Medha Patkar

Narmada dam issue

1. MEDHA PATKAR
A SOCIAL ACTIVIST OF INDIA

2. Born in Mumbai, India on December 1, 1954.
Raised by politically and socially active
parents.
M.A. in Social Work from the Tata Institute of
Social Science in 1980
After her Master's degree, she worked for
seven years with voluntary organizations

4. Provide safe drinking water to 30 million
people
Irrigate 4.8 million hectares of land
Produce 550 megawatts of power
Provide 1,300 cubic-meters of water per
yr.for municipal and industrial purposes
Provide a drainage system to carry away
floodwaters
It will also take the land of 320,000
people

5. The cost of the project was estimated at $200
million, actual cost $450 million
Investors are the World Bank until 1993 (when
they withdrew), Gov. of Gujarat (state where
the Sardar Sarovar dam is located) and
S.Kumars (India’s leading textile companies)
It will displace 180,000 more than projected
and affect 700,000 livelihoods

6. Dalits and Adivasi (Local Residents).
Many of these people are uneducated and very
few can read and write.
“NARMADA BACHAO ANDOLAN .” Started
by Medha Patkar in 1986.
Arundhati Roy; Booker Prize-winning author
supporter of the Save the Narmada Movement;
wrote a book about the Dams in India called ‘The
Greater Common Good’.
Baba Amte. a social worker whose work with
leprosy patients.

7. •Indian Government supports the building of
dams
•The World Bank supported the Sardar Sarovar
Dam Project and loaned India $450 million. They
withdrew from the project after an independent
review confirmed social and environmental
impacts were increasing.
•Mr Vyas, Gujarat's Minister for Narmada
Irrigation.

8. It was a protest by the NBA
called 'satyagraha' that
caught the World Banks
attention.
They sent in an independent
review team headed by
Hugh Brody, a British
anthropologist and
Donald Gamble, a
Canadian environmental
engineer.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/shows/dammed/photo.html

9. •Christmas Day 1990 – Long March – 3,000 people walked, 100km,
which took a week to the dam site, once they got there Medha
Patkar and 6 others went on a hunger strike demanding the
government suspend work on the dam and hold an independent
review.
• It lasted 22 days until they broke fast – this made Narmada an
international issue.
•Jan 1991 – The World Bank commissions independent review
http://www.narmada.org/images/haripics/harikrishna.pictures1.html

10. No environmental impact report
No assessment on the effects of
people living down stream
People have died because of
malaria. A previous report from the
bank said the project was ‘taking
malaria to the doorsteps of the
villagers’. But the report stated the
measures promised to prevent this
were ‘not yet due’.
Inadequate resettlement plans, some
villages haven’t even received a
resettlement plan and their villages
have already been destroyed.

11. Once the world Bank withdrew, govt of India financed the
rest of the Dam themselves.
However, India has already received $250 million from
the World Bank and is “legally obligated towards the
Bank to carry out its obligations under the loan
agreement.”

12. Not enough resettlement sites have been set up
for the amount of people already displaced.
The sites that have been set up have no
electricity, no water, no farming.
In order to get water etc., they must buy them
but they can’t buy them if they can’t farm and
they can’t farm because they don’t have these
things

13. http://www.sardarsarovardam.org/default.htm

15. The resettlement agency showed the same
town to tribal people who were considering
being relocated. For those that resign to move,
will be taken to a completely different town
with no amenities promised, if there are any
houses available at all.
The other option is to take a cash payment for
what their land is worth(90to200Rs per acre),
which oftentimes is not enough to buy other
property and goes to food for survival
They diluted the list of prjected affected
families

16. They move to the
outskirts of the city
where they try to get
work as laborers and
live on less than $1 a
day
They go back to their
old town by the river
and hope that their
houses have not been
destroyed by police they
protest

17. One of the beneficiaries was Gujarat. Many of
the villages relied on their wells, but the wells
are now dry.
Agribusiness and industry are drilling ever
deeper tube wells to find water, which is
causing the water level to decrease by about 4ft
every year. Currently, the town of Gujarat, is
dependant on emergency water supplies from
the government

18. The Sardar Sarovar dam height will be
raised to 122m. This will displace hundreds
of families without any resettlement or
displacement program.
More than 2lakh oustees are still to be
rehabilitated.
Protests are a regular occurrence and they
will continue…..

19. Awards and Honors
•She was a recipient of Right
Livelihood Award (1991)
•M.A.Thomas National Human
Rights Award (1999)
•Deena Nath Mangeshkar
Award
•Mahatma Phule Award
•Goldman Environment Prize
•Green Ribbon Award
•Human Rights Defender's
Award

21. Foreign Fund and Anti-National
Activities
•The Madhya Pradesh Government
alleged the “Narmada Bachao Andolan” of
receiving foreign funds and using them for
unclear purposes. They claimed that, the
money that was obtained was being used
by the organization to hamper the
rehabilitation process.

22. ‘no-dam’ to ‘dam-OK-if-rehab-OK’. For all these previous
years, she was just opposed to all kinds of concessions.
Her fight against the Narmada project cost the associated
states and people 5-10 years of development.
Delay increased project cost from 450 million dollar to
2billion dollar
She has been seen to be anti-development through long
and uncompromising agitations against economically
gainful projects.
Once the Narmada project has been completed there is
nothing but praise for it and Medha is nowhere in sight.

23. Group 6
Roll No 86 to 90
RIMSR MMS B