(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
When Jens Stoltenberg recently visited India, he was followed by sickening Norwegian players in hydropower development. If the shekel was of such an amount that hydropower development becomes unnecessary in India over the next ten years, the newspapers have reported very little. Probably the follow-up caught the mouth fluid in a handkerchief and twisted the fillets into a bucket when they got home.
Neither Jens Stoltenberg nor Norwegian companies traveled to India to run old-fashioned aid. It's about contracts. By Norwegian standards – large contracts. India has so far only developed hydropower for 22000 megawatts, we must believe a director of GE Hydro. It is smaller than Norway. Then you can imagine for yourself how much power it takes to light up the lives of a billion people. There is a lot of money, that – to the delight of Norwegian companies that are desperate for new pastures outside Norway's borders.
Indian success writer Arundhati Roy was among the critical voices during the Norwegian state visit. She felt that our own prime minister and his wife should stay home. Hydropower development is controversial in India. For the author of the Indian success novel of the time, "The God of Small Things", it's obviously an easy matter to be against. At the same time, she does what one usually accuses writers and intellectuals of for to do enough, namely to engage; act binding and scream out. When Jens Stoltenberg visited miracles and other power plants in India, Arundhati Roy had to appear in the Indian Supreme Court accused of contempt of court in connection with a protest last year to stop a dam project. 40.000 families will lose their homes if the authorities give the go-ahead for the development, according to Roy. The World Bank has already withdrawn its support, because no policy has been made for where and how these families will move. This is nothing new in Indian politics. In the last fifty years, around 56 million people have been forcibly relocated due to dam development, reports The World Commission of Dams Report – without being offered alternative housing. What was supposed to save India from hunger and poverty has become a nightmare for far too many people, writes Arundhati Roy in an article published in the April issue of the Swedish magazine Ordfront – it's time to wake up.
The totalitarian ideologies of the last century have taught us that man has lost the moment the policy of salvation demands bloody sacrifices. "Development" must be called something else when there is one step back for each step forward. Feel free to call it a siding. Dam development in India destroys drinking water for poor people. Then it does not help much with extra power capacity for the PC. Arundhati Roy's main argument is that the development of hydropower only benefits the wealthy, those who can already afford a comfortable reading lamp over Chesterfield. The counter-argument could of course be that 400 million illiterates do not need so much good reading light.
In Norway, the bright spots in our lives were bought at Ikea. We probably can afford to act Design if Norwegian power companies conquer half India. The Swedish idea historian and ex-communist Sven-Eric Liedman attempts in the book «To see yourself other. About solidarity »to modernize the concept of solidarity. Liedman's point is that if we focus on man as a consumer, everyone will have an interest in strengthening the other's position; both those who sell and those who buy. Growth breeds growth. Stoltenberg would probably agree with this. But what happens when people are unwilling to consider themselves consumers? That they want something different from what they are offered? For example, a better environment?
The popular non-violence resistance is rising again in India, from intellectuals and peasants, from people affected by development and who are not, we believe the author. For Arundhati Roy and others, it's not just about decent treatment of the victims, but about the worldview and philosophy of life. Indian authorities have thrown themselves on the privatization wave in hydropower development as well, waiving responsibility for the consequences.
"The only thing in the world worth globalizing, under the prevailing circumstances, is contradiction and resistance," she writes.
Worth a trip to India, we believe the author who will not know until August whether she must spend the fall in prison.
