India, next to China, has probably had the most active program of dam building over the last 50 years. Environmental impacts, the forced relocation of millions of people, and the enormous economic costs, among other factors, have combined in recent years to generate controversy concerning these projects. By the late 1980s, India's prime minister V. J. Singh could state, regarding his nation's water projects: "For years we have poured money out. The people have got nothing: no water, no irrigation, no increased production to help their lives." (Compare with Nehru's 1954 statement, in Chapter one).

The building of dams and canals in independent India has only continued massive British efforts of canal building, particularly during the 1800s, that had made India one of the most intensively irrigated areas of the world. These projects had also had a range of unintended consequences, including outbreaks of malaria, while failing to prevent large-scale famines.

The most prominent such controversy concerns the Sardar Sarovar project on the Narmada River. Extensive materials are available concerning this controversy, particularly as generated as a result of debate concerning World Bank involvement in the project, the work of an independent review in 1991/92, and withdrawal of the World Bank from the project in 1993.

Sources:
o Alvares, Claude, Ramesh Billorey, Damming the Narmada: India's
Greatest Planned Environmental Disaster, (Penang: Third World Network, 1988).
o Chapman, Graham P., Michael Thompson, eds., Water and the Quest
for Sustainable Development in the Ganges Valley, (London:
Mansell, 1995).
o Fisher, William F., ed., Toward Sustainable Development: Struggling Over (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1995). [Essential collection on the controversy, including contributions from activists, World Bank and government personnel supporting the project (and who actually worked on it) and academics. An expression of diverse points of view, with many opportunities for analysis and comparison.]
o Jackman, Brian, "India Be Dammed," Geographical Magazine, June 1989: 10-14.
o Lewis, Damien, "Drowning by Numbers," Geographical Magazine, September 1991: 34-38.
o Morse, Bradford, Thomas Berger, Sardar Sarovar: Report of the Independent Review, (Ottawa: Resource Futures International, 1992).
o Pearce, Fred, "Building a Disaster: The Monumental Folly of India's Tehri Dam," The Ecologist, 1991, 21(3): 123-128.
o Pearce, Fred, The Dammed, pp. 67-76.
o Pearce, Fred, The Dammed, pp. 67-76, 144-152 [on the British
colonial heritage of water development in India; and on the Tehri
Dam in the Himalayas.]
o Pearce, Fred, The Dammed, pp. 77-86, 115-122.
o Shiva, Vandana, Ecology and the Politics of Survival: Conflicts over Natural Resources in India, (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1991). [Extensive critique of water development projects and politics in India.]
o Wood, John R., "India's Narmada River Dams: Sardar Sarovar Under Siege," Asian Survey, 1993, 33: 968-984.