" Many dams we rebuilt following India's independence, which were responsible for more fer tile and productive farmlands." This, at any rate, is the official version of progress that Indian children learn at school. But for the past ten years the battle has raged along the Narmada Riverdue to the disastrous effects stemming from the construction of the Bargidam. Touted by the government in the 1970s as one of the most ambitious dam projects in the world (in all,over 3,000 dams, including 30l argedams), work began with the Bargi. Seventy meters high and five kilometers long, it was completed in 1989. It is responsible f or submer ging a surface area of 300 square kilometers (equivalent to half the surface area of a city like Bombay), displacing more than 100,000 persons, most of whom members of the Gondh tribe. Due to a mistake in calculations , many more than the 100 villages originally slated f or flooding were actually left under water, while inhabitants were never notified beforehand. In 1992 authorities decided to measure flooding capacities of 22 more villages (no compensation w as offered, and inhabitants were forced to the outlying slums). Of course, the Bargidam was only the beginning. Fur ther south the Sardar Sarovar (one of the largest in the world - 390 cubic kilometers of basin, with 240 villages under water) is already nearly completed, promising to meet the electric energy needs of the entire Gujarath region. Until now, though, all that has been seen is human suffer ing as a result. Independently filmed and produced, this documentary was made over a six-year per iod,with numerousby boat and on foot-expeditions into the remote tr ibal regions of Madhya Pradesh. Besides shedding light on an announced ecological disaster in the name of progress, the film also gives us rare and precious glimpses of life among tribes threatened with extinction.
