MEDHA PATKAR

A SOCIAL ACTIVIST OF INDIA

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

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

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

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.

• 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.

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

• 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

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.

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.”

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

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(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

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

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

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…..

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.

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.

Group 6 Roll No 86 to 90 RIMSR MMS B