Nation-building, industrialisation, and spectacle: Political functions of Gujarat’s Narmada pipeline project

Abstract

Since 2000 the Indian state of Gujarat has been working to construct a state-wide water grid to connect 75% of its approximately 60 million urban and rural residents to drinking water sourced from the controversial Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada River. This project represents a massive undertaking – it is billed as the largest drinking water project in the world – and is part of a broader predilection toward large, concrete-heavy supply-side solutions to water insecurity across present-day India. This paper tracks the claims and narratives used to promote the project, the political context in which it has emerged, the purposes it serves and, following Ferguson (1990), the functioning of the discursive-bureaucratic 'machine' of which it is a product.The dam’s reinvention as the solution to Gujarat’s drinking water shortfall – increasingly for cities and Special Industrial Regions – reflects a concern with attracting and retaining foreign investment through the creation of so-called 'world-class' infrastructure. At the same time, this reinvention has contributed to a project of nation-building, while remaining cloaked in a discourse of technological neutrality. The heavy infrastructure renders visible Gujarat’s commitment to 'development' even when that promise has yet to be realised for many, while the promise of Narmada water gives Gujarat’s leaders political capital with favoured investors and political supporters. In conclusion, I suggest that the success of infrastructure mega-projects as a political tool is not intrinsically tied to their ability to achieve their technical and social objectives. Instead, the 'spectacle' of ambitious infrastructural development projects may well yield political gains that outweigh, for a time, the real-world costs of their inequity and unsustainability.

Geographies of big water infrastructure: Contemporary insights and future research opportunities

“…Politicians also perform and engage in these processes of spectacle and nation‐building (Luxion, 2017; Schwenkel, 2015). In a case from Gujarat, India, Luxion (2017) showed how the construction of the Narmada pipeline was a chance for the state to leverage a national project to showcase modernity, state power and national identity through displays of ‘spectacle’ (see also P. Harvey & Knox, 2015; Schwenkel, 2015). These ideas become “encoded” (Jasanoff & Kim, 2015, p. 20) in material technologies when engineers and politicians decide to harness the infrastructure to provide more water to certain places, while denying it to others (see also Star, 1999).…”

“…In doing so, engineers develop "infrastructural knowledge" of designing, constructing and operating water infrastructure, both of which are infused with state goals of development and free-market ideology (Björkman, 2015). Politicians also perform and engage in these processes of spectacle and nation-building (Luxion, 2017;Schwenkel, 2015). In a case from Gujarat, India, Luxion (2017) showed how the construction of the Narmada pipeline was a chance for the state to leverage a national project to showcase modernity, state power and national identity through displays of 'spectacle' (see also P. Harvey & Knox, 2015;Schwenkel, 2015).…”

“…The planning and construction of big water infrastructure to reterritorialize water creates winners and losers, which leads to various form of resistance. Local resistance to these projects is on the rise globally (Colven, 2017;March, 2015).…”

Unmapped Water Access: Locating the Role of Religion in Access to Municipal Water Supply in Ahmedabad

“…Simply put, the municipal corporation, having decreased its reliance on groundwater, needs to be disentangled from larger assumptions around the decrease in groundwater use across the city. This, in turn, calls into question the rationale behind bringing Narmada waters to Ahmedabad to begin with, and the logic of the Sardar Sarovar Dam and the Narmada Pipeline Project in extension (see [61] for more on this).…”

Urban drinking water security in Gujarat

“…This has been the Government of Gujarat’s primary response to the issue of water scarcity for domestic and industrial use, replacing local dam—and groundwater—based schemes across the state.' (Luxion 2017 ). Mehta and Mehta ( 2011 ) had showed that with water from the Narmada River reaching the interiors of Kutch, North Gujarat and Suarashtra, and the Government of Gujarat’s priority to water sector, there is increased drinking water security in the state.…”