Narmada bachao Andolan/save Narmada Movement

The Narmada is one of the important rivers in India. It has a length of about 1450 kilometers and it originates from Amarkantak in Madhya Pradesh ends in Arabian Sea after flowing through Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. The Narmada Project was taken by joint-venture of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. The two largest dam reservoirs named ‘sardar sarovar’ and ‘Narmada sagar’ were planned to be constructed over the river Narmada in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh respectively.

There was a plan to build 30 big dams, 135 medium dams and 3000 small dams along the mainstream and tributaries of this river. ‘Sardar sarover’ project was most important to the people of Gujarat as it was thought to have following benefits-

(I)The irrigated area will increase and the drought prone uncultivated land will be brought under cultivation.

(ii) The drinking water will be supplied.

(iii) The Electricity will be generated.

(iv) It will be possible to check the Flood by reserving water in the reservoir.

But this benefit was not considered acceptable to ecologists.

Because this dams would submerge 92 villages totally and 294 villages partly. About 3 lakh people will become homeless and jobless and forest of about 54,000 hectares will be destroyed. Considering the demerits than merits, movement was started. It is called ‘Narmada Bachao Andolan’ (NBA). Baba Amte first protested against Narmada Dams.

Later on mass movement was started under the Leadership of Smt. Medha patekar. Now many renowned persons are associated with this movement and author ‘Smt. Arundhati Roy’ is one of them.

Earth summit:

The high level intergovernmental meeting on environment of the earth held in Rio-de-Janerio, Brazil in June, 1992, namely ‘united Nations conference on Environment and development, abbreviated as UNCED, including India attended in this submit. The major objectives of Earth summit were signing of two treaties as follows:

(i) Reduction of green house gas emission by 20 percent by 2000 AD.

(ii) Conservation and management of biodiversity.

21 rules of action are accepted for the different environmental problems and their control.

So it is recognized as Agenda 21. In this summit, there was found some debate among North and south blocks (i.e. developed and developing countries of the world ) on the question of responsibilities regarding environment.

Fro this reason ,it is also known as ‘North-south debate.’