B1 · Intermediate
13 min
agriculturewaterfood securityindiadevelopment
The Water That Feeds: India, Dams, and the Price of Food
El Agua que Alimenta
This week, nine people died when a cruise boat capsized on the Bargi Dam reservoir in Madhya Pradesh, India. Fletcher and Octavio use the moment to dig into how large dams transformed Indian agriculture, and at what human cost.
Esta semana, nueve personas murieron cuando un barco se hundió en la presa de Bargi, en Madhya Pradesh, India. Fletcher y Octavio usan este momento para explorar cómo las grandes presas transformaron la agricultura india, y a qué precio humano.
7 essential B1-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| la presa | dam / reservoir | La presa de Bargi está en el río Narmada, en el centro de India. |
| el riego | irrigation | Sin riego, los agricultores no pueden cultivar arroz en la estación seca. |
| desplazar | to displace / to uproot | La construcción de la presa desplazó a muchas familias que vivían cerca del río. |
| la cosecha | harvest / crop | Si el monzón llega tarde, la cosecha de arroz puede ser muy mala. |
| para que | so that (with a different subject) | El gobierno construyó canales para que los agricultores pudieran regar sus campos. |
| subterráneo | underground / subterranean | En Punjab, el agua subterránea está muy profunda porque los agricultores la usan mucho. |
| la compensación | compensation | Las familias desplazadas por la presa no recibieron una compensación justa. |
Nine people drowned this week in a reservoir in central India.
A pleasure boat, families out for the day, and then nothing.
And the first thing I thought, honestly, was not the accident itself.
It was the dam.
Sí.
Yes.
La presa de Bargi es parte del río Narmada.
The Bargi Dam is part of the Narmada River.
Es un río muy importante en India, no solo por el agua, sino por la historia y la cultura.
It's a very important river in India, not only for the water, but for history and culture.
Hay muchas presas grandes en ese río.
There are many large dams on that river.
The Narmada.
Right.
And Bargi was one of the first big dams built on it, back in the eighties.
The idea was irrigation, electricity, food security.
Feed millions of people.
That was the promise.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y India necesitaba esa promesa.
And India needed that promise.
Después de la independencia en 1947, el país tenía hambre, mucha hambre.
After independence in 1947, the country was hungry, very hungry.
El primer ministro Nehru dijo que las presas eran los 'templos de la India moderna.' Esas fueron sus palabras exactas.
Prime Minister Nehru said that dams were the 'temples of modern India.' Those were his exact words.
Temples of modern India.
That phrase has aged in complicated ways, hasn't it.
Because Bargi displaced somewhere between a hundred and two hundred thousand people when it was built.
Whole villages, gone.
Sí, y muchas de esas personas eran agricultores.
Yes, and many of those people were farmers.
Tenían tierra para cultivar arroz, trigo, legumbres.
They had land to grow rice, wheat, legumes.
Y cuando el agua subió, perdieron todo eso.
And when the water rose, they lost all of that.
El gobierno prometió nuevas tierras, pero muchas familias nunca recibieron nada.
The government promised new land, but many families never received anything.
So you build a dam to feed people, and in the process you destroy the farms that were already feeding people.
There's a brutal irony in that.
Es una ironía que se repite mucho en la historia de la agricultura moderna.
It's an irony that repeats itself a lot in the history of modern agriculture.
No solo en India.
Not only in India.
En España también construimos presas grandes durante el siglo veinte.
In Spain we also built large dams during the twentieth century.
El régimen de Franco construyó muchas para modernizar el país.
Franco's regime built many to modernize the country.
You know, I want to stay in India for a minute, because the food dimension here runs deeper than the dams alone.
The nineteen sixties and seventies, the Green Revolution.
India went from famine-level shortages to being a net exporter of grain.
That transformation was staggering.
Sí, la Revolución Verde.
Yes, the Green Revolution.
Nuevas variedades de trigo y arroz, más fertilizantes, más agua de riego.
New varieties of wheat and rice, more fertilizer, more irrigation water.
Fue un cambio muy grande.
It was a very big change.
India produjo mucho más alimento.
India produced much more food.
Pero también creó problemas nuevos.
But it also created new problems.
Like what?
Walk me through that.
Bueno, las nuevas semillas necesitaban mucha agua.
Well, the new seeds needed a lot of water.
Los agricultores empezaron a usar agua subterránea, no solo agua de los ríos.
Farmers started using groundwater, not just river water.
En el estado de Punjab, que es el granero de India, el nivel del agua subterránea bajó mucho.
In the state of Punjab, which is India's breadbasket, the groundwater level dropped a lot.
Ahora hay zonas donde el agua está muy profunda y es muy difícil encontrarla.
Now there are areas where the water is very deep and very hard to find.
Punjab.
The breadbasket running dry while feeding the country.
I spent time there in the late nineties, and the farmers I talked to were proud, deeply proud, but also worried.
This sense that the land had given everything it had and was now asking to rest.
Eso es muy interesante.
That's very interesting.
Porque en España tenemos una expresión: 'la tierra no miente.' La tierra siempre te dice la verdad sobre cómo la tratas.
Because in Spain we have an expression: 'the land does not lie.' The land always tells you the truth about how you treat it.
Si la tratas bien, produce bien.
If you treat it well, it produces well.
Si la tratas mal, un día deja de producir.
If you treat it badly, one day it stops producing.
The land does not lie.
That's a good one.
I'm filing that away.
Pues sí.
Indeed.
Y volviendo a India, la situación del agua es muy seria ahora.
And going back to India, the water situation is very serious now.
El país tiene casi mil cuatrocientos millones de personas.
The country has almost one billion four hundred million people.
Necesita producir cantidades enormes de alimento.
It needs to produce enormous quantities of food.
Pero el agua para cultivar ese alimento, el agua que viene de los ríos, de las presas, del suelo, esa agua está disminuyendo.
But the water to grow that food, the water that comes from rivers, from dams, from the ground, that water is decreasing.
And meanwhile the Himalayan glaciers, which feed those rivers, are retreating.
The water that eventually becomes the Narmada, the Ganges, the Indus, it starts up in the ice, and that ice is getting smaller every decade.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y cuando los glaciares desaparecen, los ríos van a tener mucha menos agua en el futuro.
And when the glaciers disappear, the rivers will have much less water in the future.
Eso significa menos agua para los campos, para las presas, para las personas.
That means less water for the fields, for the dams, for the people.
La pregunta es: ¿cómo va a comer toda esa gente?
The question is: how is all that population going to eat?
That is the question of the century, honestly.
And it's not abstract.
Right now, in Madhya Pradesh, where the Bargi accident happened, something like sixty percent of the population depends directly or indirectly on agriculture.
This is not a region that can absorb a food shock easily.
Y hay otro problema.
And there's another problem.
Los agricultores más jóvenes en India no quieren trabajar la tierra.
The younger farmers in India don't want to work the land.
Quieren ir a las ciudades, buscar trabajo en fábricas o en tecnología.
They want to go to the cities, find work in factories or in technology.
Entonces la gente que sabe cultivar, que conoce la tierra, está envejeciendo.
So the people who know how to farm, who know the land, are getting older.
Es un problema que también existe en Europa.
It's a problem that exists in Europe too.
It's everywhere.
I remember writing about that in Argentina in the nineties, actually.
Young people leaving the pampas for Buenos Aires, and this generational knowledge about the land, about crops, about seasons, just evaporating.
You can't download that from anywhere.
No, no puedes.
No, you can't.
Y en India es más complicado porque hay una diferencia grande entre los agricultores ricos y los pobres.
And in India it's more complicated because there's a big gap between rich and poor farmers.
Los agricultores ricos tienen tecnología, tienen tractores modernos, tienen acceso al mercado.
The rich farmers have technology, modern tractors, market access.
Los pequeños agricultores tienen muy poco.
The small farmers have very little.
A veces solo tienen un campo pequeño y agua del río.
Sometimes just a small field and water from the river.
That gap is huge and it's getting wider.
And there was a protest movement about exactly this, not long ago.
Farmers marching on Delhi in 2020 and 2021, some of the largest sustained protests in human history, over agricultural laws that they felt would hand their markets over to corporations.
Sí, recuerdo esas protestas.
Yes, I remember those protests.
Fueron increíbles.
They were incredible.
Cientos de miles de personas, durante meses, acampadas fuera de Delhi.
Hundreds of thousands of people, for months, camped outside Delhi.
Y al final el gobierno canceló las leyes.
And in the end the government cancelled the laws.
Fue una victoria importante para los agricultores.
It was an important victory for the farmers.
It was.
Though some analysts would argue the underlying economic pressures haven't really changed.
The small farmer in India is still in a very precarious position.
And when you factor in climate, erratic monsoons, heat waves that are getting more intense, the precariousness deepens.
Y el monzón es fundamental.
And the monsoon is fundamental.
En India, si el monzón llega bien, hay buena cosecha.
In India, if the monsoon arrives well, there is a good harvest.
Si el monzón llega tarde o con poca lluvia, es un desastre.
If the monsoon arrives late or with little rain, it's a disaster.
La gente depende de esa lluvia para cultivar arroz, para llenar las presas, para tener agua en los pozos.
People depend on that rain to grow rice, to fill the dams, to have water in the wells.
Octavio, here's something I find fascinating.
India is simultaneously one of the world's largest food exporters and a country where something like fifteen to twenty percent of children under five are still severely malnourished.
How do you hold those two things at the same time?
Porque el problema no es solo producir comida.
Because the problem is not only producing food.
El problema es distribuirla.
The problem is distributing it.
India produce suficiente arroz, suficiente trigo.
India produces enough rice, enough wheat.
Pero hay familias que no tienen dinero para comprarlos.
But there are families who don't have money to buy them.
Y hay zonas remotas donde los caminos son malos y la comida no llega bien.
And there are remote areas where the roads are bad and food doesn't arrive well.
La producción y el acceso son dos cosas diferentes.
Production and access are two different things.
Amartya Sen said something very similar, decades ago.
That famines are rarely about the absence of food.
They're about the absence of the power to claim food.
He was writing about Bengal in 1943, but the logic applies everywhere.
Sen es muy importante para entender India.
Sen is very important for understanding India.
Y también para entender el mundo.
And also for understanding the world.
Porque ese problema existe en muchos países.
Because that problem exists in many countries.
Venezuela, por ejemplo, que tenemos en mente estos días.
Venezuela, for example, which we have in mind these days.
O en partes de África.
Or in parts of Africa.
Hay comida en el mundo, pero no llega a todo el mundo.
There is food in the world, but it doesn't reach everyone.
And back to that Bargi reservoir for a second, because I want to close this circle.
The water in that dam was supposed to irrigate hundreds of thousands of hectares.
The actual number, according to some studies, was a fraction of that.
The dam worked as a reservoir, but the canal infrastructure to take the water to the fields was never fully built.
Eso es increíble.
That is incredible.
Y muy triste.
And very sad.
Las familias perdieron sus casas, sus tierras, todo.
The families lost their homes, their land, everything.
Y el beneficio que prometió la presa, el agua para los agricultores, nunca llegó completamente.
And the benefit the dam promised, the water for the farmers, never fully arrived.
Es una historia muy dura.
It's a very hard story.
There's a writer, Arundhati Roy, who spent years documenting the Narmada dam projects.
She called it 'the greater common good.' That phrase had deep irony in her usage.
Who decides what the greater common good is?
And who pays the price for it?
Siempre pagan los más pobres.
It's always the poorest who pay.
En India, en España, en todas partes.
In India, in Spain, everywhere.
Cuando hay un proyecto grande, un embalse, una autopista, una ciudad nueva, las personas que viven en el camino, que normalmente son las más pobres, son las que tienen que moverse.
When there's a big project, a reservoir, a highway, a new city, the people who live in the way, who are normally the poorest, are the ones who have to move.
Y muchas veces no reciben una compensación justa.
And many times they don't receive fair compensation.
You said 'cuando hay un proyecto grande.' When there's a big project.
And that 'cuando' is doing a lot of work.
It's not if, it's when.
You're describing a pattern, not an exception.
That's the part that sticks with me.
Sí, es siempre el mismo patrón.
Yes, it's always the same pattern.
Y lo curioso es que ahora India quiere construir más presas, más infraestructura de agua.
And the curious thing is that now India wants to build more dams, more water infrastructure.
Porque el cambio climático necesita soluciones.
Because climate change needs solutions.
Pero las soluciones del pasado también causaron muchos problemas.
But the solutions of the past also caused many problems.
Es una situación difícil.
It's a difficult situation.
And what do you feed a billion four hundred million people on a planet that is getting hotter and drier?
That is the question that keeps agronomists, economists, and climate scientists up at night.
And I don't think anyone has a clean answer.
No, no hay una respuesta fácil.
No, there's no easy answer.
Pero hay personas que trabajan en esto.
But there are people working on this.
Científicos que desarrollan variedades de arroz y trigo que necesitan menos agua.
Scientists who develop varieties of rice and wheat that need less water.
Agricultores que usan técnicas tradicionales combinadas con tecnología nueva.
Farmers who use traditional techniques combined with new technology.
Hay esperanza, pero es un trabajo muy difícil y muy largo.
There is hope, but it's very difficult and very long work.
Octavio, I want to ask you something before we close.
Earlier you said the dam was built 'para que los campos recibieran agua.' And I noticed you used 'para que' there, not just 'para.' Is that a specific construction I should know about?
Buena pregunta.
Good question.
'Para' con un infinitivo es cuando el sujeto es el mismo.
'Para' with an infinitive is when the subject is the same.
Por ejemplo: 'Construí la presa para tener agua.' Yo construyo, yo tengo el agua.
For example: 'I built the dam to have water.' I build, I have the water.
Pero 'para que' es diferente.
But 'para que' is different.
Es para indicar un propósito que tiene otro sujeto.
It's to indicate a purpose that has a different subject.
'Construí la presa para que los agricultores tuvieran agua.' Yo construyo, pero los agricultores reciben el beneficio.
'I built the dam so that the farmers would have water.' I build, but the farmers receive the benefit.
So it's about whether the person doing the action is the same as the person receiving the benefit.
Same person, you use 'para.' Different person, you use 'para que.' That's actually a clean distinction.
English handles it with 'so that' versus just 'to,' now that I think about it.
Exactamente, es la misma lógica.
Exactly, it's the same logic.
'I came to eat' es 'vine para comer,' mismo sujeto.
'I came to eat' is 'vine para comer,' same subject.
'I came so that you could eat' es 'vine para que pudieras comer,' sujetos diferentes.
'I came so that you could eat' is 'vine para que pudieras comer,' different subjects.
Es una regla útil.
It's a useful rule.
Y muy importante para explicar propósitos, que en política, en historia, en economía, son siempre complicados.
And very important for explaining purposes, which in politics, history, and economics, are always complicated.
Built the dam so that the fields could be irrigated.
But the canals never came.
That one sentence kind of captures the whole story we just told, doesn't it.
Sí, perfectamente.
Yes, perfectly.
Y mira, ahora sabes usar 'para que.' No me puedes decir que no aprendes nada hablando de desastres y presas.
And look, now you know how to use 'para que.' You can't tell me you learn nothing from talking about disasters and dams.