Medha Patkar and the Narmada Bachao Andolan

She fought a dam all the way to the Supreme Court. The court let the dam go ahead anyway — and she kept organising for another two decades regardless.

Must Know

• Medha Patkar (born 1 December 1954, in Mumbai) is a social activist and a founding member of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), formed in 1985.
• She holds an MA in Social Work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS).
• The NBA opposed the Sardar Sarovar Dam and other large dams planned on the Narmada river, across Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra.
• Its core arguments were the scale of displacement, over 40,000 families, inadequate rehabilitation for those displaced, and the project’s wider environmental cost.
• On 18 October 2000, the Supreme Court allowed construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam to continue, up to a height of 90 metres. Further approvals were required above that.

Good to Know

• Patkar received the Right Livelihood Award in 1991 and the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1992, for the NBA’s work.
• She co-founded the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), a network coordinating grassroots organisations across India on displacement, housing, and land rights.
• In 2013, she led an indefinite hunger strike at Golibar in Mumbai, protesting slum demolitions, joined by over 500 affected residents.
• Her activism later extended to opposing several other large projects, including the Tata Nano plant site in Singur, West Bengal, and the Lavasa hill-city development.

Test Yourself

Please wait…

1. Medha Patkar was a founding member of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, formed in which year?

1985

1990

1995

2000

 Loading…

 

Great to Know

• The 2000 Supreme Court verdict is a useful reminder that a movement’s legal outcome and its lasting influence aren’t the same thing. The Court sided against the NBA’s core plea, yet the movement’s arguments still reshaped how India debates displacement and rehabilitation today.
• NAPM’s growth beyond the Narmada valley shows a common pattern in Indian social movements. A fight over one specific project can build an organising network that outlasts that single fight.
• Patkar’s activism sits alongside EnvEco0035 — Sunderlal Bahuguna, another leading figure in India’s post-independence environmental movement. Their signature campaigns unfolded a decade apart, in different regions.
• Dam-building’s costs and benefits, central to the NBA’s case, are explored more broadly in IndEco0044 — Environmental Impact of Dams.
• Patkar’s resistance to a large dam makes an instructive contrast with Rajendra Singh’s approach. His Tarun Bharat Sangh revived rivers by rebuilding small, traditional structures village by village, not by opposing a single large project. See IndSoc0053 — Rajendra Singh: Reviving Rivers with Mud and Community.