125 BEDA DAM TRIBALS ARRESTED AND JAILED IN KHARGONE

Police repression on peaceful protest of Upper Beda adivasis

Today 125 tribal men and women affected by the Upper Beda dam to be built on the river Beda in Khargone district in Madhya Pradesh and sitting on peaceful protest were arrested by the District administration and lodged in Khargone jail. Those arrested included 77 men and 47 women, adivasi leaders Banabai and Vesta from the affected zone as well as Narmada Bachao Andolan activists Mangat and Radheshyam Verma. The adivasi women especially were beaten up badly during the arrests. Several hundred other protestors were chased and dispersed. Cases under Section 151 of the IPC were registered against the arrested people.The heavy handed way that the administration wreaked repression on the adivasis already faced with uprootment and eventual destitution because of the dam, and without answering any of their questions, clearly shows that the intention of the government is to substitute rehabilitation and necessary democratic response to the legitimate demands of the people with lathis and blows. After they were taken into police custody, the arrested people have been illegally stopped from meeting anybody by the Jailer of the Khargone jail.

The Narmada Bachao Andolan condemns this state violence and demands that the arrested people be immediately and unconditionally released. The Narmada Bachao Andolan also demands that the dam must be scrapped and dispersed water alternatives implemented or that the government must rehabilitate both the farmers and the landless people with irrigated agricultural land as per the state rehabilitation policy for the Narmada dam oustees and conditions of the Central Ministry of Social Welfare.

It may be noted that the Upper Beda dam is one of the 30 large dams in the Narmada valley, and that the people, mainly tribals, of the affected zone have been fighting a successful battle against their displacement since the last 8 years. Till now, they have been able to stop any construction on the dam site. In 1999, after a prolonged fast of 21 days by affected people of several dams in the Narmada valley, including the Upper Beda dam, the State government passed an order agreeing to implement dispersed water alternatives in lieu of the Upper Beda dam and appointed a Committee with government and Narmada Bachao Andolan representatives to explore these alternatives. However, it soon cancelled these alternatives and attempted to start work on the dam.

On the 5th of January 2004, the Upper Veda dam affected people took out a huge rally in Khargone and demanded that decentralized water alternatives be implemented in the command area. They said that instead of this Rs. 86 crore Upper Veda Project, if one crore Rupees is distributed for the implementation of water alternatives to every command village in all 72 villages of the command, not only would the command area villagers be able to solve their water problems through decentralized soil and water works in record time, but that the decentralized investment would ensure huge employment opportunities in every village for the next many years to come. The affected people demanded that while public investment in developing water and irrigation sources is imperative, this investment must be freed from the clutches of the contractor-politician-bureaucrat nexus who have milked all public investment for graft in the last few decades. This public investment must be made directly available to the people and communities through the village Panchayats and be used for employment intensive tasks of water conservation and regeneration.

The affected people also demanded that if the government still wishes to build the dam instead of the alternatives, they must first make available irrigated agricultural land of around 1323 ha. to all affected landed families in addition to 2 ha. of land each to landless families in the irrigation command of the Upper Beda dam of around 9900 ha., that must be acquired under the Madhya Pradesh Displaced Persons Act, 1985. Every individual oustee as well as the Gram Panchayats had given written demands to this effect to the district administration.

However, although the District Collector and other senior officials present at the rally of 2nd January 2004, that no dam work would be started before the agricultural land acceptable to the people is identified, no positive steps were taken to identify lands in the last 5 months. Instead the state government initiated a process of land acquisition of the villager^Òs lands, and today after arresting the people, moved in machinery to start work on the dam.

For the last three months, soon after the people compelled the officials through a peaceful mass action in February 2004 to remove the machinery > that they had brought into the dam-site, and some of the adivasi leaders faced police action on this count, the affected people began a program of barricades or "nakabandi" on the road leading to the dam, not allowing officials or any machinery to enter the dam. The barricades program was sustained all through the summer. Now that the elections are over, the administration seem to have gained the political consensus to start repression afresh against the adivasis.

The Narmada Bachao Andolan demands that the arrested people be immediately released and the alternatives implemented with the dam being scrapped or alternatively each farming and landless family in the affected zone be given irrigated agricultural land in the command in lieu of the land being taken from them, before dam work starts. The people affected by the Upper Beda dam have stood by the struggling people of the Sardar Sarovar and Man dams, and have seen their travails. They are determined that they would not the story of pauperization and destruction being played out by successive state governments in the Narmada valley to be repeated once again.