ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates a narrative which is based on conversations with Medha in August 1994. It presents a historical perspective of the evolution of issues in the Narmada struggle. In 1985, the Narmada valley and a few of its villages, the situation was that the project work on the Sardar Sarovar was stalled. It had been suspended at the behest of the Ministry of Environment owing to the nonfulfillment of basic environmental conditions and the lack of completion of crucial studies and plans. At the same time, in the field, the only message conveyed to the people was that the dam was going to be built and the people affected would have to be rehabilitated. Until 1990, one can say that the activists were in the first phase of the struggle. Until 1987, in some of the villages of Maharashtra that were faced with the threat of submergence, the activists did not merely raise the issue of displacement.
