At the present juncture, and since around March 17, 2006, two independent popular movements in India, the Bhopal movement and the Narmada movement, are encamped in New Delhi, holding dharnas (sit-in demonstrations) to voice their respective protests and demands. The movements are of labouring women and men, peasants and Adivasis (‘tribals’, or indigenous peoples). Both, and this is not a coincidence, are from the state of central India called Madhya Pradesh, ‘central province’.
The first is from Bhopal, the city in where the Union Carbide gas leak and massacre took place in December 1984 and where thousands lost their lives and many thousands more were crippled by the poisoning, then and in the years after by the poisoned groundwater available to them. www.bhopal.org and www.bhopal.net.
The second from the Narmada valley, in this case from that part of the valley that is being submerged by the Sardar Sarovar Project (a giant dam and reservoir), and where hundreds of thousands of people are being ‘displaced’ to make way for Development. The Narmada river as a whole already has several dams on it, and in all is threatened by something called the Narmada Valley Development Project, which is made up of something like 3,300 dams of various sizes. The Sardar Sarovar dam is one of the two mega dams being built on the river. www.narmada.org.
Each of the two movements has been struggling for over twenty years now, against the manner in which the people of the two areas have been treated, and for justice. Now, in further protest against the manner in which their demands and proposals are being ignored by the political leadership of the country, the two movements have –independently– decided to come to the capital of the country, to place their demands. Both have declared that they will not leave without having their demands met; and beyond this, they are now also in protest against the brutish manner in which they, including victims of the gas leak, have been handled by the police -like so much rubbish– where they were swept up from where they had first camped and dumped onto another footpath of the city.
More coverage of the Delhi Demos (Narmada and Bhopal): "Delhi Demo Updates"/ CACIM
Related information
A statement by Shehezadi Bee, 49, four times victimised
"I am a victim of Union Carbide's gases, a victim of the water contamination caused by chemicals abandoned by Union Carbide in its factory, a victim of the greedy irresponsibility of Dow Chemical and a victim of the infifference of the politicians who rule our poor country". April 10, 2006.
Source: International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal
