Aradhana Seth. DAM/AGE
Brooklyn: First Run/Icarus Films, 2002
50 minutes. VHS or DVD. $390.00

H-NET MEDIA REVIEW
Published by H-Environment@h-net.msu.edu (November 2004)

Reviewed for H-Environment by Cynthia A. Melendy, Department of History, University of Maine

Dam Dissent

Aradhana Seth's award winning film DAM/AGE follows writer Arundhati Roy's daring campaign to speak out against the colossal Indian Narmada dam project. This enormous project is estimated to not only displace up to a million people, but threatens to redistribute land, water, and energy for millions more. The author of The God of Small Things (1997), which won the Booker Prize in 1998, and Power Politics (2002), Roy does what few dare to do: challenge the idea that only experts can speak out on crucial issues such as nuclear war, resource privation, and the Narmada Dam project.

As the film unfolds, the viewer is drawn into the complex web of related issues that include India's nuclear standoff with Pakistan, the corruption of the World Bank, and the Indian peoples' uprising against their displacement by the government's failed dam projects. Part 1 investigates the events leading to the arrest of Arundhati Roy, which was the result of allegedly "scandalizing the Supreme Court ... and lowering its authority" when she protested the Narmada Valley Dam project. Roy explains that her motivation for protesting the vast dam project was a result of having a developed a relationship with the river when she was young girl, when she spent hours on it banks. She tells the viewer that she owes the river "a debt of gratitude for all kinds of understanding ... when she spent hours of silence catching fish. The river became her friend, and she feels the "loss of a river is a terrible aching thing." The film thus joins together the ecological, political, and spiritual dimensions of the river to deliver the message that the government has not only displaced the Indian people from their homes, land, and livelihood, but also their spiritual anchor through the Narmada Dam project.

As the film's tension rises to the days before Roy's sentencing for her bold protest, the viewer becomes entranced by Roy's ability to draw the common Indian people to her cause. Everywhere she goes, the Indian people support her protest and almost desperately cling to her voice as though it is the last in a sea of repressive government policies. As she puts it in DAM/AGE:
"I became more and more successful and I watched as in the city I lived in the air became blacker, the cars became sleeker, the gates grew higher and the poor were being stuffed like lice into the crevices, and all the time my bank account burgeoned. I began to feel as though every feeling in The God of Small Things had been traded in for a silver coin, and if I wasn't careful I would become a little silver figurine with a cold, silver heart."

Roy pursued making the film because she felt that "what was missing was the story ... the story of modern India ... who counts and who doesn't" and how power shines its light in one place, only to leave others without power in darkness.

Roy makes a connection between India's nuclear tests and the government's plan to dam the river, so that its projects and undertakings ignore the will of its people. In altering the river basin, it would take a river, along whose banks millions of people lived, and turn it into a "shining silver staircase," in the process submerging 162,000 people in their homes. Indeed, the dam project's intended purpose was never met: it irrigated only 5 percent of the land it was supposed to irrigate and benefited only corporate sugar cane growers.

The film witnesses what happens to the displaced people who go to the slums of the city to live lives of servitude, humiliation and landlessness. It reveals the contours of flooded land and ancient buildings only recognizable by the tips of their rooftops. The film illustrates Roy's fight for her worldview, which ultimately was submerged when she was convicted of contempt of court and sentenced to one day in jail and a fine. Roy opted to pay the fine rather than to become a martyr. "Writers have the weapon of clarity," Roy declares, "the only thing worth globalizing is dissent."

Roy's fears of being silenced were not realized because her brave heart led her to declare, "to stay quiet is as much of a political act as speaking out." DAM/AGE is a testament to the power of one person to activate millions to protest against environmental, political, and financial corruption. Once seen, the viewer never forgets the power of even one voice when it speaks out against environmental and political injustice. At the same time, however, the viewer must face the realization that, in order to effect change, the world needs a powerful creative voice such as Roy's to stand up to environmental degradation that is taking place at such a colossal scale.

DAM/AGE is an excellent film for the classroom, especially to accompany a global environmental history course. Recipient of numerous film festival awards around the world, it especially is required viewing for all of those whose vision of environmental crisis only extends to their own back yard, the privilege to backpack, or to enjoy a getaway free of snowmobiles. DAM/AGE powerfully illustrates that environmental threats are enormous in scope, enforced by powerful courts, governments, and corporations who, hand-in-hand, threaten the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Even without providing an inventory of the environmental degradation suffered by India's ecosystem, DAM/AGE motivates the viewer to activism through Roy's appeal to dissent. Roy's vision helps to bring into focus the urgency of making environmental connections global.

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