Village Vadgam, Resettlement Site Dharampuri, Gujarat.
3–4 minutes
Interview in 2009 and in 2023
Ushaben Tadvi is a project affected person from the village Vadgam, the first of a total of 245 villages to be submerged by the Sardar Sarovar dam waters. She and her family were forcibly evicted from their village Vadgam in Gujarat in 1994 and were relocated at the Dharampuri resettlement site near Dabhoi, Vadodara, also in Gujarat. The two clips below are brief excerpts from her two interviews: the first from the year 2009, about 15 years after her displacement from Vadgam and the second in 2023, about 29 years after her displacement.
In the first clip excerpted from her 2009 interview, Ushaben details the life of women in the Narmada valley before and after displacement. In the second clip excerpted from Ushaben’s 2023 interview, she says nothing has changed for the better in the resettlement site in the 14 years since her 2009 interview.
Since she belongs to the first village to be submerged and the one closest to the Sardar Sarovar dam, Ushaben has a unique vantage point. She describes the impact of forced displacement on adivasi women. In her first clip she explains how even after 14 years she has never really felt at home in the resettlement site provided by the Government of Gujarat. Contrast this against the Government of Gujarat’s claims that the resettlement provided to the oustees of the Sardar Sarovar Project is the best in the country.
In the second clip, 29 years after her displacement and 14 years after her first interview, Ushaben describes in detail the difficulties that they continue to face at the resettlement site and points out that the oustees now have to depend mainly on wage labour for their livelihood. She goes a step further and says that had they not been forcibly evicted by the police, they would never have left their original village and even today, having spent 29 years at the settlement site, her desire is to return to Vadgam, to their ancestral home.
Nandini Oza, the interviewer was also a witness to the forced eviction of Vadgam on that fateful day in 1994.
1st Clip Duration:
00:06:12
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 Duration:
00:05:00
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