16,000 oustee families to benefit if Centre 'agrees' on Narmada backwater level demand

By A Representative
The Madhya Pradesh government has asked the Central Water Commission (CWC) to reconsider the backward level of the Sardar Sarovar dam, which were revised in 2015. The revision had "kept out" a whopping 15,946 oustee families out of the project affected areas, claiming, these would not suffer drowning.

This was revealed during a meeting the anti-dam body, Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), with Madhya Pradesh government officials led by Narmada minister Surendra Singh Baghel in Indore. Based on the review of the backwater levels, the previous state government had talked of "zero balance" for oustees' rehabilitation and resettlement (R&R).

Minister talking with NBA agitators

The meeting took place even as oustees continued their protests in the Narmada valley amidst rising water levels leading to sinking of roads in several villages, ruining crops, turning mohallas into small islands, and submerging houses. Those present from the NBA side included its leader Medha Patkar and 35 of her associates.
The meeting followed an agitation by NBA activists in front of the Narmada Control Authority office in Indore protesting against the failure to take into account the oustees' plight while raising the water levels in the dam. Hundreds of women, led by Patkar, blocked the way on which the minister was passing through, expressing their anger towards the alleged destruction caused by submergence.

Comments

When nostalgia becomes a memory we never lived: The 80s AI trend

By Mohd. Ziyaullah Khan The retro hair, vintage clothes and analogue grain are not the real attraction. The real fascination is that AI can now manufacture something technology has always struggled to reproduce: the tactile, imperfect feeling of memory.

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.

Dolly Parton: From a mountain cabin to a library for the world

By Suresh Deman Born in a one-room cabin in the Tennessee mountains, Dolly Parton turned poverty into poetry, heartbreak into song, and her father's inability to read into a programme that has given more than 300 million books to children. Her remarkable journey suggests that a life is measured not only by how far one travels, but by what one sends back *** Dolly Parton was born into poverty, but never into a poverty of imagination. She entered the world on 19 January 1946 in the mountains of East Tennessee, the fourth of twelve children. The Parton family had little money and few of the comforts that much of America would eventually take for granted. Her father, Robert Lee Parton, farmed, built and laboured wherever work could be found. Her mother, Avie Lee, possessed a different kind of wealth. She filled the crowded home with Appalachian songs, stories, faith and the conviction that hardship need not extinguish beauty. Dolly's childhood poverty was not something later inven...

Counterview

Search This Blog