MEDHA PATKAR

A SOCIAL ACTIVIST OF INDIA

IT REALLY REQUIRES A COURAGE.

Born in Bombay, India on December 1, 1954.

Raised by two 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

Provide safe drinking water to 30 million people

Irrigate 4.8 million hectares of landProduce 550 megawatts of powerProvide 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

The cost of the project was estimated at $200 million, actual cost is $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

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 has earned him much respect in the country among the tribal people and government officials.

• 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.

• The Supreme Court of India has ruled on the Sardar Sarovar Dam. In 1995 they suspended work on the dam because the height exceeded the amount originally planned, 75m. In 1999 they ordered work to continue up to the height of 85m. Then in Oct 18, 2000 they ruled in favor of building the Sardar Sarovar despite global protests

• Mr Vyas, Gujarat's Minister for Narmada Irrigation.

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

No environmental impact report No assessment on the effects of people living down stream despite a

previous report by the bank regarding increased salinity that would destroy fishing grounds, increase in silt and the project would only be able to irrigate 5% of what was initially stated.

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.

“The politicians used drought-stricken populations to justify their big dams, despite knowing that the projects can never deliver”

Hugh Brody, from independent review team for the World Bank

• Threat to aquatic habitat – barriers for fish passage, water quality is affected because of change in land use can also affect aquatic life

• Water logging – excess water in the soil and can render the soil useless. This could affect 40% of the area to be irrigated.

• Salinisation – when irrigation water has more saline content and adds more salt to the system. This happens because the land to be irrigated is an arid area and not used to so much water. This impacts the flora and fauna and makes the water not suitable for drinking.

Outbreak of diseases – the concern of an increase in malaria because of the increased reservoirs and water logged lands, which are prime locations for mosquitoes to breed. Authorities have suggested pesticides but there is concern for humans ingesting the pesticide. Another disease on the rise is TB because of the increasing number of people being moved out of their villages because of dams. The shanty towns they move to have no running water and no plumbing.

http://www.narmada.org/images/haripics/harikrishna.pictures1.html

There was no social impacts assessment before the dam project started. The World Bank tried to do an assessment after the dam project started but found that there was a ‘severe shortage in baseline data’.

One of the main problems that came up was the lack of communication between the state and the people who were to be affected by the project.

Established in 1989Sept 1989 - 60,000 people

rally against destructive development

Jan 1990 – 5,000 people marched on the Narmada Valley Development authority offices forcing them to close

March 1990 – 10,000 protesters blocked the highway from Bombay for two days

May 1990 – 2,000 people staged a sit-in outside the prime ministers house in Delhi

• Christmas Day 1990 – Long March – 3,000 people walked, 100km, which took a week to the dam site, once they got there Medha Patka 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

Once the world Bank withdrew, the country 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.”

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, and no fruit or trees.

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

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

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, which oftentimes is not enough to buy other property and goes to food for survival

They mov e 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

One of these villages in the desert region where millions of people are affected by water shortages is Gujarat. It is one of the villages bring used by the government to justify the Narmada dam. Twenty years ago they relied on their wells, but the wells are now dry. Why?

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

Is This More Important Than Rehabillation Of tribals and providing water To Needy People?

The Sardar Sarovar dam height will be raised to 110m. This will displace 12,000 families without any resettlement or displacement program.

Protests are a regular occurrence and they will continue to do so until the dam is stopped.

Medha Patkar’s contribution for tribals Rehabilation can’t be ignored in this issue.

“Nobody builds Big Dams to provide drinking water to rural people. Nobody can afford to.”

“There's a lot of money in poverty .”

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

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.

‘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.

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.

Medha Patkar, her colleagues, the NBA, and the NAPM, are all symbols of hope. Medha Patkar conveys this message of hope and solidarity, when she says, "we have to challenge these forces, conveying to them that we who resist are not just in nooks and corners of the world. We are together... But it can't be just a one-time

demonstration in the street, but continuous strategizing and action on multiple fronts that can challenge these forces"

Displacing poor tribal people from their homes and destroying their means of livelihood without them having a say and without giving them just compensation is not development but a human rights violation.

And that’s why her fight is for cause.

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