05-02-2006, 10:32 PM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Call Medha's bluff </b>
The Pioneer Edit Desk
Her andolan promotes violence ---- Whoever says 'protest' cannot be turned into a viable career option needs only to look at Narmada Bachao Andolan's Medha Patkar for advice and guidance. For nearly two decades now, Ms Patkar has been a study in someone making an industry out of people's misery - the very folk whose cause she claims to represent. By going on her 'fasts-unto-death' on an average of twice a year - and rather mysteriously emerging stouter and healthier each time - Ms Patkar has proved that nothing succeeds like excess. She is the bland ambassador of the jholawala brigade whose only aim - given their youth and relative inexperience - is to make revolution; it does not matter whether it works on the ground or not. For the gullible 18,000 families whose self-claimed matriarch Ms Patkar is - or is perceived to be - this is bad news. For her misplaced activism is even today coming in the way of the relief and rehabilitation of the people affected by the Sardar Sarovar Project.
Ms Patkar's own followers have dwindled over the years - youth in their callow, impressionable twenties have long since deserted her for "greener pastures" which, as a figure of speech, stands for foreign-funded NGOs that dot the Indian landscape. Many of them work out of centralised air-conditioned head offices in Lutyens' Delhi. If such exodus has never really affected Ms Patkar's andolan, it is only because there is always a fresh crop of rebellious youth willing to pick up the baton from their immediate predecessors - complete with a handy survival kit on what to do next. Thus the NBA has been reduced to a contemporary anachronism whose cause célèbre is protest for the sake of it. Publicity is what Ms Patkar and her outfit has thrived on all these years, which she mistakenly believes is public support. For, apart from equally image conscious celebrities, the only people whose cause she serves are issue-starved 24X7 television news channels. After all, poor tribals holding placards against development and displacement make for engaging discussions in - again, air-conditioned - television studios.
Therefore, while the "public" shows off its latest purchases from dastkaar fairs in make-believe villages in south Delhi, Ms Patkar and her band of sisters and brothers - from Arundhati Roy to Aamir Khan - must raise a private toast to the success of their revolution. All this while the millions of people in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and even Rajasthan, who could benefit from the waters of Narmada if only these "useful idiots" had been put in their place, have no other alternative than to look to the heavens for succour. And to the courts, we may add. It is for such earthy and real reasons that the Gujarat High Court had pronounced the NBA anti-national, for its coming in the way of not just the resettlement of those displaced but also hundreds of thousands of farmers in dire need of water which is most cruelly and self-servingly being denied by a seemingly crazed lot. Clearly, their farcical bluff needs to be called.
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The Pioneer Edit Desk
Her andolan promotes violence ---- Whoever says 'protest' cannot be turned into a viable career option needs only to look at Narmada Bachao Andolan's Medha Patkar for advice and guidance. For nearly two decades now, Ms Patkar has been a study in someone making an industry out of people's misery - the very folk whose cause she claims to represent. By going on her 'fasts-unto-death' on an average of twice a year - and rather mysteriously emerging stouter and healthier each time - Ms Patkar has proved that nothing succeeds like excess. She is the bland ambassador of the jholawala brigade whose only aim - given their youth and relative inexperience - is to make revolution; it does not matter whether it works on the ground or not. For the gullible 18,000 families whose self-claimed matriarch Ms Patkar is - or is perceived to be - this is bad news. For her misplaced activism is even today coming in the way of the relief and rehabilitation of the people affected by the Sardar Sarovar Project.
Ms Patkar's own followers have dwindled over the years - youth in their callow, impressionable twenties have long since deserted her for "greener pastures" which, as a figure of speech, stands for foreign-funded NGOs that dot the Indian landscape. Many of them work out of centralised air-conditioned head offices in Lutyens' Delhi. If such exodus has never really affected Ms Patkar's andolan, it is only because there is always a fresh crop of rebellious youth willing to pick up the baton from their immediate predecessors - complete with a handy survival kit on what to do next. Thus the NBA has been reduced to a contemporary anachronism whose cause célèbre is protest for the sake of it. Publicity is what Ms Patkar and her outfit has thrived on all these years, which she mistakenly believes is public support. For, apart from equally image conscious celebrities, the only people whose cause she serves are issue-starved 24X7 television news channels. After all, poor tribals holding placards against development and displacement make for engaging discussions in - again, air-conditioned - television studios.
Therefore, while the "public" shows off its latest purchases from dastkaar fairs in make-believe villages in south Delhi, Ms Patkar and her band of sisters and brothers - from Arundhati Roy to Aamir Khan - must raise a private toast to the success of their revolution. All this while the millions of people in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and even Rajasthan, who could benefit from the waters of Narmada if only these "useful idiots" had been put in their place, have no other alternative than to look to the heavens for succour. And to the courts, we may add. It is for such earthy and real reasons that the Gujarat High Court had pronounced the NBA anti-national, for its coming in the way of not just the resettlement of those displaced but also hundreds of thousands of farmers in dire need of water which is most cruelly and self-servingly being denied by a seemingly crazed lot. Clearly, their farcical bluff needs to be called.
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