Public Purpose? How the Tourist Destination of Tomorrow continues to dispossess March 2008 the Adivasis of Narmada today. An investigative report on the tourism EQUATIONS Equitable Tourism Options project in Kevadia, Narmada District, # 415, 2C Cross, 4th Main Gujarat. OMBR Layout, Banaswadi Bangalore 560043 ph: +91 80 25457607 / 25457659 EQUATIONS, March 2008 fax: +91 80 25457665 Email:
[email protected] URL: www.equitabletourism.org Established in 1985 as a society under the Karnataka Society Registration Act 1960. Registered under Section 80-G and Section 12 (a) of the Income Tax Act of 1961. This investigative report was researched and written by Souparno Lahiri (National Forum of Forest People and Forest workers- NFFPFW) and Aditi Chanchani (EQUATIONS). They njustice continues to haunt the Narmada River Valley. As the travelled to Kevadia in March 2007. Additional research support was provided by ISardar Sarovar Dam inches towards 138 metres, with each Rosemary Viswanath and Ananya Dasgupta (EQUATIONS). passing year and each onset of monsoon, hills, mountains and plains get inundated, pristine forests, villages, people and their croplands are submerged without proper rehabilitation and compensation. This phenomenon is not limited to the impact areas of the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) alone. The inhuman suffering is writ large on the whole of the Narmada Valley - the Omkareswar and Mann dams, the Indira Sagar Project, and the Bargi and Maheshwar dams. In a span of a quarter of a century, millions have been ousted from their ancestral homeland, thousands of hectares of crops destroyed. After more than twenty years of heroic struggles and supreme sacrifices, in spite of the Narmada Water Dispute Tribunal awards, Supreme Court and High Court orders, over a quarter of a million people, a large number of them tribals, are yet to be rehabilitated, waiting for the water of mother Narmada to submerge them.