Do you know this woman?


She is Medha Patkar, founder of Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA). If you came late, here's an ultra-quick background: Our government is building an obscenely humungous dam on Narmada and is destroying rainforests, submerging agricultural lands and above all displacing millions of rural and tribal people without a planned or visible rehabilitation programme. This is at a time when the world has realised that dams are environmentally bad for rivers and many developed nations are busy demolishing them. Sardar Sarovar Dam project in Narmada is badly planned, poorly executed and statistically atrocious project against which Medha Patkar has been waging war for more than a decade.

Hold on. This piece is not about the project in itself. It is about Patkar. Till last week, she was staging dharna in front of Prime Minister's office. Her demand: The central government should look into the lapses in rehabilitating the displaced millions. Result: except some verbal remarks, Dr. Singh did nothing else and after some days, since her coterie was becoming a traffic hazard, she was arrested and released in the evening.

Since then Medha Patkar has been on indefinite fast and it has reached fifth day now. Nobody, just nobody is paying any attention to her now. You and I know what will happen now. couple more days, her health will deteriorate. She will be arrested again on the grounds of attempted suicide, admitted to hospital, glucose injected and released again.

But nobody from the government will speak to her.

Because her methods of agitation is non-violent and it doesn't affect anyone's life. We can beg and plead with Hurriat Conference, Hijbul-e-Mujahideen, or ULFA. We can even agree to hold talks with them within or 'without' the framework of our constitution. We request them to participate in our democracy, that is stand in the elections and become our MLAs or MPs. We do all these because, they are called terrorists and they have killed thousands of innocent civilians and kidnapped our jawans, held the daughters of our ministers as hostages and bombed our temples and parliament. We have none of these to expect from Patkar . She is after all a middle aged woman who can't even feed her supporters.

Recently, when the DMK President Karunanidhi claimed that the rampant unemployment is breeding Naxalites, I flinched. I loathed the DMK supremo for encouraging terrorisism. It is not the lack of jobs that's driving these people to taking to arms. It is this callous attitude of our government driving them up the wall. You go
for the procession, conduct public meetings, write articles dripping with statistics, and go fasting. The powers-that-be doesn't even bat their eyelids. You kidnap one senior official or plant one bomb in a busy market area, the whole nation talks about you and your cause.

I'm not encouraging violence or extremism here. I'm deeply upset about what's happening to that good woman who has dedicated her entire life to the cause of millions of faceless people. If Narayana Murthy doesn't get a few acres of choking Bangalore, it becomes a cover story. Chidambaram announces Fringe-Benefit-Tax and the Economic Times goes berserk. Medha Patkar's fast-unto-death for a small hut for Bolarams of this world doesn't even figure between the ad-breaks of 24x7 channels.

It is not a good sign that we leave such people unattended. And do not think that what happens in a remote corner of Narmada will not impact you. Those million faceless people will invade your cities for a measly housemaid, rickshaw-walla, or coolie jobs. And then don't complain that the cities are being polluted by the illiterate.

Worse still, don't drive them out of streets when the American President or Bill Gates visit the cities.