The convulsions in the Aam Aadmi Party have spread far beyond Delhi to the Narmada Valley in Madhya Pradesh. For about 25 years, the Narmada Bachao Andolan had been the admired voice of the thousands of people left dispossessed by government projects on the river. Now because of AAP, the voice is faltering.
The apolitical NBA movement assumed political overtones in January 2014, when two of its tallest leaders, Medha Patkar and Alok Agrawal, joined AAP in their quest to practice and propagate an alternative politics. Patkar contested the 2014 Lok Sabha election from Mumbai and Agrawal from Khandwa in Madhya Pradesh. Both lost, but remained mainstays of the outfit.
It was when AAP cracked, resulting in the ouster of Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan, that fault lines unwittingly appeared in the Narmada Bachao Andolan too.
Patkar quit AAP in solidarity with Yadav and Bhushan, while Agrawal, who is the party’s convenor in Madhya Pradesh, stuck around with Kejriwal. There are so far no outward expressions of discord between Patkar and Agrawal – but for the many NBA volunteers in Madhya Pradesh, finding their two foremost leaders in opposing political camps has been confusing as well as demoralising.
Rakesh Diwan, a prominent NBA activist and developmental journalist, lamented the diminishment in the movement’s credibility because of its foray into electoral politics.
“The crisis is quite apparent in the poor response to the ongoing Jal Satyagrah in Ghogalgaon,” said Diwan. “There was a time when NBA used to wield so much moral authority that all political parties would be compelled to take note of our agitations even if they were opposed to our demands. Now they seem to treat NBA as an extension of a discredited political outfit.”
Apathetic administration
The Jal Satyagrah in Ghogalgaon village of Khandwa district had started on April 10. Since then, a group of 22 evacuees of the Omkareshwar dam project on River Narmada have been standing waist deep in the river to protest against the state’s decision to raise the water level in the dam from 189 to 191 metres. They say they will end the agitation only if the administration compensates them with adequate money or an alternative piece of land at a safer place.
But the administration is not listening.
Though some of the protesting farmers have developed skin and fungal infections due to constant submergence in water, the agitation has found no response from Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s government. Alok Agarwal, who is leading the protest, told Scroll that protestors’ health is deteriorating with every passing hour. “No one from the government’s side or a single medical team has visited the protest site. This shows how serious our government is about farmers.”
The chief minister has ruled out yielding to the protestors’ demand and accused the Narmada Bachao Andolan activists of being anti-development. He told newsmen on April 25 in Bhopal that thousands of farmers had accepted the rehabilitation package and only 213 families held out. From the Rs 225 crore package prepared for dam oustees, he said, Rs 183 crore had been distributed.
Officials in the government say the problem here is not the protestors’ demands. It is AAP. Chouhan is not willing to allow Kejriwal’s nascent party to take credit for championing the farmers’ cause since this will create space for it to expand in Madhya Pradesh at BJP’s expense.
This contention appears true given that Chouhan had accepted all the demands of the farmers in September 2012 when they resorted to a similar agitation for 17 days. Back then, over 50 oustees of the Omkareshwar dam project had called off their Jal Satyagrah after the administration constituted a ministerial subcommittee to look into their grievances. On this panel’s recommendations, the government announced a special Rs 225-crore package for the evacuees. The difference, at that time, was that an apolitical Narmada Bachao Andolan was heading the agitation and AAP was not born. The NBA, by no means, posed a political challenge to the ruling party in the state.
Today, what has toughened the Chouhan government’s stand is Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s intervention in the agitation. Kejriwal claims he tried to contact his Madhya Pradesh counterpart repeatedly to sort out the matter but got no response. Chouhan denies receiving any calls from Kejriwal.
The Madhya Pradesh chief minister also cold-shouldered AAP’s emissary Kumar Vishwas when he sought to mediate between the protestors and the state on April 25. Bharatiya Janata Party workers held black flags on the roads as Vishwas made his way to the protest site after discussing their demands with Chouhan. His mission failed miserably.
Diminishing credibility
NBA’s political avatar has jeopardised its fight for the evacuees of the Sardar Sarovar project too. Within a month of Narendra Modi taking over as prime minister, the Narmada Control Authority had unilaterally decided to raise the height of the Sardar Sarovar dam from 121 to 138 metres. Chouhan was not consulted before the decision was taken, but he could not opposite it for fear of antagonising Modi, with whom his relation is not too warm anyway. That decision is likely to cause the submergence of the houses of 45,000 families in 200 villages in Madhya Pradesh.
Months after that call was made, in October, Medha Patkar had protested in front of Chouhan’s residence in Bhopal, but the government ignored her. Since then she is not active in the state.
Patkar was a 30-year-old social activist and researcher when she came to the Narmada Valley in 1985 to study the villages to be submerged by the Sardar Sarovar Dam. As her work progressed, she grew increasingly horrified by the treatment of villagers at the hands of the project authorities. Soon she gave up her survey and joined activists working to secure fair compensation for the dam’s oustees. Over the years, she has travelled by foot, bus and boat throughout the nearly 200-kilometre-long submergence zone.
Agrawal, a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, joined Patkar in the early ’90s. Both worked together for a while, but later Agrawal concentrated on Narmada projects in Khandwa district, while Medha focused on the rehabilitation issues of the Sardar Sarovar dam evacuees.
Agrawal says Patkar’s resignation from AAP will not impact the party in Madhya Pradesh since she has not been active in its affairs since her loss in the Lok Sabha election. He claims that his joining the AAP has in no way weakened the Narmada Bachao Andolan. “In fact, our fight under the banner of AAP has become sharper.”
NBA volunteers, have been associated with Patkar, are not so sure. They are hopeful that she will return to Madhya Pradesh and restore credibility to the movement.
“Now that she has said goodbye to politics, we hope Patkar will resuscitate the movement and make it a potent force it used to be,” said Diwan. “She has learnt it the hard way that active politics and credible people’s movements cannot go hand-in-hand.”
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The apolitical NBA movement assumed political overtones in January 2014, when two of its tallest leaders, Medha Patkar and Alok Agrawal, joined AAP in their quest to practice and propagate an alternative politics. Patkar contested the 2014 Lok Sabha election from Mumbai and Agrawal from Khandwa in Madhya Pradesh. Both lost, but remained mainstays of the outfit.
It was when AAP cracked, resulting in the ouster of Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan, that fault lines unwittingly appeared in the Narmada Bachao Andolan too.
Patkar quit AAP in solidarity with Yadav and Bhushan, while Agrawal, who is the party’s convenor in Madhya Pradesh, stuck around with Kejriwal. There are so far no outward expressions of discord between Patkar and Agrawal – but for the many NBA volunteers in Madhya Pradesh, finding their two foremost leaders in opposing political camps has been confusing as well as demoralising.
Rakesh Diwan, a prominent NBA activist and developmental journalist, lamented the diminishment in the movement’s credibility because of its foray into electoral politics.
“The crisis is quite apparent in the poor response to the ongoing Jal Satyagrah in Ghogalgaon,” said Diwan. “There was a time when NBA used to wield so much moral authority that all political parties would be compelled to take note of our agitations even if they were opposed to our demands. Now they seem to treat NBA as an extension of a discredited political outfit.”
Apathetic administration
The Jal Satyagrah in Ghogalgaon village of Khandwa district had started on April 10. Since then, a group of 22 evacuees of the Omkareshwar dam project on River Narmada have been standing waist deep in the river to protest against the state’s decision to raise the water level in the dam from 189 to 191 metres. They say they will end the agitation only if the administration compensates them with adequate money or an alternative piece of land at a safer place.
But the administration is not listening.
Though some of the protesting farmers have developed skin and fungal infections due to constant submergence in water, the agitation has found no response from Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s government. Alok Agarwal, who is leading the protest, told Scroll that protestors’ health is deteriorating with every passing hour. “No one from the government’s side or a single medical team has visited the protest site. This shows how serious our government is about farmers.”
Photo credit: IANS
The chief minister has ruled out yielding to the protestors’ demand and accused the Narmada Bachao Andolan activists of being anti-development. He told newsmen on April 25 in Bhopal that thousands of farmers had accepted the rehabilitation package and only 213 families held out. From the Rs 225 crore package prepared for dam oustees, he said, Rs 183 crore had been distributed.
Officials in the government say the problem here is not the protestors’ demands. It is AAP. Chouhan is not willing to allow Kejriwal’s nascent party to take credit for championing the farmers’ cause since this will create space for it to expand in Madhya Pradesh at BJP’s expense.
This contention appears true given that Chouhan had accepted all the demands of the farmers in September 2012 when they resorted to a similar agitation for 17 days. Back then, over 50 oustees of the Omkareshwar dam project had called off their Jal Satyagrah after the administration constituted a ministerial subcommittee to look into their grievances. On this panel’s recommendations, the government announced a special Rs 225-crore package for the evacuees. The difference, at that time, was that an apolitical Narmada Bachao Andolan was heading the agitation and AAP was not born. The NBA, by no means, posed a political challenge to the ruling party in the state.
Today, what has toughened the Chouhan government’s stand is Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s intervention in the agitation. Kejriwal claims he tried to contact his Madhya Pradesh counterpart repeatedly to sort out the matter but got no response. Chouhan denies receiving any calls from Kejriwal.
The Madhya Pradesh chief minister also cold-shouldered AAP’s emissary Kumar Vishwas when he sought to mediate between the protestors and the state on April 25. Bharatiya Janata Party workers held black flags on the roads as Vishwas made his way to the protest site after discussing their demands with Chouhan. His mission failed miserably.
Diminishing credibility
NBA’s political avatar has jeopardised its fight for the evacuees of the Sardar Sarovar project too. Within a month of Narendra Modi taking over as prime minister, the Narmada Control Authority had unilaterally decided to raise the height of the Sardar Sarovar dam from 121 to 138 metres. Chouhan was not consulted before the decision was taken, but he could not opposite it for fear of antagonising Modi, with whom his relation is not too warm anyway. That decision is likely to cause the submergence of the houses of 45,000 families in 200 villages in Madhya Pradesh.
Months after that call was made, in October, Medha Patkar had protested in front of Chouhan’s residence in Bhopal, but the government ignored her. Since then she is not active in the state.
Patkar was a 30-year-old social activist and researcher when she came to the Narmada Valley in 1985 to study the villages to be submerged by the Sardar Sarovar Dam. As her work progressed, she grew increasingly horrified by the treatment of villagers at the hands of the project authorities. Soon she gave up her survey and joined activists working to secure fair compensation for the dam’s oustees. Over the years, she has travelled by foot, bus and boat throughout the nearly 200-kilometre-long submergence zone.
Agrawal, a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, joined Patkar in the early ’90s. Both worked together for a while, but later Agrawal concentrated on Narmada projects in Khandwa district, while Medha focused on the rehabilitation issues of the Sardar Sarovar dam evacuees.
Agrawal says Patkar’s resignation from AAP will not impact the party in Madhya Pradesh since she has not been active in its affairs since her loss in the Lok Sabha election. He claims that his joining the AAP has in no way weakened the Narmada Bachao Andolan. “In fact, our fight under the banner of AAP has become sharper.”
NBA volunteers, have been associated with Patkar, are not so sure. They are hopeful that she will return to Madhya Pradesh and restore credibility to the movement.
“Now that she has said goodbye to politics, we hope Patkar will resuscitate the movement and make it a potent force it used to be,” said Diwan. “She has learnt it the hard way that active politics and credible people’s movements cannot go hand-in-hand.”
