Day 6: Dabhol - Hedvi

Dabhol is synonymous with the infamous Enron power project, but this is actually 4km further on, at Anjanvel. We woke up late, had our breakfast and at 9:30 crossed the creek by motorized ferry. There's a lot of development visible in this largish-sized town. Even the creek is to be converted to a harbor and there are signs of progress in this direction. We climbed till the DPC (Dabhol Power Company) site, where we found heavy security – three police trucks and plenty of security guards. However, we slid inside, playing the IIT card, and were escorted around the site in a Jeep. No photography allowed.

DPC is a huge dry place with large scale construction going on. In 750 acres of land they plan to set up a 2000MW power plant in 3 stages – the first stage of which is to be completed in 1998. The escort gave us fundas about the layout – the main plant, the cooling tower (huge!), the living quarters, etc. Right now the construction is being done by contractors – large companies – and they seem to follow safety precautions. These contractors train and employ locals – now about 3500, but after construction, when the plant is fully functional, the total number of employees will be about a tenth of this. The rest are expected to be absorbed into the various industries (large houses like Tatas, Birlas, Kirloskars) that will then come up nearby.

There is a local resistance to this project and there are banners and posters all the way to Guhagar (7km) and probably beyond. Although, as I mentioned, there are going to be employment opportunities, the townspeople of Dabhol do not want this unpolluted place to go the Bombay way. The discontent is not directly towards DPC (which uses naphtha fuel and not coal), but towards the “progress” it would bring. One local we met on the ferry rued the way the artificial structures there had spoilt the natural beauty of the creek.

It seems once every few days a protest morcha finds its way to the gates of DPC. However, the escort told us the frequency of such morchas has decreased of late.

After visiting the site (but not meeting any of the higher-ups), we cycled in the sun and had lunch at Guhaghar. Really gorged on GKRs at the ST stand – I had 4½ glasses – and then staggered to sleep it off at the beach nearby. Krishnan sauntered off to pay obeisance at one of the numerous temples in town while the others went to play in the sea. I’m sitting in the shade of the grove here (like Akshi beach) and writing this report.


We left Guhagar at 4:15 and headed for Velneshwar. Here the map is confusing. According to this, we projected Ganpatipule by night. But the terrain is really hilly. The map shows Hedvi and then Velneshwar, but we asked around for the boat to Jaigad and got conflicting reports. The last locals we asked at Hedvi told us there was no boat at the time (6:45) and that we had to go to Tavsal (further on from Rohile) tomorrow morning for a boat. We decided to spend the night at Hedvi itself, convinced by a local who told us we might get free food and accomodation at the temple due to a yearly festival.

At Hedvi, we had to pay for accomodation and dinner at a Bhaktinivas (dharmshala) attached to the Ganesh temple, but decided to stay anyways as it was too late, and the sums involved were nominal. The festival turned out to be a “wadi puja” where a group of about 60 huts (wadi) do a yearly puja. We don’t have the nerve to try and gatecrash this.