Medha Patkar at Stanford University

Ms. Medha Patkar is India's foremost social activists and leader of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) or Save Narmada Movement. She is the recipient of the Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Peace Prize) and the Goldman Environmental Prize. She spoke at Stanford University on June 27th 2003 (70 mins).

Association for India’s Development, Inc.
San Francisco Bay Area chapter

PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Stanford University
June 28, 2003

350 Give Standing Ovation to Medha Patkar in Silicon Valley
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Medha Patkar, leader of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, delivered an inspiring address to a gathering of over 350 persons in the San Francisco Bay Area on the evening of June 27. Speaking about the river valley struggle against large dams on the Narmada river in India, Ms. Patkar connected this struggle with those of other river valleys, the fight against corporate globalization and the need to broaden the agenda of the secular forces to address the problems of common people. The audience related with the message of her talk for a just and humane world and she was welcomed at the opening with a warm applause and in the end with a standing ovation at Stanford’s packed Cubberley auditorium. Patkar’s talk was organized by the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the Association for India’s Development (AID Inc.).

Civil protest against an omnipotent state:
Medha Patkar opened her talk by saying that it was a critical time for people across the world and strongly condemned the US-led war on Iraq and the vulgar ambitions of the Bush administration as well as the submissiveness of the Indian government in considering the sending of its troops to Iraq upon request from the American administration. Contrasting this with the hundreds of thousands of anti-war demonstators in US cities, she indicated that this exemplified that “civil protest against an omnipotent state” was alive and that she would that evening talk about a number of battles that are on in the India and many parts of the world that parallel this.

Vision of an alternative society:
There are several natural resource based, simple communities living in sustainable ways and that want to preserve their culture, exercise their human rights, and who do not desire to exploit the rest of the world or aspire to consumerist ideas. Patkar said there needs to be a feeling of solidarity with them from those amongst us who aspire for the vision of an alternative society. She implied that these visions for the future would mean nothing if today’s battles are not fought and because then the rivers would be drying or dying and the forests would be gone in such a future.

Riverine communities pushed to the margins:
Medha Patkar said that just as in the past few centuries, dalits (depressed classes in the Indian civilization) and adivasi or indigenous communities have been kept at the periphery of the society, today riverine communities which as history tells us have been the focal point for civilizations are being pushed to the periphery by the market forces and the State which is in alliance with them.

The battles are on in the Narmada valley and other river valleys such as the Amazon in South America, the Pak-Mun in Thailand, the Mangla and Tarbela in Pakistan and the Yangtze in China. For understanding the nature of these conflicts, Patkar asked the audience to visualize a hypothetical scenario wherein say the state of California or even the city of San Francisco was decided to be submerged by someone sitting in Washington DC, without informing the local population, without having considered the impact of some future development that was possible. This is precisely what was happening in the Narmada valley, she said.

Framework for resolving such conflicts:
Medha Patkar was one of the Commissioners of the World Commission on Dams (WCD) which was a joint effort bringing together people from the dam-building industry, policy makers, academicians, environmentalists and social activists to investigate the benefits and problems with dam projects across the world. Patkar mentioned that this was an example where different actors could come together for resolving conflicts by agreeing upon a clear value framework as to what should the development planning process be like and what it should be not. By agreeing to this the WCD was able to bring out an investigative report on the dams that all the Commissioners from diverse backgrounds were able to sign on. She said that such an approach by agreeing to a clear value framework held promise to resolve other conflicts.

Addressing some dissenters:
A handful of people had distributed flyers to the audience at the event that repeated several claims made by the government regarding its accomplishments. While addressing these dissenters, Medha Patkar mentioned that the people of the valley have countered and can counter the claims of the circulated papers. While defending the dissenters rights to distribute such literature, she said that the people of the valley should also be given the right to counter such claims.

She talked about the impact of the current Sardar Sarovar Dam project in terms of its ability to deliver water to the most drought prone areas of Kutch and Saurashtra in the state of Gujarat. She also discussed the economic impact of the project which is expected to cost Rs. 440 billion. Also according to the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, currently close to 22 % of this project’s cost goes towards servicing the debt burden and the people’s movement cannot be blamed for that. She also mentioned that despite the tremendous increase in electricity generation since India’s independence, only 30-60% of individual rural households in various states of India are currently electrified.

In this scenario, and with all the talk nowadays of transparency, accountability and right to information, Patkar argued that if those who are directly affected by developmental projects asks questions, shouldn’t they at least have that right?

Decentralized planning and people-centred approaches:
Patkar asserted that planning of water management needs to be linked to land management. Also water management should start right from “the first drop at the first place” where the water falls on the land. Talking about a real decentralization that is empowering, she said that “Ownership of the means of production … that is the only way to ensure jobs to every single person”.

Situation in the Narmada valley today:
On May 15th last month, the Narmada Control Authority granted permission to raise the height of the Sardar Sarovar Dam further by 5 meters to the new height of 100 meters. At his height over 12,000 families in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra remain to be resettled even as the monsoon in India has begun. This imposes an illegal submergence on these families as they should have been resettled using land-based rehabilitation as a basis, at least 6 months prior to the monsoon as per the orders of the Supreme Court judgment and the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal Award.

Campaign of falsehoods:
Speaking about this situation, Medha said that while in the Supreme Court the state governments have filed affidavits asserting compliance with requirements, the situation on the ground is very different with the same governments having admitted to lack of land availability and talking about [illegal] cash based compensation.

Patkar said to the audience about the Government of Gujarat that if it takes it up as a war that is necessary for water that should flow, and flow from the Narmada, from this very reservoir of this very dam, then they are fooling you and fooling the drought affected people of Gujarat as well --- just as George Bush fooled everyone on Iraq.

Violence of the state versus non-violence of the people:
Medha Patkar said that there is a section of rulers who have faith in the use of violence. She said that just as in Gujarat where there were arguments made to justify the communal violence, similar justification was being made for the violence [of imposed submergence and forced displacement] in the Narmada valley.

While the state was justifying the violence caused by it, the people of the Narmada valley have been fighting a non-violent battle (“even when every single adivasi household has a bow and arrow”) and paying for it with their lives. Patkar mentioned example of villagers being killed by crocodiles breeding in the reservoir and the death due to people getting trapped in the slit that has started accumulating on the river-bank.

Interlinking of rivers:
A debate is on in India to inter-link river basins across the country. While little concrete information and plans are available to the public on the benefits, and detrimental impacts of such a large scale project it is being pushed and advocated right from the top, from the President and Prime Minister, to the Supreme Court. In this context, Medha Patkar mentioned that it is the most gigantic of plans that is being presented as the only recipe to solve the water problem of India. It is estimated to cost about Rs. 5.6 trillion. She wondered where the money for this would come from but the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the Multi-National Corporations (MNCs). She also mentioned that Suresh Prabhu, the ex-power minister is in Texas making deals with MNCs and a separate ministerial delegation from the Maharashtra government that was in the Bay Area that very day wooing a different set of MNCs. Such approaches will not solve the problems of the common people of India.

Broadening the agenda of secular forces:
To solve the problems of the common people, Medha suggested that “all those who fight for a humane relationship between human being and human being, and all those who are for the right kind of relationship between human beings, communities and nature” need to come together and “that would be the real secular forces of India and the world”. Adding further she said, “If the secular agenda gets restricted to agenda of the temple and the mosque then the communal forces win their battles and have their wishes fulfilled. But if the secular agenda really takes up the issues related to the impact of not only globalization-privatization, but centralization based human resource and natural resource management paradigms … then that would be the secular agenda that we could evolve ourselves in our own country with the Indians abroad and the friends across the world who may share their technology with us but not impose anything --- either war or a solution to the battles I brought before you.”

The evening’s program:
The evening’s program was conducted by Ms. Nalini Sekhar a support of AID, Inc and began with a popular song from people’s movements in India called “Isliye raha sangharsh ki ” (“This is why we walk the path of struggle”). Medha Patkar was introduced by Ms. Swati Desai who is a close associate of AID (“AID Saathi”) an a social and environmental activist based in Gujarat.

Medha Patkar spoke for about 70 minutes and took questions from the audience for the next 40 minutes.

The event also featured a poster exhibit of AID’s projects and campaign. Posters and books from the International Rivers Network, which co-sponsored the program along with the Cultural and Social Anthropology Department of Stanford University, were also on display. A special exhibit of photographs from the Narmada valley by acclaimed photographer Robert Dawson was also featured at the event.

While most of the audience were residents of the Bay Area with a majority of people of South Asian origin, a handful of people attended from far-flung AID chapters in Austin, TX and Boston, MA.

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About AID:
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Association for India's Development Inc., (AID Inc. ) is dedicated to promoting grass roots efforts in India that organize communities for health care, education, small enterprise, alternate energy, environmental action and people's rights. We are a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization.

For more info about AID, visit http://www.aidindia.org/

Visit http://www.narmada.org/ to learn more about the Narmada struggle. Including news reports, images and other resources.

Press contact:
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Please contact for additional information, photographs of the event, background materials, Broadcast quality Audio recording, Video recording (Radio and TV stations).

Aniruddha Vaidya , AID Press Relations
Mountain View, CA
650-996-8249
asvaidya@comcast.net