Do or die: The people versus development in the Narmada Valley

A special issue of New Internationalist on the ongoing crisis in the Narmada Valley is being published to coincide with the start of the 2001 satyagraha by villagers and activists confronting the waters rising behind the Sardar Sarovar and Maan dams during the coming monsoon.

This New Internationalist account of the Narmada story is a journey. Inspired by meeting NBA leader Medha Patkar at an international meeting, British writer Maggie Black and artist Lucy Willis went to Narmada to find out why the Sardar Sarovar and other large dams in the Valley have provoked such extraordinary opposition. In people's homes, at village meetings, on boats, trains, verandas and temple steps, they found out why people would rather drown than let these dams be built. They learnt about a kind of destructive injustice and a popular resistance unknown in their own society, and they were amazed, appalled and inspired.

This account of the Narmada struggle begins at Bargi dam, whose oustees have been treated with extraordinary official indifference since 1990. It continues downstream to Maheshwar, where S Kumars' attempt to build the first private hydro-electric dam in India is in trouble. Then they go to the dam-site on the Maan tributary, where the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh has ordered the violation of his own state policies and 17 tribal villages face submergence without any re-settlement. On to the Sardar Sarovar reservoir and more tribal villages faced with submergence, where people are still being made offers of useless or already occupied land 12 years after re-settlement should have been completed. Finally they visit other communities affected by the SSP - the canal-affected, and those who have been re-settled in Gujarat - and find out what is happening 'at the end of the line'.

The Supreme Court judgement in the Narmada case, NBA's international support, alternative water harvesting approaches, and facts about India's love affair with large dams are all covered in the magazine. But Narmada's people, interviewed by Maggie Black with the help of translators, and painted and drawn by Lucy Willis, are the main focus. This issue of New Internationalist provides a platform for some of those ruined in the name of development by destructive grand-slam projects, illustrating what globalisation in the form of an alliance between politicians, contractors, bureaucrats and foreign capital does to people at the margins of society.

A limited number of copies of the Narmada issue of NI should be available shortly from NBA office in Baroda.

Further information on this issue: maggie@black.win-uk.net
New Internationalist website: www.newint.org
Lucy Willis website: www.lucywillis.f9.co.uk
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