“The Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP), the largest and most expensive river valley project ever initiated in India, is often described by its proponents as Gujarat’s lifeline. However its critics feel that it may be one of India’s largest planned ecological disasters. In this book, the environmental aspects of the SSP are discussed in terms accessible to a lay reader. It describes the need for an Environmental Impact Assessment of the project and explains why it is lacking, how conditional environmental clearance was granted to it, and how that clearance has effectively lapsed, and also, whether the SSP can be justified at all. Basic ideas about environmental impacts of dams and irrigation projects are clearly spelt out, therefore setting up a framework within which projects other than SSP can also be examined.”

Ashish Kothari and Rahul Ram, “The Environmental Aspects of the Sardar Sarovar Project”, 1994

 

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