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Title: Social Protest and the State
of Democracy in the Narmada Valley (Madhya Pradesh, India)
Where
& When: October 23, 2007
341 Eggers Hall
12.30 pm
Type
of Activity: Speaker
Speaking: Ashwin Parulkar
Summary:
I intend to examine the results
of developmental policy in the Narmada Valley from two
perspectives. The first is how the policy coordinating the
water distribution and electricity generation schematic of
the Sardar Saravor, Indira Sagar and Omkrashwar dams has
created an overall inequality in access to basic, natural
resources required for human survival amongst the people who
live in the surrounding villages affected by the dam and
between these inhabitants and those who benefit from the
aforementioned policy in total. I will also examine the
response from those in the Valley whose homes, land, and
livelihoods have been or will be submerged in the monsoons
due to the dam construction. This “response” has been waged
in the form of prolonged, non-violent, social protest by the
villagers on behalf of a coalition of social movements
within India. They are represented most notably by an
organization called The Narmada Bachao Andolan. The
“response” and agitation – in my opinion – is in direct
correlation, in form (non-violent protest) and content (the
attempt to wrest resettlement and rehabilitation rights from
the government per Supreme Court decisions), to the apparent
crises acknowledged in the failure of democratic
institutions on the state level to operate functionally; at
the least, the villagers believe, in part, that they have
limited to zero access to the democratic institutions
offered through the state to change the course of their
fate. Thus, we see in the Narmada Valley – as well as other
areas undergoing similar economic and topographic changes in
India as a result of the same modern phenomenon throughout
the country concerning the notion of “progress” and the
differences in opinion, logic, and vision ascribed to that
ideal between various parties including members of the
state, social elites, and those who live in the areas where
“development projects” arise – the apparent attempt to
utilize alternate channels of democracy to influence the
tide of change on a social level (amongst the masses) in
order to influence political change (within the state) at
this critical point and in the face of increasing stagnancy
within the culture of governance. The situation urges us to
reassess our definitions of democracy as well challenges our
understanding on what democracy requires to perform in the
interests of the people it claims to serve.
Sponsorship:The South Asia Center
