Medha Patkar

Medha Patkar (born December 1, 1954, Bombay [now Mumbai], Maharashtra, India) is an Indian social and environmental activist known chiefly for her work with people displaced by the Narmada Valley Development Project (NVDP), a large-scale plan to build a series of dams on the Narmada River and its tributaries in the Indian states of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and Maharashtra. An advocate of human rights, Patkar founded her campaigns on two basic tenets in the Indian constitution: the rights to life and to livelihood.

Early life

Born to socially active parents, Patkar grew up in an environment imbued with a sense of social justice and freedom. Vasant Khanolkar, her father, was a lawyer who represented workers’ unions and participated in India’s freedom struggle. Indu Khanolkar, her mother, worked in the post office and supported women in need through Swadhar, a nongovernmental organization in which she was a key member. Patkar graduated with a bachelor’s degree in science from Ruia College in Mumbai and earned a master’s degree in social work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS).

Narmada Bachao Andolan

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The background to Patkar’s activism took place during the 1960s and early ’70s, when the Indian government was promoting dam building as a route to modernization. The harnessing of river water was to provide water for drinking and irrigation and for generating electricity in impoverished areas. It would also, however, displace hundreds of thousands of people. In 1961 Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru inaugurated the Sardar Sarovar Project, which became part of the NVDP. The NVDP’s proposal to construct thousands of dams on the Narmada and its tributaries faced some initial hiccups but was granted approval in 1979. In 1985, as part of her PhD work, Patkar visited villages in the Narmada valley that were to be submerged after the completion of the Sardar Sarovar Dam in southeastern Gujarat, one of the largest of the planned projects. There she became aware of indifference exhibited by local government officials toward the people affected by the project. In 1986 she and her supporters organized marches and protests against the local government entity that was seeking financial grants from the World Bank for the Sardar Sarovar project. About that same period, Patkar established the organization Narmada Dharangrastra Samiti (NDS) in Maharashtra. In 1989 NDS and other affected groups and individuals in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh came together to form the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA; Save the Narmada Movement). The NBA used satyagraha (nonviolent resistance) as a means to oppose the numerous dams planned on the Narmada and to push for rehabilitation of displaced people, organizing numerous protests and hunger strikes. Its major aim was to provide project information and legal representation to the concerned residents of the Narmada valley. Patkar became occupied with the people’s concerns and dropped work on her PhD.

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Through the NBA, Patkar sought help for those rendered homeless and without livelihoods because of the construction of the Sardar Sarovar and other large dams along the Narmada. In 1990 Patkar led NBA members and some 3,000 people displaced by dam projects on a march from northern Madhya Pradesh toward the Sardar Sarovar dam site, but they were stopped at the Gujarat border by police and pro-dam activists. However, after further protest and opposition, including hunger strikes of up to 22 days, Patkar and the NBA achieved a breakthrough in 1993 when the World Bank withdrew from the project. The NBA filed a case the following year in the Supreme Court of India against the Gujarat government, which had decided to pursue the Sardar Sarovar Project on its own. After initially suspending work on the project, the Supreme Court, in 1999, allowed the dam’s height to be raised to 88 meters (289 feet). Subsequently, in 2000, the court allowed the construction to go ahead in stages, subject to the fulfillment of certain conditions related to rehabilitation and environmental clearance.

Following Supreme Court judgments allowing the continuation of the dams, construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam was completed in 2017, reaching a maximum height of 138.68 meters (455 feet). Patkar, who was on the way to meet people displaced by the dam, was arrested and kept in judicial custody for a fortnight, but she was not new to arrests and detentions faced during the Narmada valley and other protests. The NBA continued to represent the tribal and other communities displaced by the dams, fighting for their rights and rehabilitation.

Awards and work beyond the NBA

In 1996 Patkar extended her work beyond the Narmada valley project and cofounded the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), an agglomeration of more than 150 social bodies opposed to the resource conflicts arising out of India’s globalization and liberalization policies in the 1990s. The organization worked to support housing rights among slum dwellers in Mumbai and opposed Lavasa, a luxury town planned near Pune, among other activities. Patkar was a representative to the World Commission on Dams, the first independent global advisory body on dam-related issues of water, power, and alternatives; the commission was set up in 1998 and in 2000 issued its influential final report, which contained recommendations on improving development outcomes. Patkar also worked with local communities to develop alternatives for energy generation, water harvesting, and education, and she created a system of residential and day schools in villages of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat. She was recognized internationally for her work, and shared the Right Livelihood Award in 1991 with social activist Baba Amte, who joined the Narmada movement in the late 1980s. Patkar also won the Goldman Environmental Prize, often referred to as the “Green Nobel Prize,” the following year.

In 2014 Patkar joined the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP; “Common Man’s Party”), and later that year she ran for the Lok Sabha (lower chamber of the Indian parliament) but was defeated. She resigned from the AAP in 2015 and has since participated in a number of agitations, including those in support of families affected by the Sardar Sarovar Dam (2017), farmers in Punjab and Haryana protesting three proposed agricultural laws (2020), and farmers opposing land acquisition for an aerospace park in Devanahalli, Karnataka (2025).

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