Narmada Bachao Andolan Research Articles

Sustaining a social movement through infrastructural followup: activist pedagogies and prefigurative politics in Narmada Bachao Andolan’s schools for life (jeevanshalas)

ABSTRACT This article is based on an exploratory study of jeevanshalas, a network of ‘schools for life’ run by the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), an anti-dam movement in the Indian states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra that did not succeed in its mission of stopping the construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam. Based on participant observation and conversations with movement leaders, teachers, administrators, parents and community volunteers, and on participatory research with children living in the localities of Jeevan Nagar and Trishul, Maharashtra, this article illuminates how the NBA reinvented itself through education. It argues that the jeevanshalas offer a model of long-term sustainability for social movements whose aim is not necessarily to grow the movement’s membership but to catalyse wider societal change that might eliminate the need for the movement. The findings suggest that the NBA’s understanding of the social purpose of education reflects a view of young people as political agents whose voices shape the community’s collective future, in marked contrast with India’s state-run depoliticising education system. The jeevanshalas thus represent a previously under-researched model of social movement led education whose explicit aim is not to train movement agents but to leverage the transformative potential of education to address underlying patterns of oppression. The article theorises this rearticulation of the concept of ‘social movement schools’ through Spivak’s notion of ‘infrastructural followup’, which parallels recent debates about the nature of prefigurative politics.

Book review: Nandini Oza, The Struggle for Narmada: An Oral History of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, by Adivasi Leaders Keshavbhau and Kevalsingh Vasave

Nandini Oza, The Struggle for Narmada: An Oral History of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, by Adivasi Leaders Keshavbhau and Kevalsingh Vasave. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 2022, 273pp. ISBN 978-93-5442-297-3.

Arundhati Roy’s Critique of Big Projects: An Eco-critical Perspective

The present article endeavors to analyze Arundhati Roy’s critique of big dams and projects. An attempt is made to bring home various dimensions and commitments that inform her critique of the big dams which cause more damage and devastation than serving the needs of the people at large. The primary focus is on Ms. Roy’s participation in the Narmada Bachao Andolan which is an Indian resistance movement that tries to prevent building of large dams, reservoirs and power plants. As the building of projects may lead to evacuation of villages and to lose immovable properties numerous environmentalists, humanists, activists and other personalities also have condemned the government for the decisions and implementations. Arundhati Roy is one among them who raises awareness of dangers of massive dams, of resulting forced relocation of people and of damage to environment. The present article is going to discuss the tireless and selfless service of Arundhati Roy and the NBA to tens of thousands of farmers, Adivasis and common people who are participating in the protest to oppose the aforementioned large structures constructed by the Narmada Valley Development Authority (NVDA). In conclusion, the article also attempts to bring out the various aspects and convictions that informed Roy’s critique of big projects.

Book review: Nandini Oza, The Struggle for Narmada: An Oral History of the Narmada Bachao Andolan by Adivasi Leaders Keshavbhau and Kevalsingh Vasave

Nandini Oza, The Struggle for Narmada: An Oral History of the Narmada Bachao Andolan by Adivasi Leaders Keshavbhau and Kevalsingh Vasave. Orient BlackSwan, 2022, 320 pp., ₹915. ISBN: 978-9354422973.

Learning and Leading: Resistance, Subaltern Leadership and the Making of Two Bhil Community Leaders from the Narmada Valley, Western India

This paper studies subaltern agency and the changing nature of leadership in rural western India among the Bhil Scheduled Tribe or Adivasi group in the wake of the anti-dam movement initiated by urban middle-class activists of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA; also Save Narmada Campaign). Drawing on fieldwork data along with oral history, archival research, government records, vernacular records and dailies, it analyzes the politics of displacement and resettlement due to the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the River Narmada as a lived experience of two ordinary Bhil men from the submergence villages in Maharashtra state across three decades from 1985–2016. The NBA-led movement acts as a form of political education for the two Bhils who assume leadership, displacing both traditional Bhil leaders and external activists to guide their community deftly to the resettlement colonies by making claims on the Indian state, and helping to recreate life and livelihood for themselves and their fellow Bhils in the new setting.

Challenges and Dilemmas of Civil Society movements in India

AbstractCivil Society spaces provide citizens opportunities to frame their collective identities and interests through the formation of voluntary interest groups and organisations set to specific purposes. In the west, historically these interest groups have contributed to the development of political thought that assisted to forge the economic interests of emerging bourgeoisie. This paper situated in the context of India begins with a thematic perspective and reviews the challenges that emerge as a result of the demands that emerge within the civil society space. The paper considered three broad range organizations for this review such as the Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the river Narmada Campaign); National Alliance for People's Movement (NAPM); and the Self‐Employed Women's Association (SEWA). The authors see civil society as a conciliating place—where individual interests appear to mingle with societal requirements while providing adequate representation to the marginalized groups and expression of concerns around economic and environmental rights.

Gandhi as an Environmentalist.

Gandhi as an Environmentalist.

Anti‐Dam Protests in India: Examining the Profile of the Sardar Sarovar Dam

AbstractAlmost all protests against large dams in India have failed to stop the construction of the respective projects. The latest one is protest against the Sardar Sarovar Dam. Ignoring the demands of the protestors, the height of the Sardar Sarovar Dam has been increased, and in 2017, finally, the 138.68 m high dam was inaugurated by the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. The construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam has caused submergence of a large area of land and has displaced many people in the Narmada basin. Due to the impact on local communities, the Narmada Bachao Andolan has been leading peaceful protest against the Sardar Sarovar Dam since the 1980s. In addition to the debates on construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam is the issue of resettlement and rehabilitation of the people and families affected by it. Protestors and activists allege that the people and families affected have not been properly compensated, resettled, and rehabilitated by the government. This paper critically examines the evolution of the Sardar Sarovar Dam, the impact it has on the people and land in its command area, and the history of protest and activism relating to the dam.

Anand Patwardhan’s Chronicles of Socio-political Realities

Probably India’s best-known documentary film-maker Anand Patwardhan, for close to four decades now, has been raking the country’s political consciousness through his films, which delve into the crux of India’s social and political lives. In this piece, the editors have put together, with Patwardhan’s permission, his writings from his blog ( http://patwardhan.com/wp/ ) on the state atrocities upon Dalits in Maharashtra, the protests through poems and songs by a young group of Dalit activists from Pune—the Kabir Kala Manch (KKM)—and the satyagraha for the freedom of expression by its leaders like Sheetal Sathe; on the Supreme Court judgment that failed the Narmada Bachao Andolan as well as the belief in the justice system, making irrelevant a whole body of evidence built by the Andolan over the years that underlined the huge financial and human costs of the Sardar Sarovar dam project; and on the whole climate of intolerance that was behind the attack on M. F. Husain for his depiction of Hindu goddess Saraswati. This piece also includes a commentary by Alex Napier on Patwardhan’s documentary of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, drawn from Patwardhan’s blog. These are important social commentaries of our times.

Choosing to Die: Suicide Bombing and Suicide Protest in South Asia

Scholars tend to attribute the use of suicide protest and suicide bombing to purely rational considerations. In contrast, I argue that conventional understandings of strategy are too narrow and must be expanded to include emotional motivations for political mobilization. “Complex” strategy directly engages both the calculative and emotive understandings of political action. I develop this theory through a comparison of suicide protests and suicide bombings in South Asia, focusing on the emotional content of this extreme tactic. Suicide protests illustrate the importance of pride, sympathy, fear, and shame in political mobilization. I explore the emotional character of suicide in protest through an investigation of two cases: the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka (LTTE) and the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) in India.

Against the Current, From Below: Resisting Dispossession in the Narmada Valley, India

This article presents a comprehensive analysis of popular resistance to dam building in the Narmada Valley, India. Like Indian dam projects more generally, the Narmada projects are characterized by a distributional bias in favor of India's “dominant proprietary classes” and, it is argued, must be understood in terms of the political economy of postcolonial capitalism in India. The article then traces the emergence of popular resistance to dispossession in the form of “militant particularisms” struggling for resettlement and rehabilitation in the dam-affected communities in the riparian state, the transition toward a pan-state antidam campaign—the Narmada Bachao Andolan—embedded in a multiscalar infrastructure of contention, and, finally, the embedding of this struggle in a wider social movement project for alternative development. In conclusion, the author reflects on the strategic lessons that can be drawn from the trajectory of popular resistance to dispossession in the Narmada Valley.

‘Repertoires of Contention’ in Movements Against Hydropower Projects in India

Applying Charles Tilly's notion of ‘repertoires of contention’, this paper discusses strategies and modes of protest carried out by the movements against hydropower projects in India. It compares the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA; Save Narmada Movement) in Madhya Pradesh and the Shramik Mukthi Dal (SMD; Labour Liberation Party) led mobilisations against hydropower projects in Maharashtra. It explains the more dramatic repertoires deployed by NBA as opposed to moderate and pragmatic movement repertoires of SMD. The paper concludes that the differences in ideology, organisation and cultural–historical legacy of the two organisations, as well as their different modes of interaction with the state, are the causes behind different contentious repertoires deployed by them, which resulted in different trajectories and outcomes.

Judicial Interpretation of Public Purpose with Respect to Land Rights

The idea of public purpose stems from the concept of morality in larger public good. The judiciary, as mentioned above, has in subsequent cases given certain similar explanations as to what comprise a public purpose. In one judgment, public purpose has been equated to being elastic, stretchable. But if it is so equated, there must be a breaking point too, when the land acquired with the excuse of public purpose is an inherent wrongful act by the State. Then what can be done? Such situations are not unknown, and the most debated has been the one related to the Narmada Bachao Andolan, where a liberal interpretation of Article 21 was rejected by the Court in its final judgment. The Court just depended on the materials provided to it by the Authorities, while neglecting the entire adivasi protest.

‘The cost of dams’: acts of writing as resistance in postcolonial India

Since the 1980s, the construction of the Sardar Sarovar, a megadam to be built along the Narmada River, has been promoted by the Indian government as an instrument of democratization, potentially supplying drinking water to millions of people. On the other hand, the nationalist discourse on dams as ‘Temples of Modern India’ has been challenged by social movements such as Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA). Activists and intellectuals have stressed that dams form part of a biopolitical apparatus causing displacement and relocation, mainly for Adivasis (indigenous people). Drawing on the language of Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy in ‘The Greater Common Good’, this essay addresses the colonial legacy of the Land Acquisition Act (1894) and discusses how the legal framework of the modern state repeats and reinforces a process of orientalization of indigenous populations rooted in imperialist, evolutionary economic and legal discourses. Referring to Roy's narrative and her experience in the Narmada Valley, this article also shows how local movements of resistance re-signify the logic of development, questioning ‘modernity’, ‘development’ and ‘justice’. Roy's de-orientalizing text reveals how Adivasi protests and their ways of expressing political subjectivity challenge a traditional model of citizenship.

SCALE, PLACE AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: STRATEGIES OF RESISTANCE ALONG INDIA’S NARMADA RIVER

This paper focuses on the struggles being waged by the Narmada Bachao Andolan, a rural social movement opposing displacement due to dams along India’s Narmada River. Building a comparison between two major anti-dam struggles within the Andolan, around the Sardar Sarovar and Maheshwar dams, this study seeks to show that multi-sited social movements pursue a variety of scale and place-based strategies and this multiplicity is key to the possibilities for progressive change that they embody. The paper highlights three aspects of the Andolan. First, the Andolan has successfully combined environmental networks and agricultural identities across the space of its struggle. The Andolan became internationally celebrated when its resistance led to the World Bank withdrawing funding for the Sardar Sarovar dam in 1993. This victory was viewed as a consequence of the Andolan’s successful utilization of transnational environmental networks. However, the Andolan has also intervened in agrarian politics within India and this role of the Andolan emerges when the struggle against the Maheshwar dam is considered. Second, this paper examines the role played by the Andolan in building a national movement against displacement. Given that India’s Supreme Court gave permission for the continued construction of the Sardar Sarovar dam in 2000, the power of the state to push through destructive development projects cannot be underestimated. The national level thus remains an important scale for the Andolan’s struggle leading to the formation of social movement networks and the construction of collective identities around experiences of rural and urban displacement. Third, this paper reflects on how common access to the Narmada river also provides a material basis for the formation of a collective identity, one which can be used to address the class divisions that characterize the Andolan’s membership. Overall, the paper aims to contribute to the study of social movements by showing how attachments to multiple geographies ensure that a movement’s potential futures always exceed the nature of its present forms of resistance.

Conceptualising Movements against Large Dams

The Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) is a protracted struggle of more than three decades against large dams. While the movement has been a witness to various highs and lows, some key lessons nevertheless can be deducted by analysing its overall successes and failures. Arguments presented in this article are based on the assumption that ‘domestic mobilisation is one of the main strategies in shaping political will amongst state actors’. It argues that while transnational advocacy can help build consensus or appreciation towards critical developmental issues at the international level, domestic mobilisation or consensus amongst key stakeholders is perhaps the pre-requisite for influencing state response. The article is divided into three broad sections. The first section focuses on the history of the NBA. The genesis, nature and the role played by the movement in broadening the debate on dams with respect to development is studied. The second section deals with the internationalisation of the issue of large dams, when the NBA came to be known as a strong opponent of large dams. Based on the insights of the struggle in the third section some pointers are offered for social movements towards effectively shaping state behaviour on social and development issues.

How Movements Move? Evaluating the Role of Ideology and Leadership in Environmental Movement Dynamics in India with Special Reference to the Narmada Bachao Andolan

Lawrence Cox (1999) has argued that the established perspectives on social movements operate with an inadequately narrow conception of the ‘object’ that is being studied and thus tends to ‘reify’ “movements” as usual activity against essentially static backgrounds, and in its place, he advocates a concept of social movement as the more or less developed articulation of situated rationalities. Following Cox, therefore, the present study perceives social movements as articulations of situated rationalities by perceiving them as a tactical, dialectical response to the harsh realities of the political system. This would help us capture the essential dynamic and transformative aspects of the movement. Any social movement, and for that matter, environmental movements are characterized by the presence of agencies and structural components, which, however, are not a priori and static. They are rather dynamic and get changed and transformed in the course of the movement. Precisely for this reason, the environmental movements can at best be comprehended by way of locating and analyzing the dynamism and transformations of the movements produced by the dialectical interaction of the various components and parameters of the movement over a span of time. Hence, the present paper aims to evaluate the dynamics and transformations of the environmental movements in India, taking the case of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, and, adopting a strategic relational approach within the agent-structure framework as its framework of analysis. For the present purpose, however, we have taken only two variables, namely, Ideology and Leadership and attempted the analysis of their contributions in producing movement dynamics.Hydro Nepal: Journal of Water, Energy and Environment Issue No. 4, January, 2009 Page 24-29

Submerged and submerging voices: hegomony and the decline of the Narmada Bachao Andolan in Gujarat, 1998-2001

ABSTRACT Adivasis(aboriginal peoples) in southeastern Gujarat, India, have been subjected to an accelerated process of accumulation by dispossession through the construction of large dams, as well as through the privatization of common property resources. Neo-Gandhian social movements, such as the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), have used transnational activism to gain exposure for these issues but in the process have lost local support in the state, particularly after a negative court judgment in 2000. This article identifies three major reasons for the declining support for NBA in Gujarat. The first arises from the repressive nature of agrarian relations that have emerged through the capitalization of agriculture in the state. The second is the NBA's failure to link their opposition to displacement by large dams with similar examples of accumulation by dispossession in other regions of rural Gujarat, hence precluding any unity between poor peasants and adivasis elsewhere in the state. Finally, neo-Gandhianism represented adivasis through a discourse of ecological romanticism that did not reflect existing realities and tended to privilege urban, middle-class perspectives. Pushed from above and below, the NBA movement lost the support even of the adivasis it claimed to represent.

India's Narmada dams controversy

What sources will contemporary historians use when they reflect on resistance to globalisation by regional and environmental groups such as India's NBA (Narmada Bachao Andolan or 'Save the Narmada Movement')? As the country is the world's third most important dam builder, consistent mass protest against construction of the 3,200 Narmada dams in this enormous river valley over almost 20 years must surely merit further study. Campaigners seem to have developed a sense of history, but how do some of their most well-known international works of communication conform to existing models of media advocacy? This article assesses the nature of two documentary films - Anand Patwardhan's (with Simantini Dhuru) A Narmada Diary (1997) and Fanny Armstrong's Drowned Out (2004) - and the writings of Arundhati Roy, all emanating from the Narmada Dams controversy. As works of advocacy, these media communications popularised the Narmada conflict internationally, and in the process also championed fresh styles of communication. These three works represent interdisciplinary examples which, through their narratives and styles, have brought an extended creative and political repertoire of 'engaged' journalism on development issues to mainstream outlets outside of India. These examples allow us to test the continuing relevance of certain aspects of counter-hegemonic discourses, as presented in existing academic work.

Coping with Development Pathologies: Resistance to Displacement

This paper traces the trajectories in different types of anti-dam mobilization in independant India with a focus on the well-know Narmada Bachao Andolan. While the studies on anti-displacement mobilizations produced a substantial body of knowledge, they are useful neither to the civil society activists nor to the policy makers. It is suggest that, in order to render sociology relevant, we need to combine the sociology of movements and polices with sociology for movement and policies