A couple of short quotations from women activists from Narmada Bachao Andolan: "They [the government officials] say that we are backward people, uneducated people. But it is because of us, the backward and uneducated women, that this country works. Even if they bring suitcases full of [bank] notes and say 'take this and go', we will send them back. We are not prepared to sell our river Narmada, our mother Narmada, and our Earth Mother for that... The struggle has made us such, that we can go alone anywhere and we are prepared to go anywhere, go to jail, to fight. It has really changed us, it has made us fearless" Another woman continues: "Earlier we used to be shy, but we have dropped all that. Because we have to fight for our rights. Now the respect for us women, both in the village and in our family, has increased tremendously. Whenever we go anywhere people come and ask us 'So what is happening now, what are you doing now?".
These women are fighting against the Maheshwar dam, one of the more than 3.000 dams that constitute the faraonic Narmada Valley Development Programme. This dam, the first one to be privatised in India, is being built mainly with German, Swiss and Swedish capital. Bayernwerk and VEW (both German) own together 49% of the shares, Siemens (also German) owns 17% and Asean Brown Bovery (Swiss-Swedish) owns 10%. The HiPo Bank from Germany has provided a huge loan. Just to avoid confusions, this is not the famous Narmada dam from which the world bank retreated, that one is called Sardar Sarovar. Maheshwar is upstream from Sardar Sarovar. This information and much more will come out as a result of this documentation project, but we still need some more time to get transcriptions and translations done. we expect much of it to be done before the caravan starts. Narmada Bachao Andolan will participate in the caravan but they still dont know how many people will come. one of the free tickets is going to them, for one of their adivasi activists. but some non-adivasi farmers of the narmada valley will also join.