Senior Advocate, and Senior Support Group Member of Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), Indore, Madhya Pradesh (M.P.).
Anilbhai, who hails from M.P., is a Senior Advocate and a social and political activist. He has been a member of the Narmada Bachao Andolan Support Group in Indore from the time of its inception.
Anilbhai has always been in the thick of politics in M.P. He was jailed during the Emergency and has contested elections as member of the then Janata Party in the 1970s and, more recently, the Aam Aadmi Party. Anilbhai’s father, the Late Kashinathji Trivedi, was a senior Gandhian and freedom fighter. He was the then Minister of Education in the first elected government of the then Madhya Bharat (now part of M.P.) in independent India. Kashinathji was a founding member of the Narmada Ghati Navnirman Samiti (NGNS, literally The Narmada Valley Regeneration Committee). NGNs, formed in M.P. in the early eighties, was raising comprehensive questions around the large dams on the Narmada.
Anilbhai’s interview is special since he speaks both as an external observer as well as an active participant in the political scenario in M.P. in the 1970s and 1980s and the early years of the Narmada struggle. His account provides us with the necessary background to understand how the movement against large dams on the Narmada emerged in the form of the Nimad Bachao Andolan and the NGNS in the seventies and eighties when large dams were still considered temples of modern India. He also presents us with a detailed story of the anti-dam movement in the Narmada valley, the Nimad Bachao Andolan and the NGNS, before the formation of the Narmada Bachao Andolan.
Interview Duration:
01:27:41
Language:
Audio in Hindi, Subtitles in English
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