The Cost of Living

93 Pages·1999·0.44 MB·English

by  Arundhati Roy

Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR THE COST OF LIVING
THE GREATER COMMON GOOD
PREFACE
THE GREATER COMMON GOOD
REFERENCES
THE END OF IMAGINATION
THE BOMB AND I
THE MODERN LIBRARY EDITORIAL BOARD
About the Author
ALSO BY ARUNDHATI ROY
Copyright Page
To the Narmada
and all the life she sustains.
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR THE COST OF LIVING
“Arundhati Roy’s polemic is necessary and important. She combines brilliant reportage with
a passionate, no-holds-barred commentary on two great Indian betrayals masquearading as
progress. I salute both her courage and her skill.”
—SALMAN RUSHDIE
PREFACE
In May 1998, the government of India conducted a series of nuclear tests in the Thar
desert and declared itself a nuclear weapons state. Within days the government of
Pakistan followed suit.
I was in the United States on a reading tour for my book, The God of Small Things,
when this happened. My first response was one of disgust at the condescension, the
hypocrisy, and the double standards of the reaction in the western world. (Can the
Blacks handle the Bomb?)
I returned to India, and it took a few months for me to stop reacting to the
international reaction and to begin to address what we had done to ourselves, to our
lives, to our futures. In July 1998, I wrote “The End of Imagination.” In August, it was
published simultaneously in two mainstream magazines—Frontline and Outlook —as a
cover story. Both publications set aside competing commercial considerations and did
this despite the cacophony of nationalism and jingoism that was (and still is) being
orchestrated by political parties and much of the press.
Nuclear bombs, we were told, were necessary as a deterrent. A deterrent to what?
Today, a year after the nuclear tests, the hostility between India and Pakistan has
spiraled into a flashpoint. We’re not supposed to call it war. But both countries are
counting their dead.
“Oh, but it’s only a conventional war,” I was told by a senior journalist who was
interviewing me.
Only a conventional war?
Have we raised the threshold of horror so high that nothing short of a nuclear strike
qualifies as a real war? Are we to spend the rest of our lives in this state of high alert
with guns pointed at each other’s heads and fingers trembling on the trigger?
Thank you, government of India, thank you, government of Pakistan. But most of all,
thank you, government of the U.S. of A.
We’re deeply, deeply grateful.
The second essay, “The Greater Common Good” (the first in this book), was also
published simultaneously in Outlook and Frontline in June 1999.
In February 1999, the newspapers reported that the Supreme Court of India had lifted
a four-year-long legal stay on the construction of a controversial megadam—the Sardar
Sarovar—that was being built on the Narmada river in central India. It is one of 3,200
dams being planned on a single river. Its proponents boast that this is the largest, most
ambitious river valley development project ever conceived in human history.
I began to follow the story. The more I read, the more horrified I became. In March I
traveled to the Narmada valley. I returned, numbed. I returned unable to ignore or
accept what everybody (including myself) has, over the years, gradually accepted and
successfully ignored.
India is the third largest dam-builder in the world. In the last fifty years (since
Independence), India has built 3,300 Big Dams. Their reservoirs have uprooted millions
of people. Yet there are no government records of how many people have been
displaced. India does not even have a national rehabilitation policy.
These thousands of dams have been built in the name of National Development. Yet
250 million people have no access to safe drinking water. At least 350 million people
(more than the country’s population at the time of Independence) live below the poverty
line. Over 80 percent of rural households do not have electricity.
Geographically, there has been an increase in flood-prone and drought-prone areas
since 1947!
The government—every Indian government—refuses to address the problem. To
even consider that something is amiss.
Even as I write, the monsoon is raging outside my window. It’s high noon, but the
sky is dark, and my lights are on. I know that the waters of the Sardar Sarovar reservoir
are rising every hour. More than ten thousand people face submergence. They have
nowhere to go. I have tried very hard to communicate the urgency of what is happening
in the valley. But in the cities, people’s eyes glaze over. “Yes, it’s sad,” we say. “But it
can’t be helped. We need electricity.” The story of the Narmada valley is nothing less
than the story of Modern India. Like the tiger in the Belgrade zoo during the NATO
bombing, we’ve begun to eat our own limbs.
—Arundhati Roy
July 1999

THE GREATER COMMON GOOD
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are two men who fall into the “without whom” (this essay couldn’t have been
written) category:
Himanshu Thakker, who first revealed to me—brilliantly, meticulously, almost shyly—
the horrors of the Narmada Valley Development Projects. To him I owe my first
(belated) conspectus of this intricate method of pulverizing a people.
Patrick McCully, whom I’ve never met, but whose book Silenced Rivers is the rock on
which this work stands. If you want to read a truly dazzling book on Big Dams, drop
mine and read his.
Jharana Jhaveri, most tenacious of fighters and gentlest of friends, thank you for
traveling with me. All the way.
Shripad, Nandini, Silvie, Alok, Medha, Baba Amte, and their colleagues at NBA.
Extraordinary people, fighting an extraordinary war.
Deepak Sarkar and Anurag Singh, for friendship and cool, organized wisdom and
advice.
N. Ram and Vinod Mehta, editors of Outlook and Frontline, who first published The
Greater Common Good. There aren’t many like you around.
Jojo Van Gruisen, Golak Khandual, Arjun Raina, Sanjay Kak. Old soul friends. Fellow-
travelers on this path.
Finally, Pradip Krishen, without whom my life would not be fully lived.
Thank you.