Champa (ben) Tadvi

Champaben is from the submergence village of Vadgam in Gujarat and she has been relocated to Dharampuri resettlement site, also in Gujarat. The two clips uploaded here are excerpts from her two interviews. The first was recorded in the year 2009, 13 years after her displacement from Vadgam and the second in 2023, 28 years after her displacement from Vadgam.  Together they cover an in-depth history of over three decades of her life, as an adivasi woman, as a victim of the Sardar Sarovar Dam and as someone struggling for survival and justice.

She says in her 2009 interview, 

“…We are facing all kinds of trouble ever since we came here (to the resettlement site) and leaving our ancestral lands behind…In our old village, we had no troubles at all. We were happy there, but here we do not find happiness…After coming to the resettlement site, we cannot sleep at night, that is how it is, sister. It has been 12 to 13 years since we have been relocated here but I have never been happy here. After coming here, our life span is reduced, not increased. That is the kind of trouble we are in here. We are in a foreign land here, so we have to live like the foreigners do, sister…” 

In the 2009 clip, Champaben details the struggle against the dam and displacement that she and her adivasi community fought, the forced eviction of the affected families and their relocation to the resettlement site, her life on the banks of the river Narmada before her village was submerged by the dam waters and her life after displacement at the resettlement site. Although 13 years have passed since her arrival at the Dharampuri resettlement colony, she tells us how she has never felt at home at the resettlement site.
In these two clips together, Champaben covers an in-depth history of over three decades in the life of an adivasi woman, a victim of the Sardar Sarovar Dam and her struggles for survival.

In the 2023 clip, she tells us how her life has not changed for the better and her hardships have only grown  since her 2009 interview 14 years earlier. This clip helps us understand the plight of the oustees and why even after having lived for 28 years at the Dharampuri rehabilitation site, she still does not feel at home.

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I was a witness to the forcible displacement of Champaben Tadvi in the year 1994 from her village Vadgam. Vadgam was the first to be submerged by the Sardar Sarovar dam in Gujarat, out of the total of 245 villages which submerged in three states. Champaben and her family were forcibly evicted from their village by police and along with their houses and goods they were loaded into trucks, carried to Dharampuri and off-loaded at the resettlement site near Dabhoi, Vadodara also in Gujarat. When they were offloaded at Darampuri, the whole site was waterlogged with very poor amenities.

– Nandini Oza.

1st Clip 2009
Duration:
1:15:00

Language:
Audio in Gujarati, Subtitles in English

Subtitles can be switched on and off by clicking ‘CC’ button at the bottom right of the video

2nd Clip 2023
Duration:
0:28:20

Language:
Gujarati, Subtitles in English

Subtitles can be switched on and off by clicking ‘CC’ button at the bottom right of the video