

Our village is ours. We won't leave." The Sardar Sarovar dam, a

keystone in the Indian government's development plans, has been

rising in the Narmada Valley for decades. Recently work on this

dam -- one of the world's largest -- has reached the point where

dozens of villages are being submerged by the rising reservoir,

forcing their inhabitants to flee or drown. Proponents of the

dam argue that while it will displace more than 300,000 people,

it will provide electricity, irrigation, flood control, and

drinking water to an estimated 40 million. Critics maintain that

the benefits could have been achieved in other ways, with far

less human cost. Wide Angle reports on the decision Luhariya and

his family have made -- to stay put and face drowning in the

rising waters.

THE DAMMED raises important questions about the costs and

consequences of modernization and development, as the global

community re-evaluates the social and environmental impacts of

large dam projects. Franny Armstrong produced and directed

MCLIBEL: TWO WORLDS COLLIDE, a documentary about McDonald's

legal battle against two environmentalists in England.

Armstrong's other films include GOSNEY IN CHINA, a documentary

about bird watching and BAKED ALASKA, about the rapid rate of

climate change in Alaska. She is the founder of Spanner Films,

an independent television production company in London.

 

-Aravinda (Association for India's Development)