The Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP), the largest and most expensive river valley project ever initiated in India, is often described by its proponents as Gujarat's lifeline. However, it's critics feel that it may be one of India's largest planned ecological disasters. In this book, environmental aspects of the SSP are discussed here in terms accessible to the lay reader: the need for an Environmental Impact Assessment of the project and the lack thereof, the way in which conditional environmental clearance was granted to the SSP and how that clearance has effectively lapsed; the possible environmental impacts of the SSP; and whether the SSP can be justified at all.

The environmental impacts are described such that basic ideas about environmental impacts of dams and irrigation projects are clearly spelt out, therefore setting up a framework within which projects other than SSP can also be examined.

Although this is an old study, its findings and analysis remain essentially valid.

• Introduction
• The Lack Of An Environmental Impact Assessment
• Lapse Of Conditional Clearance To SSP
• Environmental Impacts Of The SSP
• Some Concluding Comments