Nisarpur village off Narmada river on warpath: Gram sabha passes resolution against "forcible" eviction

By A Representative
About 100 kilometres from the Gujarat border, not very far from the Narmada river in Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh, Nisarpur village is on the warpath. With forcible eviction looming large over the village and government sending police officials to warn people, here, thousands of women and men are on the street every day.
Three days back, it was total strike with all shops and activities closed. On Wednesday, the villagers took out a torchlight procession. On Thursday, again, there was a rally and mass meeting, followed by a special gram sabha to pass a resolute against evicting them by closing down the Narmada dam’s 30-odd gates.
Determined to challenge eviction, the big village, where about 3,000 families live, is almost a township. With all the social and public services, shops and markets, it is, however, dependent on agriculture. Traders to artisans, all gain their livelihood, thanks to the village’s agricultural prosperity.
Farmers of the village grow wheat, maize, banana, papaya, cotton, among other crops. The prime agricultural land attached with the village and all the houses of Nisarpur were recorded as affected by the Narmada Dam at levels below 110 meters.

A Nisarpur temple to face
submergence

Lands were officially declared acquired in the year 2000, but most of the farmers, potters, fish workers, laborers, and artisans yet to be rehabilitated. Majority of villagers complain extremely poor compensation for houses they have been asked to leave. The compensation is far from sufficient to build new houses at resettlement sites the project affected families (PAFs) have been offered.
The land the PAFs at the resettlement site has being offered has been acquired from 50-odd landholders. On this site, the project affected families (PAFs) if from four other villages -- Kothada, Karandia, Raswa, and Rakti – would be resettled. Ironically, 30 of these 50 landlords today are landless!

Nisarpur is just three km away from Narmada river and the well-known Koteshwar temple complex. Within this single village there are some 30 temples and 10 mosques.
Approximately 60% of Nisarpur’s population is poor, yet they have not received alternative livelihood, which ranges from fishing to making bricks at brick kilns. Many of them have not been allocated housing plots and have been cheated by middlemen, who grabbed the documents, especially of widows, and duped them.
Only recently, when complaints were written by activists, one middleman returned a widow’s documents along with Rs 15,000. However, all are not so lucky.
This is not just the case with Nisarpur but also of large number of other villages in the three districts in bordering Narmada. Government officials are visiting each of the villages, telling people to vacate the villages. In order to make their mission successful, they are paying visits to communities as never before. While police and the lower revenue officials are ready for a dialogue, this not the case with higher officials attached with the Narmada project.
Meanwhile, villagers suspect, the recent inter-state meeting of the Narmada Control Authority (NCA) in Delhi on May 17, 2017, would ensure that they are forced out of their village within the next two months, They strongly feel that all this is in violation of the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal (NWDT) and Supreme Court orders.

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