Multiple Action Research Group (MARG), New Delhi.
The multifaceted Dr. Vasudha Dhagamwar, was a lawyer, scholar, researcher, writer and an activist. She had visited the tribal belt in Maharashtra including those areas which were to become the submergence areas of the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) in the early 1970s, when the SSP was still in its planning stage.
Dr. Vasudha’s work on the issue of land rights of adivasis in the talukas of Akkalkuva and Akrani of the then Dhule district in Maharashtra is considered a pioneering work. Subsequently, in the early 1980s, she also worked on the issue of the SSP and the displacement caused by the project. She was probably the first researcher to have travelled extensively in the remote interior tribal areas of Akrani and Akkalkuva in the course of her studies of tribal rights and law.
Her interview provides us with a picture of the area and the people in the region before they were affected by the SSP. As a participating witness in the early formative years of the Narmada struggle, she tells us about the functioning of the government officials and the World Bank around the issue of SSP as well as civil society organisations like the Arch-Vahini, the Rajpipla Social Service Society, the Centre for Social Studies, the Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangathan, the Narmada Ghati Navnirman Samiti, which were active in the dam affected areas at that time when the work on the dam had just begun. She talks about the involvement of MARG and its work in relation to the SSP in both Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, and her own role in the early days before the formation of the Narmada Dharangrasth Samiti in Maharashtra and the subsequent formation of the Narmada Bachao Andolan.
Interview Duration:
01:08:50
Language:
Audio in English, Subtitles in Hindi
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