About a thousand families were displaced by the construction of the Maan Dam, one of the 30 big dams planned in the Narmada River Valley in western and central India. The Maan families, within the 17 affected villages, have not been compensated according to the terms and conditions of the rehabilitation policy defined by the government. The policy states that the displaced must be compensated with irrigated and adequate land in lieu of lands that will be submerged by the project. However, the dam has been built but those displaced have not received such compensation.
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The Narmada Bachao Andolan asks that those evicted by the Maan project be compensated with land for land. They ask that the approximately 5000-6000 people being displaced be resettled before the reservoir, enraged by the approaching monsoon rains, submerges their villages, livelihoods, lands, and futures. Ram Kunwar, Chittaroopa Palit, Vinod Patwa and Mangat Verma, the four activists who embarked on an indefinite hunger strike, were forced to take such measures because thus far the government has been indifferent to the demands of the Andolan and acted to suppress their dissent.

The Narmada Bachao Andolan has mounted a persistent and profound human rights struggle in the Narmada Valley since the mid 1980s. In a democracy the will and voice of the people must define the ethical fabric of the polity. In this instance, it appears that the stronger the voice of the people, the more callous and brutal the government's response. Whose life matters? Who has the right to life? Is national interest beyond human rights? If so, what legitimates the nation?

Ram Kunwar, Chittaroopa Palit, Vinod Patwa and Mangat Verma are held hostage by their government's refusal to take seriously the people of the Narmada Valley. As the fast weakens their bodies, perhaps irreparably, their just demands are dismissed by a government that finds it acceptable to deny people their most basic rights to shelter and livelihood. Yet resistance continues steadfastly among the people of the Narmada Valley. The dalits, adivasis and villagers who reside in the Narmada Valley are the primary stakeholders of development. Yet, their livelihood, their cultural heritage, their histories, their hopes and their capacities are condemned to a savagely uncaring, unconfined progress. Is it unreasonable to expect that on the road to progress and prosperity, those most disenfranchised must be heard and accounted for in development planning? Is it unreasonable to expect that when the government displaces people, apparently in their own best interest, it should be required to negotiate the terms of displacement? Is it unreasonable that the Maan people want to exchange land for land rather than to live as squatters in places where they do not belong or matter?

The lives of the most disenfranchised have become an afterthought in development processes. Their actions for survival and agency for self-determination are policed to benefit the advantaged. Human rights have failed the marginalized, and such failure bears testimony to a deep unconcern for social and ecological justice. Democracy requires a conscience. In this instance the Government of India and the Government of Madhya Pradesh have not given us any evidence of one.

India's record of irresponsible development has placed its marginalized most at risk, socially and politically, affecting women, children, adivasi communities, dalits and religious minorities. It has displaced countless peoples, prompted cultural annihilation, generated appalling working conditions, unequal distribution of livelihood assets, struggles over resources, and prompted the progressive and irrevocable depletion of the country's natural resource base, and the degradation of forests, agricultural lands, ecosystems, rivers and seas, animal life and mountains. In 2002, almost fifty-six years after independence, the ideals of democracy - freedom, security, self determination, access to political processes - remain most elusive for 300+ million of India's poorest citizens. In the unacceptable contradictions of postcolonial India, it has become incumbent on those most bereft to confront the injustices that produce hunger, dispossession and disempowerment.

The real war, the subordination of people to the state, continues. In the name of the people, governments, corporations and legal systems endorse forms of social and political violence. Where is public conscience? All around us lives burn with futility and despair, as we the privileged accumulate greater wealth, greater apathy, greater irresponsibility. It is as if we are condemned to live in spite of ourselves.

The present balks at its own reflection. As Ram Kunwar, Chittaroopa Palit, Vinod Patwa and Mangat Verma fast with incomprehensible commitment, their actions charge all of us to reflect on the present. If they fail, the state will have been murderously deaf to their cries of ethical protest. Political extremism cannot govern a democracy, and India is increasingly defined by this. One must believe that oppression only strengthens resistance, and that such dissent prevails. But when? And at what cost?

Angana Chatterji
June 2002

Angana Chatterji is a professor of social and cultural anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.