Narmada Bachao Andolan leader Medha Patkar lies on a bed with her eyes closed in the sixth floor of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi.
She has been fasting since the last 19 days. Every hour, she takes a glass of water.
In last twenty years, Patkar has fasted for more than 320 days at various points of time seeking justice for people (mainly tribals and villagers) displaced by the construction of big dams over the Narmada river. For her, big dams just cannot be a vehicle of development.
But now she alone does not voice this opinion. The series of events, triggered off by Saifuddin Soz's statement that the height of the Sardar Sarovar dam will not be raised, has got the entire nation to stand up and take note of the issue of development and the manner it is engaged in.
Doctors are relieved to see her blood pressure under control. Outside her room a policeman from Delhi police, in plain clothes, is keeping an eye on all her visitors.
Downstairs more policemen have been stationed. Their task: Checking all the visitors. They have been instructed not to allow the media, particularly television cameras in her room.
The reason may be obvious. A fasting woman has put Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in an unenviable situation to select between displaced tribals and the villagers' just demands for better and timely rehabilitation and the militant middle-class and farmers' just demand for more drinking water and water for irrigation.
The importance of her fasting also lies in the fact that a chief minister has been forced to go on counter-fasting to more loudly emphasize the counter-point of what Medha is representing.
Thanks largely due to influence of television and naïve dramatization of TV coverage of the dam issue, Medha versus Modi debate is top of people's mind. It is ironic that both Medha and Modi are masters of mass communication. In the past, Medha successfully launched a programme like 'Jalsamarpan' in Manibeli village and later in 1991, in Ferkuva, she had gone on indefinite fast. She always got extensive media coverage but somehow people other than affected states were not getting engaged.
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Reader's say: Medha Patkar is doing a good job
This time her fast has caught the nation's attention, of course, at a huge cost to her health and her two colleagues Bhagvatibai and Jamsing's health. Jamsingh bhai, a tribal from Narmada valley is in a separate room of AIIMS. When his health deteriorated police 'detained' him and forcibly took him to hospital. He has been given intravenous glucose to stabilize his health.
On March 8, 2006, the Narmada Control Authority gave permission to raise the height of the Sardar Sarovar Dam to 121-92 metres. Four days later, Medha and some 50 activists sat on dharna in New Delhi. Medha has sat innumerable times on dharna. So, initially, nobody took her or her agitation seriously.
But the scene changed when on March 27, Patkar and two others activists went on a hunger strike, the most potent political weapon popularised by Gandhiji to protest against injustice. Today she risks damaging her kidneys permanently due to fluctuating ketone (product of fat metabolism) level due to constant fasting. Her left leg is wrapped in bandage. She suffers from a painful skin disease called Psoriasis.
Her health could not be worse than this, says her attendant. She has not washed her hair since a month nor is she capable of walking or sitting. Her health may be failing but her resolve is as strong as ever.
"I cannot help but continue fasting because people do not know the facts of Narmada valley." She told rediff.com, promptly adding, "So much corruption is there. State governments are giving fudged figures to people."
Trying hard to convey her point in the shortest time available between us, Patkar said, "People do not understand what a big dam means. It is akin to submerging the whole area between New Delhi and Agra," she said.
The frail activist complains: "I am illegally detained here by the government. I do not want this medical treatment or intravenous fluid."
Patkar neither has many people to take care of her small things nor does she have the infrastructural or institutional support to communicate in a better way. Lawyer Prashant Bhushan and thinker-writer Arundhati Roy are steadfastly supporting her and handful of her colleagues of Narmada Bachao Andolan are on footpaths of Jantar Mantar, braving heat and carrying on with the dharna with Bhagvati bai, another activist who has been fasting.
Bhagvati is a Gujarati Patel migrant from Madhya Pradesh belonging to fairly well-to-do farmer community. More than 30 acres of her family land will be submerged if construction on the dam is not stopped, she complains.
The Supreme Court has given the order that dam height cannot be raised unless and until displaced people are rehabilitated first. When argued that lakhs of people will get water and water levels all over parched land of Gujarat will go up, NBA activists are ready to argue endlessly how alternatives to big dams are available and how the Sardar Sarovar dam near Bharuch was an instrument of corruption and is mainly benefiting rich farmers.
Bhagavati bai says nobody even visited her village to carry out a survey.
At Jantar Mantar, Clifton Rozario, activist from the NBA along with some three dozen farmers, who will be displaced this monsoon, are talking to media and providing information.
So far, Medha has not been given any fluid but her health is too fragile to predict anything. When asked why she was fasting at the cost to her health, she promptly says, "Humari maut to valley main bhi hai." (Our death is awaiting us in the Narmada Valley too).
