Taming the Waters: The Political Economy of Large Dams in India (Enviromental Science)

Rating:
Summary: Essential for the Skeptical Economist
Review: This book analyzes dams from an almost entirely economic perspective. If you fear that the abolition of large dams might be an economic disaster -- this book is for you. If your eyes usually glaze over numbers, rest assured that they won't glaze over these numbers. These are figures and charts that will keep you awake at night.

Taking into consideration the fact that ninety percent of large dams are built for irrigation purposes, it seems that the most momentous argument against large dams is one which shows that large dams do not significantly benefit irrigation, and that small dams would be economically more efficient.

According to Singh, "It has been seen that the cost-benefit analysis is not conducted ex-post to conclude on the actual as against projected returns from a large irrigation project. There is thus no method of concluding on the economic returns from a project. Given this arrangement there is little debate or scrutiny on the economic performance of large dams. It is therefore little wonder that large irrigation projects are running at huge current account losses and are poorly managed at the planning, construction and implementation stages, leading to targets going haywire." (Singh 101)

Singh goes on to explain that there is serious debate as to whether large dams or small dams would be more economically efficient. Both sides of the debate bring up valid points, but it appears that in terms of economic efficiency, large dams are overall just slightly more efficient. Singh critiques B.D. Dhawan's argument, an irrigation economist, who points out that it is "inappropriate to compare the irrigation projects on the basis of unit capital cost" (Singh 111). Dhawan believes that there are other costs that should be taken into consideration, such as the fact that large dams use the natural force of gravity to operate, while minor dams "require energy for countering the pull of gravity." The operational costs, according to him, are much higher for minor dam projects when compared with large dams (Singh 112).

Dhawan is definitely right in assuming that factors other than unit capital cost should be taken into consideration -- but yet he forgot to calculate the social costs into his final equation . Why don't we take facts such as unsatisfactory rehabilitation, environmental damage, unbalanced distributions of electricity and water into consideration when developing a BC (benefit / cost) ratio? Why hasn't the fact that the majority of large dam projects take years more to complete than originally estimated -- and thus end up having higher labor fees -- been into consideration? Why hasn't the fact that the majority of dams don't live up to their proposed purposes, and don't last as long as anticipated been taken into consideration? Why haven't the people and their opinions been taken into consideration during the process of constructing these high-priced projects? Why haven't they been informed of the consequences of the dams? Clearly, as Singh points out, there are many flaws with using this system of analysis on its own.

Singh is probably the most unbiased writer I've read who addresses this issue, but he definitely makes his position known (it's hard not to, when writing on an issue such as this). The entire concluding chapter is full of interesting ideas of alternative for large dams.