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BOOKS
Dam BusterDebunking the idea that big dams are good for society.
By Rahul Pandey
For once, we have a book that deals with all the issues
relating to large dams comprehensively. Patrick McCully's association with the Irish
anti-dam movements and international awareness campaigns against large dams is reflected
in his analysis. He attacks numerous myths about dams, evaluates their promised benefits
against realised damages and establishes they are unclean and unsustainable means of
supplying water and energy.
The book gives a systemic perspective on the linkage of dams
with ecology, aquatic life, the environment, local economies and cultures, national
economics and international politics. It begins by tracing the history of dams and their
role in establishing industrial supremacy of societies. Backed with instances from various
countries, McCully describes how powerful lobbies mould public opinion in favour of big
dams, manipulate information and make a farce of resettlement programmes for dam oustees.
Various pro-dam arguments too are analysed objectively. The
book also explores sustainable and indigenous alternatives to dams for addressing the
problems of water and energy. This is again backed by results of research and ongoing
practices. McCully's lucid work should be of particular interest to Indian readers. He
spent many days in India, particularly with the stakeholders of the Sardar Sarovar Project
and the people at Manibeli.
The last chapter traces the anti-dam struggle in the US,
Australia, eastern Europe, Brazil, Thailand and India. The book gives a much-needed voice
to the affected sections of our societies and people supporting them. Thereby, McCully
convincingly demonstrates how the modern developmental model, based on the vision of human
progress through control of nature, is fundamentally flawed.
AUTHORSPEAK
 RUCHIRA MUKERJEE
Three Stages to Nirvana
Buddhism, babudom and books
By Bindu
Menon
Twenty-four years of handling finance in the bureaucracy may
seem boring enough to uninspire aspiring writers. Not so for Ruchira Mukerjee, who
consciously decided in her early 20s -- about the same time she joined the civil services
-- to write. But given the constraints of time and a high-pressure job -- she only gets to
write after office hours on weekdays -- it took her almost two decades to publish her
first novel Toad in My Garden. The rather odd title, Mukerjee hastens to explain, is
borrowed from a verse by the British poet Marianne Moore which describes poetry as an
imaginary garden full of real toads. Her novel is fictional but certain characters -- her
father and brother for instance -- are drawn from real life.
Essentially, the novel is the story of two women, Megha and
Damayanti. Megha's story is the more interior one and, as Mukerjee confesses,
autobiographical to an extent -- the dreams and concerns, or rather unconcerns, of
childhood, the interest in books, boarding school life and adolescent adulation.
Damayanti's, on the other hand, is episodic, the story of a woman who sheds her scaly,
doormat-like existence to find meaning in life. The catalyst for both of them is Ashwin
Krishna who resembles the fairy-tale toad or frog but becomes the real prince eventually.
This further explains the novel's title. Many themes are coalesced -- primarily of
adolescence and its natural appendage, sexual awareness, aestheticism, love and marriage.
Mukerjee, additional secretary in the Department of Telecommunications, prefers to
describe Toad in My Garden as a psychological novel. And she aspires to write like John
Updike, "who can talk about the worst possible characters with so much tenderness and
significance". The mind, she says, will always be her focus of interest.
Mukerjee's novel which took nearly four years to write was
rejected by three Indian publishers. Then Pankaj Mishra, at the time working for
HarperCollins, read a draft, liked it and showed it to Picador who immediately grabbed it.
Mukerjee has just completed writing a collection of short stories and hopes to embark on
her next novel in October. And this too will, tentatively, be the story of two women.
Parallel lives, after all, is nothing new to this unlikely babu. Her world oscillates
between the Department of Telecommunications and the workings of the mind. As a practising
Buddhist, this must be her very own idea of nirvana. |
