"Dam" the Irony for Greater Common Good: Why Arundhati Roy's Rhetoric Missed Its Mark.

Arundhati Roy?s essay, Greater Common Good, decries the construction of the Narmada Dam in India in scathingly ironic and emotive rhetoric. The project she argued benefited a few at the expense of the poor and illiterate and the anti-dam protest was more than a fight to save the river valley, it was a question of justice in Indian democracy. However, the pro-dam lobby, whose views were represented in a formal reply by civil society activist BG Verghese, dismissed her careful scholarship and powerful prose as mere Poetic Licence - an anti-development diatribe not based on evidence. Ironic tropes, critics argue, render the text open to polysemic readings. However, the Narmada dam debate reveals that there is preferred reading of the text and a deliberate misreading of the author?s intent that is hard to explain as mere effect of the textual characteristics of irony as a rhetorical trope. The paper argues that the current theories of irony only clarify why ironic texts are open to multiple interpretations. They are unable to explain the misreading or preferred readings of text as they do not take into account the evidence of reception of the text or pay adequate heed to the surrounding context. This paper calls for a more reader-centered approach to interpretation of ironic text which takes into consideration a formal evidence of reception and the context of communication. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]