Narmada struggle...

Remember the Narmada struggle...?

Public memory is short. The media decides what news is important and what can safely be ignored. How long can we go on talking about the poor and the marginalized? That has little "news value". When new scams and scandals break out, our attention moves on. The latest in India is the musical chair between the ruling front and the opposition as to whether the government will last beyond the 22nd. In the U.S., of course, the debate is on whether it is Barack Obama or John McCain that best represents the "American values" (whatever that means)

For those who are new - the Narmada valley in North West India is where a huge dam is coming up - one of the largest in the world. This project threatens to submerge large tracts of virgin forest and, worse, displace thousands of Adivasis(indigenous people)from their traditional habitat. A movement under the banner of Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the Narmada valley) has been sphearheading a campaign against the project.The movement is not merely against a dam, but against a culture and politics that is materialistic and exploitative. It also projects the vision of viable and life sustaining alternatives.

The struggle seems to have reached a dead end. For over two decades, rooted firmly in the Gandhian path of non-violence, the movement has been trying to appeal to the conscience of the nation. Activists in their hundreds have fasted together, sang together and have gone to jail together. Little, however, did they reaize the might of the State and vested interests against which they are rallied. Little by litte, inch by inch, the dam has been coming up. Now it is almost complete.

Every summer for the past two decades, hundreds of activists and supporters of Narmada Bachao Andolan have gathered together in the valley to support and strengthen each other, to plan and plead together and to dream of alternatives. The policy makers, media and even the judiciary have, however, lost interest in them long ago.

Somehow, these have not stopped hundreds from gathering together in the valley this summer too with the slogan: "Another world is possible."

They are there right now, even as the rising water in the reservoir has now come up to their ankles.