Sardar Sarovar oustees up in arm against MP officials on refusal to assess damage due to submergence

Unprecedented submergence in the densely populated villages of Nimad region of Madhya Pradesh in the last week of August has spurred a series of mass actions by the Sardar Sarovar project-affected families – most of them poor landless labourers, fish workers, potters, adivasis and other farmers, who are waiting to be fully rehabilitation with alternative land, house plots, amenities at resettlement sites, alternative livelihood etc.

The situation brought oustees, backed by Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) activists, and the Madhya Pradesh officialdom face to face. The officials argued it was not necessary to assess the damage, as the submerged area had already been acquired for the Sardar Sarovar Project. This led villagers to retort that mere land acquisition was not rehabilitation, that as per the Narmada Tribunal Award, until rehabilitation was complete, no properties can be submerged and the oustees have every right to continue to reside in their original villages and cultivate lands.

First, more than 500 families gheroed the Badwani collectorate, the oustees in three tehsils of Dhar District – Manavar, Kukshi and Dharampuri -- took out rallies, and at some places stormed into the offices of the tehsildar, demanding answers for "sudden and illegal release" of reservoir waters from the upstream dams, leading to submergence of their farms with standing crop, houses, household items, fodder, food grains,fishing nets etc.

They raised issues related with lack of relief services and disaster preparedness of the administration and said, claims of rehabilitation by the Narmada Valley Development Authority were fake. On September 2, at Manavar tehsil the deputy tehsildar had to face angry questions from women and men, who came in hundreds from the villages of Ekalwara, Semalda, Gangli, Kavthi, Perkhad etc. It was only when the the deputy tehsildar finally agreed that an assessment of the damanges would be recorded that the oustees returned.
On September 4, at Kukshi, almost 800 oustees, largely women from the villages of Chikalda, Nisarpur, Karondia, Kothada, Koteshwar, Gehelgaon, Khaparkheda, Bajrikheda, Malwadi, Bodhwada etc. grilled the tehsildar and resettlement and rehabilitation (R&R) officer for almost five hours and said there was "rampant corruption in the R&R process". As arguments became heated, local MLA Mukam Singh Kirade reached the spot and spoke to the collector. Only after this the officials agreed for video-recording of the affected houses and properties.
On September 6, at Dharampuri, 500 women and men marched through the main streets and reached the office of the tehsildar, where the assistant R&R officer was also called, who listed to the woes after facing the wrath of the women, who said that till now (since August 23) their kitchen fires have not been lit and the government, which has been claiming of rehabilitation, did not care to even visit the villages when water was released in the midnight.

At all the three tehsils, the oustees also issued legal notice on government officials, including collector, district Dhar to ensure that the assessment of all losses and impacts are duly recorded as per the revenue book circular rules and the oustees are duly compensated. The oustees issued an ultimatum to the authorities that if their demands are not met soon, the struggle would be intensified and cases would be instituted against the officials in courts.

Comments

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

Search This Blog