The paragraphs below are excerpts from the chapter “Singrauli: Unfulfilled Struggle for Justice,” in Demanding Accountability, by Dana Clark.
The World Bank’s Role in Singrauli
The
World Bank provided the Indian government with the seed money to
transform Singrauli into a coal-producing, coal-burning pocket of
economic activity and environmental squalor. In 1977, the World Bank
loaned $150 million to the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) to
help finance the construction of the Singrauli Super Thermal Power
Plant, the first coal-fired power plant in the region, and financed an
expansion of the same plant in 1980. The Bank also helped finance one
of the first open-pit coal mines in the area, Dudhichua, in 1985. The
Bank helped connect the power plants to the northern grid with a loan
to NTPC for the Rihand Power Transmission project in 1985.
The residents of Mitihini village, who had been witness
to and surrounded by a wave of NTPC-induced displacement that had
shattered the lives of their neighbors, were themselves threatened with
displacement by a 1993 loan to expand the Rihand ash dike. In 1993,
they formed an organization called Grameen Kalyan Sangharsh Samt (GKSS,
or the Rural Upliftment Struggle Committee). GKSS coordinated with
local and national organizations and peoples’ movements already active
in Singrauli, and helped rally international support for the struggle
for justice in Singrauli. In 1995, Madhu Kohli, an activist who had
been monitoring the situation, moved to Singruali to live and work
directly with the affected communities and serve as a liaison between
the local communities and national and international supporters. She
helped arrange for a fact-finding team from the Berne Declaration (BD), based in
Switzerland, and the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL),
based in Washington, D.C., to visit Mitihini and surrounding area.
During their visit, BD and CIEL staff met with local people resisting
resettlement and those who had already been displaced, with NTPC
management, and with the World Bank office in Delhi. While in the
project area, the NGOs discussed the requirements of the Word Bank’s
policies with local people and provided them with information about the
Inspection Panel.
The Claim with the World Bank Inspection Panel
The
decision to file an Inspection Panel claim was not taken lightly. The
villagers of Mitihini first attempted to negotiate with NTPC, raise
their concerns with the World Bank, and seek relief from domestic
courts and domestic human rights bodies. When the people insisted on
fair compensation, and when they demanded that their rights under World
Bank policies be respected, they were met with harassment,
intimidation, and human rights violations.
Facing
increasing abuse and threats of eviction, the remaining families of
Mitihini decided in April 1997 that they had no other recourse than to
request an investigation by the Inspection Panel. Madhu Kohli filed a
claim on her own behalf and as the authorized representative of
thirty-three other affected people, whose names were kept confidential
out of fear of reprisals.
The claim alleged violations on the following Bank
policies: Environmental Assessment, Involuntary Resettlement,
Indigenous Peoples, Project Supervision, and Economic Evaluation of
Investment Alternatives. The claim focused in particular on the Bank’s
failure to ensure that displaced persons would receive effective
rehabilitation and have their livelihoods restored.
The Response: Increased Repression
Filing
the claim triggered a retaliatory backlash from NTPC, which moved into
the project area with police force and heavy machinery. In the area
around the Vindhyachal power plant, people were beaten and physically
restrained while their homes were bulldozed in the presence of and at
the behest of NTPC. International NGOs alerted World Bank officials in
Washington to the human rights violations, noting with alarm that
through these tactics, NTPC was seeking to irreversibly alter the
status quo, thereby preempting “the ability of the Panel to investigate
and the ability of the Bank to design effective remedies.” The NGOs
urged the Bank to put a halt to the forcible evictions and to restrain
NTPC from acts of violence.
Inspection Panel Desk Review and Final Report: “Victims Rather than Beneficiaries”
With
a limited mandate from the board, the Inspection Panel conducted a
Washington-based investigation of the policy violations in Singrauli.
The panel also drew from information gathered during its preliminary
field visit and received supplemental information from the claimants
and NGOs. On December 22, 1997, the Inspection Panel delivered its
report on its desk investigation to the board. One of the most
significant new findings of its Washington-based investigation was that
“violations of policies and procedures can be attributed to pressure to
accelerate the process of loan approval, and to not granting the same
relevance to Resettlement and Rehabilitation and Environmental matters
as to other project components.” The Panel found that “Senior Regional
Management pressured staff to accelerate processing of the loan in
order to meet fiscal year 1993 lending targets.” The project had been
approved just two days before the close of that fiscal year.
Conclusions
Despite some
improvement in compensation as a result of the claim, the fundamental
objectives of the World Bank's Resettlement Policy have been completely violated in
Singrauli. People have been impoverished and have not had their
livelihoods restored, nor have they been adequately compensated for
their losses. Although the claimants to the Inspection Panel feel that
they are better off than they would have been in the absence of the
claim, they have not regained their previous standard of living, and
they mourn their lost way of life.
The eighteen families that were the claimants to the
Inspection Panel, together with about twelve hundred other families,
received a better compensation package than they would have received
had they not filed the claim. In some cases, this allowed people to be
able to buy land and slowly start to rebuild their lives. However, the
compensation that they received was not enough to restore them to their
previous standards of living, and as a result, the Bank’s policies
continue to be violated. Hundreds of thousands of people have been
unjustly impoverished as a result of World Bank-financed activities in
Singrauli. | 
