Old Tehri town and several villages go under water following a court order to close the diversion canal and dam the Bhagirathi, while the scattered families' demands for compensation are yet to materialise. IT is a grave tragedy that is gradually unfolding in the vast submergence area of the 260-metre Tehri dam project in Uttaranchal. After the October 29 order of the Uttaranchal High Court resulted in the closure of the last diversion canal, the T-2 tunnel, of the 2,400 megawatt Tehri hydroelectric project, the waters of the Bhagirathi and the Bhilangana rivers began steadily inundating the 125 villages, 39 fully and the rest partially. As the uprooted families began to leave in search of new moorings, throwing one last glance at their homes and agricultural fields, anti-dam activist and environmentalist Sunderlal Bahuguna's words "the dam is built with our tears" appeared so true. Over 18,000 families, of which 14,000 (5,291 urban and 9,238 rural) will be fully affected and 3,810 partially affected, have lost not only their homes, but their social moorings and a shared heritage. Vast areas of the Pratapnagar Assembly segment would get completely cut off from the district headquarters town of New Tehri because the iron bridge linking it to the town was expected to sink in the third week of November. With this loss of the sole road link, people from Pratapnagar would now have to take a detour via Uttarkashi, traversing an additional distance of 180 kilometres, to reach New Tehri. In all, 10 bridges and several roads will go down under water in the last week of November, cutting off villages as the rivers change their course. The lopsided approach of the authorities - be it the Centre, the Tehri Hydroelectric Development Corporation (THDC) which is building the dam, or the Uttaranchal government - to the resettlement and rehabilitation (R&R) effort has compounded the tragedy. While care was taken to rehabilitate those displaced from the old Tehri town, residents of Mali Dewal, Sirai, Bhaldiyana, Cham, Biryani and other villages, which fall in the doob (full submergence) area, have not been compensated adequately. Even though they face the prospect of being drowned, they are adamant about staying on, because they have nowhere to go. They have been provided neither land nor houses in the area of relocation as they were found ineligible on some grounds or the other. For instance, in Sirai village, four brothers, Dinesh Chandra, Suresh Chandra, Ganesh Chandra and Harish Prasad, all unemployed and living in a joint family, have been left high and dry because as per the provision for compensation only one of them is eligible for the payment of Rs.22,000, the sum which they feel is insufficient to build a house and support themselves. Traders and shop-owners are another section of the dam displaced that has been denied compensation so far. The rising water level will soon force them to abandon their business establishments and become jobless. According to officials, there are 547 shops along the Tehri-Uttarkashi highway and 85 in the villages that face submergence. So far the government has not granted them any relief. It was envisaged to provide a cash compensation of Rs.60,000 and Rs.40,000 for shop owners, depending on the size of the shop, and now the State government is even thinking of doubling the compensation package. But this is yet to materialise. Complaining about discrimination in the payment of compensation, the traders said shop owners of Tehri town were given a package of Rs.14.5 crores (which included in each case a shop and cash compensation). "When we have been paying taxes at commercial rates and the water and electricity bills at urban rates, why are we discriminated as rural traders?" asks Lakhiram Uniyal, president of the Cham Udyog Vyapar Mandal. "We have written to the State government seeking a Rs.10-crore package. But so far only Rs.3.6 crores has been sanctioned for owners of shops located on the highway," says Narendra Singh Chauhan, a Superintending Engineer of the Public Works Department, in charge of rehabilitation. "The Centre and the THDC have refused to give any money for rehabilitation. We are trying to do our best with the limited resources available," he says. He admits that connectivity will become a problem for vast areas but says the State government is trying to "do something". "We have already built two bridges, at Syansu and Peepaldali, for light vehicular traffic at a cost of Rs.30 crores. We will do something soon for heavy vehicular traffic," he says. However, the bridge at Syansu, which has been under construction for the past three years only has two incomplete pillars on hilltops, with no bridge connecting them. Despite the fact that the dam has been in the making for several years now (its construction began in 1978) and some of the best engineers and agencies were involved in its planning and design, the planning has been haphazard, with bizarre consequences. For example, Sirai continues to be a bustling village. Its full submergence is likely to happen sometime in December. It has a functioning inter college and three primary schools with a total student strength of 250. There appears to be no plan to relocate the schools. While the authorities have promised that children studying in Classes IX to XII will be allowed to complete their education in schools elsewhere, those in the primary schools have nowhere to go. Village pradhan Saheb Singh Guliyal and parents association president Kushak Singh Rana are desperate to find alternatives but all their efforts have been futile. Loss of infrastructure is only one part of the tragic story of the soon-to-be displaced. The irreparable damage to the social fabric is what is causing more anguish to them. The likely disintegration of the village community, which has been living as one single unit for generations, is making people all the more insecure. "The entire village was like a family here. Now the very thought of living in another place and not being together with one's own people scares me," says Rajendra Singh Rawat of Cham village. Rawat and his three brothers, who were living with their families in the village, have been given residential and agricultural land separated from one another. Others in the village have also been scattered at various places; some of them have been allotted land near Rishikesh and some others near Haridwar. Besides, they say the compensation is hardly adequate. But Chauhan maintains that rehabilitation can never be to everyone's satisfaction. "There will always be complaints." Maybe there is some truth in what he says because the residents of Sirai and Cham village, who were complaining bitterly about meagre compensation, have actually been given half an acre of land for practising agriculture, besides residential plots, at Pashulok and Pathri, two well-developed sites near Rishikesh, along the highway, and at Roshnabad, which is close to an industrial area in Haridwar. The half-acre land could fetch about Rs.35 lakhs if the allottees wish to sell it. However, not everyone has got some kind of compensation. In Cham village, scores of child widows have been rendered homeless because they could not produce any official records to stake their claims for compensation. Lopsided planning is also evident from the fact that so far Rs.983 crores has been spent on R&R. Of this, Rs.543 crores was spent by the THDC to establish the New Tehri town. The State government spent the rest of the amount on rehabilitation, which included the grant of compensation to 3,000 families in 109 villages and the building of new roads and bridges. This is hardly sufficient. "We have sought Rs.435 crores from the Centre. We are trying to do our best with meagre resources. But the Centre and the THDC have washed their hands off rehabilitation now," State government officials say. This explains the loud complaints about tardy rehabilitation. Damming the Bhagirathi in what anti-dam activists have described as an ecologically sensitive zone has also hurt religious sentiments. Since the flow of the river with much religious importance would now get arrested in the reservoir, the water that enters the plains would not be the "real" Ganga. "This is not the sacred Ganga water for which we have come all the way from the south. This is only water from the Alaknanda river," said one of a family of five from Hyderbad who had come to Har Ki Pauri in Haridwar for a holy dip. Although the THDC has left two holes of 40 cm diameter each for the Bhagirathi water to flow down, that hardly suffices because the water level at Har Ki Pauri, which usually sees a rapid flow of the fast-flowing Ganga, has gone down drastically. Upstream, the dam oustees are more interested in seeking compensation to restart their lives now that their fight against the dam has failed.