A new 400-page report on India's Narmada River dam project has called for a suspension of World Bank funding for the series of 3,000 dams, because the project is beset by problems. Based on the first ever independent review of a World-Bank-funded megaproject, the report says it is not possible to fairly resettle the 250,000 tribal people about to be displaced, and environmental issues are not being dealt with properly.

Following the report, Bank president Lewis Preston acknowledges that 'performance (of Narmada) has fallen short of ... Bank policies and guidelines.' But although Preston accepts that there are 'deficiencies in the Bank's appraisal of the project, the borrowers' implementation and the Bank's supervision', he still insists that the continued Bank support for the Narmada project is justified.

The Bank has already pumped $450 million into the programme which is scheduled to cost five and a half billion dollars in all and is the world's biggest-ever river project. It involves building a series of dams on the Narmada river. Forest and farmland roughly equivalent in space to 250,000 soccer pitches will be flooded. And up to one and a half million mainly tribal people will be forced to leave their traditional lands.

Proponents of the scheme portray it as a dream development project. According to the corporation set up to build the dams, they will provide 15 billion gallons of water daily, irrigate 11,000 square kilometres of land, protect 750,000 people from flooding and generate 1,450 megawatts of hydroelectric power.

But opponents say it will force 250,000 tribal people out of their fertile forests and devastate the environment. Local opposition to the dam has met with a violent response from the authorities.

The degree of controversy over the project in India and among many Western environmentalists led to Japan axing its funding for the dams last year and prompted the Bank to commission the review.

The report by leading environmentalist Bradford Morse and campaigner Tom Berger accuses the Bank of bending and even ignoring its own policy and Indian law concerning the resettlement of indigenous peoples and the environmental impacts of the project.

It concludes that the numbers of people facing resettlement has been grossly underestimated and that over half are being denied compensation. In addition irrigation potential has been exaggerated and damage to downstream fisheries has been ignored.

While not calling for the Narmada project to be scrapped they advise the Bank to completely reassess it, and add that little can be achieved while construction continues.

Both Morse and Berger are believed to have been under pressure to tone down the report. Both refused, but they did agree to withhold publication until after the Rio Earth Summit.

Selected by Dr.G.S.Bhalla Professor, Department of Commerce and Business Management. Guru Nanak Dev University,Amritsar