A fight against odds

IT was the final day of the Narmada Bachao Andolan's monsoon Satyagraha. There was a festive gathering, in village Domkhedi, on the banks of what was once a river. About two thousand people sat listening to a 14-year-old boy who had gone to meet the President in New Delhi.

Magan Bhuraji was born in a village, in the Narmada Valley, that now faces submergence under the waters of the Sardar Sarovar Dam. He is also a student of one of the 11 Jeevan Shalas, literally School of Life, run by the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) in riverbank villages for the last eight years. In August this year Magan and 66 of his Jeevan Shala friends set out for New Delhi to make a special appeal to the highest authority in Independent India.

The President agreed to meet the children and their accompanying teachers but was unable to keep the appointment due to ill health. But, Magan told the Satyagraha gathering, the President had ensured that the children were welcomed as honoured guests at Rashtrapati Bhavan. A senior official, who, surprisingly, knew the Adivasi languages which most of the children speak, accepted their petition.

In the petition these young inhabitants of the Narmada Valley asked the President to save their Jeevan Shalas and homes from submergence. This is not an extraordinary request. It is simply an appeal for the law of the land to be honoured by various State governments involved in the Narmada projects. The law states clearly that unless proper rehabilitation is ensured for the affected people, no land can be submerged by any of the dam projects on the Narmada. Yet the waters have been rising steadily for the last five years.

The day after the children's visit to Rashtrapati Bhavan the President sent a message saying that he had got the appeal and thanked the children for coming from so far away. On September 6, the last day of the Satyagraha, Magan conveyed a hopeful message to his elders. The President promised that their journey wouldn't be wasted. ``He will do something to help us,'' Magan said as he stood in front of a grand tree which has a red line painted across its trunk. That red line is where water would reach if the Sardar Sarovar Dam were filled to its current 90-metre height. If there had been a heavy monsoon this year, that Satyagraha site would have gone under water. The dense crop of grain, standing tall all over Domkhedi, would also have gone waste.

Even as people heard Magan's account, many of them may have gazed upon that red line and wondered if this is the last year the tree would be above the water mark. Already the water beside Domkhedi is not a free flowing river. It is a reservoir whose edges are dotted by the top branches of what were once trees or bushes. Pieces of junk, plastic bottle caps and broken rubber chappals form clusters of floating garbage on this dam-caused reservoir.

How, then, can that Satyagraha gathering at Domkhedi have a festive air, complete with decorations of the traditionally auspicious mango leaves and wild flowers? The answer to that question can partly be gleaned by being witness to another such gathering that took place a week later at Mumbai's Azad Maidan. About 1,600 men and women from the project-affected villages first marched through the streets of Mumbai for two days and then sat in a dharna for almost three weeks. In that period eight activists of the NBA, including Medha Patkar, went on a protest fast for 11 days.

The protesters' presence, in such large numbers, came as a surprise to most people in Mumbai. The general impression now is that the struggle in the Narmada valley is over and construction on the Sardar Sarovar Project continues at full speed. The Satyagraha in the river valley and protest actions like the one in Mumbai provide lively evidence of the continuing energy and passion of this movement.

Much of the protesters' energy comes from having both the law and the moral right on their side. The wider political issues about big dams and model of development have now fallen into the background. The slogan ``No one will move, the dam will not be built'' still rings in the air at protest actions. But many of the people who came to the Satyagraha action in Domkhedi, and the dharna in Mumbai, are those who agreed to move and accept rehabilitation several years ago.

Noorji Kalsia Padvi is among those who opted for rehabilitation and went to the site provided by the government. But only half the people who moved got land for cultivation. Many who did get land found that it was useless for agricultural purposes. Meanwhile their original village, Danelgaon, has gone under water. Either the government should let us settle on forestland or it should open up the dam gates and empty the reservoir says Noorji. And he adds: ``As the damage to our lives increases so also the anger grows and then our energy (to protest) grows.''

The anger has mounted further as Adivasis in 73 villages in Akrani tehsil of Nandurbar District of Maharashtra discover that the government has never completed the processes of conferring land-rights to them. The morale of the NBA has also been strengthened by the report of a committee appointed by the Government of Maharashtra on the displacement and resettlement of the Adivasis in project affected villages of Maharashtra.

This committee, headed by a retired High Court Judge, Mr. S.M. Daud, has made recommendations regarding rehabilitation, which the NBA has welcomed.

The Daud Committee has also vindicated the NBA's long-standing complaint that there has not been proper resettlement of the people displaced so far and that there is no land available for further resettlement.

Implementation of the Daud Committee report has been one of the main demands of this year's Satyagraha and the recent action in Mumbai. The dharna in Mumbai was finally lifted only after the State Government gave assurances about rapid action on several of the Andolan's demands.

These assurances relate only to project-affected villages in Maharashtra. There is a much larger area facing submergence in Madhya Pradesh and that battle has to be fought with the State government in Bhopal. Yet the gains of the Mumbai action will have a wider impact.

The most important gain is that the Ministers of the Maharashtra government have acknowledged errors in earlier reports they submitted to the Supreme Court on progress in rehabilitation work. It has now been officially accepted that there are thousands of families who have already been displaced without adequate rehabilitation. It follows then that there can be no further construction of the SSP, until there is dramatic improvement in the status of rehabilitation work.

However, these gains are offset by the fact that the Madhya Pradesh government is going ahead with work on several other dams, on the Narmada, even after acknowledging that there is not enough land available for full rehabilitation of the displaced families. That is why those children from the Valley went to meet the President of India, who is specially empowered to protect the rights of Adivasis and Scheduled Castes.

To a pessimist, the President's promise to those children may look like a straw in the wind.

But for those who lend their energy to Satyagraha in the Valley, it is one more reason for hope and perseverance.

RAJNI BAKSHI

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