The Greater Common Good First published in Outlook and Frontline, June 4, 1999. If you are to suffer, you should suffer in the interest of the country . . . —Jawaharlal Nehru, speaking to villagers who were to be displaced by the Hirakud dam, 19481 I stood on a hill and laughed out loud. I had crossed the Narmada by boat from Jalsindhi and climbed the headland on the opposite bank, from where I could see, ranged across the crowns of low bald hills, the Adivasi hamlets of Sikka, Surung, Neemgavan, and Domkhedi. I could see their airy, fragile homes. I could see their fields and the forests behind them. I could see little children with littler goats scuttling across the landscape like motorized peanuts. I knew I was looking at a civilization older than Hinduism, slated—sanctioned (by the highest court in the land)—to be drowned this monsoon [1999], when the waters of the Sardar Sarovar reservoir will rise to submerge it.
