Fishing for simple truths

26 May 2000

Mahatma Gandhi brought down an empire by dramatizing simple truths. By scooping up a little sea-water to make salt—and so defying a government monopoly—he dramatized the injustice of colonial government. This simple, childish bit of play-acting challenged the British to use violence to obstruct simple access to a necessity of life.

The demand that the Thai government open the gates on the Pak Mool dam to let the fish through is taking on something of this Gandhian quality.

The Pak Mool dam is a swirl of violence. Violence was done to the river. Rapids detonated. Fish breeding grounds swamped. Migrations disrupted.

Violence was done to the local people. Livelihoods disrupted. Homes flooded. Protests dispersed.

Most of all, violence was done to the truth. The case studyt by the World Commission on Dams (WCD) describes the poor data collection, dishonest calculations, and bad arguments on which the dam’s plans were based: ‘it is unlikely the project would have been built if actual true benefits would have been used in the economic analysis’.

The government’s responses to the protests at Pak Mool are in exactly the same vein. The fish are fine, we are told. The mob is destroying property at the dam site. If the generator is closed, we will have a power crisis (will the lights go out in Bangkok?). If the floodgates are open, upstream villagers will go thirsty, and downstream villagers will be swept away in a tidal wave. The protest is the work of a disgruntled minority who are threatening all kinds of wonderful benefits flowing to the "real people" of Ubon. Statement after government statement, violence is still being done to the truth.

As Gandhi realised, non-violent protest exposes the violence of its opponents. The demand to open the flood gates shifts the argument over Pak Mool away from the scrappy arguments about compensation, and towards the real issue of the river. Ite emphasises that this was a badly planned project with no proper environmental investigation. It delivers very little benefit and sacrifices an important natural resource. The demand to open the flood gates says very simply and eloquently: admit the mistake. Let the fish back. Do whatever is possible to repair the damage. Recognise the value of the river.

In the face of this simplicity, the prime minister is flailing.

He tells us the Fisheries Department assures him that fish can pass the dam, so the protesters’ demand is invalid. He wants the Electricity Generating Authority (EGAT) to explain to everyone how important the dam is.

He assumes that the officials know best and that we should all believe them. But that moment is long past. There is now study upon study detailing the disastrous impact on the Mool river fisheries. The WCD study offers a brief summary. Some 169 of the 256 species in the river have been affected. Some 77 have been prevented from migrating. At least 50 rapids have been submerged and no longer function as breeding grounds. The fish yield in the head pond is as little as 5 percent of the projection. The river catch around the dam may be down to a fifth of its old level. Most of all, the dam "seals off a catchment area…three times the size of the Netherlands" without any serious study of the impact. Who on today’s shrinking, resource-threatened planet thinks that scale of violence is justified for a little bit of electricity which could be generated elsewhere, possibly at cheaper cost?

Nor should we wait with bated breath for EGAT to explain to us how important the Pak Mool dam is to the nation. At the WCD’s hearings in Bangkok earlier this year, an EGAT spokesman argued that nobody else was equipped to understand the rationale behind the Pak Mool dam except the highly trained and very clever power planning experts at EGAT. The rest of us should simply stop trying to understand these immensely complicated matters. We should stop scratching our heads and asking questions about the bad data and bad logic in the plans. This speech was listened to with patience, but not with respect. And the WCD—whose members include power experts with rather more training and experience than those of EGAT—sets it out very clearly: Pak Mool has a little over a quarter of the power benefit that EGAT claims (40 against 150 MW).

The present little crisis was telegraphed long ago. The protesters set up camp at the site over a year ago, in March 1999. At the time the Ubon governor commented gaily: "It’s the dry season. The villagers have nothing to do for a couple of months. So they come here for a picnic because it’s a nice place." Two months ago, the protesters indicated they would escalate the issue in May because it is the peak season of fish migration. Yet the authorities failed to respond.

It is very difficult for government to reverse a policy or ditch a project. It is more difficult if a lot of money has already been spent. It is even more difficult if a great deal of violence has been committed—violence against the environment, violence against protesters, violence against the truth. The easy, tempting, automatic course of action is to go on expending violence in the project’s defence. It was that which made Mahatma Gandhi’s anti-colonial protests so effective. He knew the British colonial authorities would not immediately say: this salt monopoly’s a silly idea; make as much as you like! Rather they would clap him in prison and beat his followers with sticks, and eventually the empire would collapse under the weight of its own injustice.

The authorities seem surprised that media opinion has tended to side with the protesters. They should take note of the rising international interest in the issue. They should probably act before the WCD delivers its final judgement on Pak Mool.

It may be true that opening the gates and reversing out the Pak Mool project has some technical complexity. But the political issue is quite simple. Stop piling violence on violence, threats on threats, lies on lies, damage on damage. Admit Pak Mool was a big mistake. Start looking for a solution. Not a Yadana-style fudge.