Submergence Village: Chotabadada, Madhya Pradesh
Rukmikaki, “The men would sit in the meeting, listen and nod. And then they would go back home and stop the women from joining the movement, “No! No, no! We are from respected families, you are veil-wearing women, how would you join the movement?” The women would tell me that the men of their house are not allowing them to join.
So we used to go to every house and explain to the men, “Today your women are behind veils, but tomorrow when you would be on the street, then what would happen to the veils of your women? When they would have to wash utensils and clothes in others’ houses, when they would have to lay concrete on the roads, then what would happen to the dignity of your women? What would happen to their veil then?… So the men would understand this logic and this way I got the women to join the movement. I mobilized people across the whole of Nimad, and that too on foot. I would not come back to my house for 15 days or a month even…I poured my heart and soul and built the organization (NBA)…You can’t imagine the challenges of mobilization work; it is not an easy task. I would be mentally exhausted…Mobilization requires a lot of hard work… So, this way village by village, we built this large movement, in Nimad, in Maharashtra, now it has spread everywhere and all are one, now we don’t have to work that hard. But in the beginning, I worked very hard….”
Rukmikaki’s own village Chotabadada is one of the 245 villages falling in the submergence of SSP and has been severely impacted by the dam waters after the dam got completed in 2017. Rukmikaki has been active in the NBA right from the early days and took up full time responsibility of strengthening the movement.
While Rukmikaki’s interview focuses on the mobilisation work of the movement and its importance and the significance of women’s participation in a struggle, her interview is also a history of how the struggle in the Nimad region of Madhya Pradesh grew to become a powerful movement under the aegis of NBA. It throws light on the long-drawn struggle of the affected people, the dynamics that led to many affected people accepting cash compensation instead of land even though mandated in rehabilitation policy, the impact of different strategies of the movement and most important of all, the life of a local woman activist of the NBA.
Interview Duration: 02:20:00
Language: Hindi, Subtitles in English
Subtitles can be switched on and off by clicking ‘CC’ button at the bottom right of the video