Government of India assures NBA: Narmada dam height will not be raised till the last oustee is rehabilitated

Anti-dam rally in Madhya Pradesh

By A Representative
The Government of India has said that there will not be any movement towards increasing the height of the Narmada dam from the present 122 metres to 138.64 metres, which is the full reservoir level, till the last oustee is rehabilitated. The declaration came at a meeting of representatives from the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) led by Medha Patkar in Delhi following two-day dharna by hundreds of oustees affected by the dam from Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat at Jantar Mantar.
Union minister for water resources Harish Rawat, who met a 10-member delegation of the oustees, led by Patkar, assured the oustees that the dam “cannot move ahead until the last person is rehabilitated and that his Ministry, which leads the Narmada Control Authority, will have to ensure rehabilitation, environmental compliance and a comprehensive cost-benefit appraisal before permitting any decision on the dam height.
“The minister and his officials heard a presentation on the massive scale of pending rehabilitation of 48,000 families, ongoing judicial inquiry into Rs 1,000 crore corruption scandal in Madhya Pradesh and severe non-compliance on environmental measures and dismal performance of the SSP, after an investment of Rs 70,000 crore rupees”, a statement issued in Delhi by the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), an apex body of several NGOs across India, said.
Rawat said that although the primary role of his ministry is water management and dam building, “it cannot be without lawful rehabilitation”. Responding to the oustees who claimed that more than 1,500 houses and thousands of hecatres of land with standing crop has been submerged illegally in the monsoon of 2012 and 2013, due to water releases from upstream dams, he said, “There can be no submergence without rehabilitation and the people have a right to reside and cultivate their agricultural land and carry on livelihoods.”
“The minister directed his officials to seek a report from the three state governments, particularly Madhya Pradesh, on the status of compliance with the orders of the Grievance Redressal Authorities (GRA), binding as per the judgment of the Supreme Court, even as taking cognizance of the orders and reports with regards to the ongoing processes of inquiry into corruption by the Jha Commission and the GRA and admitted that the official process itself is clear to prove that rehabilitation is far from complete”, the NAPM statement said.
Rawat said his ministry will explore ways to ensure land-based rehabilitation to all categories of oustees (more than 6,500), including 3,000 families who have been entangled in the “fake registries scam”, 1,500 families who have “not been able to purchase land out of the meagre cash compensation” and 2,000 adivasis and other farmers in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, “who have not accepted cash at all, but have been given offers of uncultivable or encroached land.”
He assured the traditional displaced fisher families have “the first and inviolable right to fisheries in the reservoir and the state governments are legally duty bound to register the cooperatives of the fish workers”, even as promising to look into the “serious issue of exclusion of 55 villages and a huge township from submergence by changing the backwater levels, which have even been disapproved by an Expert Committee of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF)”.
The minister said, the role and right of Gram Sabhas in the scheduled adivasis areas is inviolable and that his ministry and the NCA “will work to ensure that the PESA Act is fully complied with, in the context of the Narmada project oustees.” At the same time, the minister asked the NBA to give a separate representation on the issue of illegal sand mining in the project-affected areas, adding, “Concrete action would be taken in this regard.”
Later in the evening, a larger delegation met Sudhir Bhargav, chairperson, resettlement and rehabilitation subgroup, NCA, and secretary, ministry of social justice and empowerment, who said no final clearance has been granted to increase the dam height. He said this in response to the oustees’ view that neither the GRA of Maharashtra, not that of Madhya Pradesh, has given consent to raise the dam height and there is absolutely no case for permitting further construction.
He was told that Madhya Pradesh has fraudulently presented consultation of the ‘former’ GRA in the last meeting of the R&R subgroup, while even as on date, there are hundreds of orders of the former and present GRA yet to be complied with and hundreds of pending complaints. “Project affected families from Gujarat also complained about the pending issues of land allotment in the original villages and R&R sites”, NAPM statement said. The secretary said, there was a need to initiate a process of field verification in sample villages, to begin with, to assess the status of rehabilitation.
In a third meeting with Union minister for rural development Jairam Ramesh, who had recently visited the submergence area in Madhya Pradesh and witnessed the scale of pending rehabilitation, a similar assurance was given to the delegation. Meanwhile, NAPM claimed, NBA dharna received “wide support from writers, academicians and advocates”. Those who visited the dharna included writer Arundhati Roy, Annie Raja, president National Federation of Indian Women, Prof Manoranjan Mohanty of the Delhi University, Dr Prakash Jha, well-known environmental expert, Sagari Chhabra and Sanjay Kak, prominent documentary film makers, Kumar Prashant of the Gandhi Peace Foundation, among others.

Comments

Plastic burning in homes threatens food, water and air across Global South: Study

By Jag Jivan In a groundbreaking study spanning 26 countries across the Global South , researchers have uncovered the widespread and concerning practice of households burning plastic waste as a fuel for cooking, heating, and other domestic needs. The research, published in Nature Communications , reveals that this hazardous method of managing both waste and energy poverty is driven by systemic failures in municipal services and the unaffordability of clean alternatives, posing severe risks to human health and the environment.

Economic superpower’s social failure? Inequality, malnutrition and crisis of India's democracy

By Vikas Meshram India may be celebrated as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, but a closer look at who benefits from that growth tells a starkly different story. The recently released World Inequality Report 2026 lays bare a country sharply divided by wealth, privilege and power. According to the report, nearly 65 percent of India’s total wealth is owned by the richest 10 percent of its population, while the bottom half of the country controls barely 6.4 percent. The top one percent—around 14 million people—holds more than 40 percent, the highest concentration since 1961. Meanwhile, the female labour force participation rate is a dismal 15.7 percent.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

The greatest threat to our food system: The aggressive push for GM crops

By Bharat Dogra Thanks to the courageous resistance of several leading scientists who continue to speak the truth despite increasing pressures from the powerful GM crop and GM food lobby , the many-sided and in some contexts irreversible environmental and health impacts of GM foods and crops, as well as the highly disruptive effects of this technology on farmers, are widely known today.

History, culture and literature of Fatehpur, UP, from where Maulana Hasrat Mohani hailed

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Maulana Hasrat Mohani was a member of the Constituent Assembly and an extremely important leader of our freedom movement. Born in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, Hasrat Mohani's relationship with nearby district of Fatehpur is interesting and not explored much by biographers and historians. Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri has written a book on Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Fatehpur. The book is in Urdu. He has just come out with another important book, 'Hindi kee Pratham Rachna: Chandayan' authored by Mulla Daud Dalmai.' During my recent visit to Fatehpur town, I had an opportunity to meet Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri and recorded a conversation with him on issues of history, culture and literature of Fatehpur. Sharing this conversation here with you. Kindly click this link. --- *Human rights defender. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/vbrawat , X @freetohumanity, Skype @vbrawat

Epic war against caste system is constitutional responsibility of elected government

Edited by well-known Gujarat Dalit rights leader Martin Macwan, the book, “Bhed-Bharat: An Account of Injustice and Atrocities on Dalits and Adivasis (2014-18)” (available in English and Gujarati*) is a selection of news articles on Dalits and Adivasis (2014-2018) published by Dalit Shakti Prakashan, Ahmedabad. Preface to the book, in which Macwan seeks to answer key questions on why the book is needed today: *** The thought of compiling a book on atrocities on Dalits and thus present an overall Indian picture had occurred to me a long time ago. Absence of such a comprehensive picture is a major reason for a weak social and political consciousness among Dalits as well as non-Dalits. But gradually the idea took a different form. I found that lay readers don’t understand numbers and don’t like to read well-researched articles. The best way to reach out to them was storytelling. As I started writing in Gujarati and sharing the idea of the book with my friends, it occurred to me that while...

Would breaking idols, burning books annihilate caste? Recalling a 1972 Dalit protest

By Rajiv Shah A few days ago, I received an email alert from a veteran human rights leader who has fought many battles in Gujarat for the Dalit cause — both through ground-level campaigns and courtroom struggles. The alert, sent in Gujarati by Valjibhai Patel, who heads the Council for Social Justice, stated: “In 1935, Babasaheb Ambedkar burnt the Manusmriti . In 1972, we broke the idol of Krishna , whom we regarded as the creator of the varna (caste) system.”

From colonial mercantilism to Hindutva: New book on the making of power in Gujarat

By Rajiv Shah Professor Ghanshyam Shah ’s latest book, “ Caste-Class Hegemony and State Power: A Study of Gujarat Politics ”, published by Routledge , is penned by one of Gujarat ’s most respected chroniclers, drawing on decades of fieldwork in the state. It seeks to dissect how caste and class factors overlap to perpetuate the hegemony of upper strata in an ostensibly democratic polity. The book probes the dominance of two main political parties in Gujarat—the Indian National Congress and the BJP—arguing that both have sustained capitalist growth while reinforcing Brahmanic hierarchies.

'Restructuring' Sahitya Akademi: Is the ‘Gujarat model’ reaching Delhi?

By Prakash N. Shah* A fortnight and a few days have slipped past that grim event. It was as if the wedding preparations were complete and the groom’s face was about to be unveiled behind the ceremonial tinsel. At 3 PM on December 18, a press conference was poised to announce the Sahitya Akademi Awards .

Search This Blog