Atabhai owns a sprawling farm in Vanger village where he grows onion, maize, coconut, mango, and a variety of vegetables. He earns Rs 50,000 every six months, which makes him one of the more affluent farmers in this region in Mahuva taluka of Bhavnagar district in coastal Gujarat. From his savings, he has even bought a car, Maruti 800 – a rarity in these parts of Saurashtra.

But slightly over a decade ago Atabhai was known as Atiyo, a pejorative version of his name, because he had turned to robbery to feed his family of five. He used to spend at least four months in a year in a police lock-up. Though he had land, some 10 acres of it, it was useless as the seawater had seeped in from the Arabian Sea.

How did he become Atabhai, a respectable landowner, once again? He thanks the three check-dams built in the area between 1998 and 2002 under a Gujarat government scheme to mitigate water shortages in this drought-prone region. These simple structures stopped the seawater and also stored the rainwater during monsoons in reservoirs, recharging the groundwater. Soon the land turned fertile and Atiyo turned into Atabhai.

Atabhai at his sprawling farm in Vanger village

Atabhai, however, is worried his old days might return as the reservoir of one of the three check-dams, at Samadhiyala, is the location Ahmedabad-based detergent giant Nirma group has chosen for its Rs 300 crore, 1.91 million tonne cement plant.

“Chances are I will turn to Atiyo again to feed my family,” says Atabhai, 55, while keeping a close watch on his two sons who are plucking vegetables that have grown in abundance this season.

Atabhai’s agony is shared by some 5,000 families in 15 villages benefitting from the water body (known locally as ‘bandharo’), part of which falls under the 268-acre land the state has allotted for the cement plant.

The waterbody supports 5,000 in 15 villages. Th plant promises 500 jobs.

While the project is expected to generate 500-odd jobs, apart from indirect employment opportunities and boost regional  economy, farmers are more concerned about the water body that has turned their land into a veritable gold mine right before their eyes, feeding about 25,000 people living in their villages.

To save the check-dam, around 10,000 villagers put their signatures in their blood on a memorandum to Chief Minster Narendra Modi asking him to shift the project elsewhere.

Making of a people’s movement

What started as worried farmers’ discussions in evenings snowballed into a major non-violent protest movement over nearly two years. It has galvanised illiterate old women like Kadviben (see box) into leaders. Local MLA Kanubhai Kalsaria of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has risked his political career—he has been leading the movement from the front and demanding of his own party’s government that it reconsider locating the cement plant there.

Kalsaria was instrumental in the construction of the three check-dams that have helped villagers grow two crops a year. He is upset now that the government is hell-bent on destroying the very dams which it had built at a cost of Rs 68 crore.

In the process, they have faced police atrocities, detention and even a near-fatal attack in case of Kanubhai. Police have resorted to lathi charge and large-scale arrests whenever protesters have gathered for peaceful demonstrations, civil rights groups say. “We have documented the state-sponsored violence with pictures of the wounded and filed a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission,” said Ila Pathak, secretary, Ahmedabad Women’s
Action Group (AWAG).

For example, on February 20, as thousands marched on in the streets of Mahuva, police threw their batons indiscriminately, injuring several protesters, including women. Kadviben said while two policemen held  her hands a third repeatedly hit her on the back.

The next day, as Kalsaria was returning to Mahuva after campaigning in Doriyo village for the next big rally, about 50 people stopped his Ambassador car and attacked it with sticks and stones. It was the alertness of the driver that saved the MLA’s life, according to the villagers.

The next big rally too was eventful. Agitators had planned a peaceful march from the historic Sabarmati ashram in Ahmedabad to the assembly complex in Gandhinagar on February 25. That morning, an unusually efficient police force swooped down and detained Kalsaria and 92-year-old Gandhian activist Chunibhai Vaidya. As former state finance minister Sanat Mehta, women’s activist Ila Pathak, Gandhian activist-turned-journalist Prakash N Shah and others were leaving their homes, they too were detained. Countless buses carrying farmers from Mahuva to Ahmedabad were stopped and people were taken into custody.

The next day, Kalsaria tried to raise the issue during “zero hour” in the assembly but was not allowed to do so. He met Modi and industry minister Saurabh Patel and submitted his memorandum. The memorandum has not made any difference so far.

Court verdict

None of these oppressive measures could break their resolve to carry on with their non-violent demonstrations as did the Gujarat High Court judgment of April 26 allowing Nirma to resume construction of the plant.

The judgment, on a writ petition by the villagers, also asked Nirma to return 46 hectares of the land that is part of the water body. The company had earlier returned 54 hectares on a  government order, thus releasing 100 hectares of the total 268 hectare of the land acquired.

But the land thus returned, villagers argue, will serve no purpose as the remaining land includes the catchment area of the reservoir.

Hamir Shiyal, a 55-year-old farmer from Vangar village, pointed to the fence of the factory running adjacent to his land that has given him a rich harvest of onion, maize and cotton. He was waiting for the monsoon to fill the reservoir so that he can grow a second crop of onion.

He was not sure if the water beneath his ground would stay sweet once the factory comes up. “Assuming the cement plant doesn’t not affect the reservoir, as Nirma argued in the court, it will still cover my land with cement destroying my crops,” he says.

Shiyal was also not sure if their future demonstrations would be as peaceful as they have been so far. “The high court order is immaterial to us; we are now prepared to fight to death.”

Kadviven leading the protest against Nirma in Dugheri village. 

At Dugheri village, some five km off the Bhavnagar-Rajkot highway, where about 500 villagers had gathered to decide on the next course of action, the people,  including women and children, showed stoic indifference to the hot winds blowing in the afternoon.

As they assembled to listen to Kadviben, a feisty 50-year-old woman, they debated whether the non-violent protests they had believed in so far served any purpose.

Even as Shiyal explained how the struggle should move ahead, the crowd burst into shouting “Jaan denge, zamin nahin (we will give our lives, not our land)”, as if on cue. “See that’s what the common sentiment of the villagers is,” Shiyal pointed out.

Of course the call for the slogan was given by Kadviben. “Whatever is the high court order, we are sure of not letting the factory come up,” she told the crowd.

Bharat Shiyal, the young sarpanch of Dugheri village, has mobilised his village folks for every protest launched against Nirma. “We have followed our leaders in their call for a non-violent agitation. But if they ask us to turn to violent protests, we will do so,” he said.

He explained how his village’s fortunes changed after the check-dams were built. “Ours is one of the most prosperous villages, with electricity and water connection in every house.” Farms have been producing such rich harvests that hardly anyone here depends on the NREGS, he pointed out. Despite the near-fatal attack on him and the Gujarat government’s indifferent response to villagers’ plight, Kalsaria is adamant that there is no option but to lead a peaceful Gandhian protest.

It must be a sign of times that even a veteran Gandhian of Chunibhai Vaidya’s standing feels non-violent protests have become ineffective. He has led many campaigns including the one against the Emergency (in which Narendra Modi too participated as a RSS member, inspired by Jayaprakash Narayan), but it is the Mahuva experience that has made him doubt the Gandhian principles.

“Is there a point in singing Gandhiji’s bhajans while Nirma, in collusion with the state, destroys thousands of lives,” Vaidya said, in a voice surprisingly loud for his thin and frail body, at his spartan cottage adjoining the Sabarmati ashram. The only alternative left for villagers was to dig up the highways and physically stop Nirma from carrying out the work on the cement factory, he added.

Kalsaria, however, does not agree. Referring to the simmering disquiet among the villagers, he said violent struggles were never successful. “Tell me, do they stand a chance in front of the might of the state and the industry?” he asked. “If they take up lathis, the state will take up rifles.”

According to him, there still are options for civil resistance. “We are all set to approach the apex court against the high court judgment,” said the MLA, a doctor by profession.

His confidence stems from the government’s own admission in the high court that 222 hectare of the total 268 hectare allotted to Nirma is a water body. And according to a 2002 judgment of the Gujarat High Court, the state cannot tinker with any water body on any condition.

The high court in allowing the resumption of the construction work didn’t take note of its own 2002 order as the government never cared to
notify the water body in its revenue records, Kalsaria pointed out.

“We are up for a long-drawn struggle and I am sure the victory will be ours. The factory cannot be built here,” he said.

This first appeared in June 1-15 issue of the Governance Now magazine (Vol.01 Issue 09).

An illiterate, middle-aged rural woman's guide to civil resistance

This 50-year old villager is an unlikely leader of this mass movement.

I am Kadviben Rambhai Bhaliya. I live in Dugheri village (near Mahuva). There was a time when no water body (“bandharo”) existed here; our land was salty and water not drinkable. Then they built two water bodies, at Malan and Sanadhiyala. Thereafter our land has turned fertile. A good quantity of water gets stored when there are good rains. We can grow cotton or wheat or onion or vegetables. The yield from our farms has gone up as if the earth is churning out gold.

But then came this Nirma project. Now, if the company comes here, we will have problems in living here. Firstly it will destroy nature. Then it will also destroy the grazing land for our cattle. Then our water body will go. Today we don’t have to go elsewhere; we can keep a couple of animals, children can go to school in the village, we can earn our living here, but after the project all of this will be lost.

When Nirma people arrived here for land survey, we thought may be we will get a canal. When we village folks realised why they had come, we gathered together and chased them away and told them: don’t dare to come here again; don’t measure our land again.

…...Nirma people organised a public hearing (in the neighbouring village of Padhiyarka) and invited us to come. As I am in the women’s association (‘mahila mandal’), they told me, Kadviben, you too must come. That night, our sarpanch got a threat, he was told that if you folks of Dugheri come to the public hearing, we will skin you. The next day, he did not tell anybody but it was 10 in the morning and he had not left for the hearing. I went to his home and asked him why he wasn’t going. The sarpanch said the MLA from Padhiyarka has threatened us. I said, come what may, at worst they will skin us alive, won’t do anything more than that. We were told the hearing was at 2, but it was actually at 12. They thought we would finish the hearing before these people could reach there.

When we went there, there were a lot of people. Signatures were being taken. They’d say raise your hands, we have to take your signatures. A man raised his hand and I asked him why he was putting his signature and he said we have to mark our presence. I said this is not for presence, this is (a resolution) in favour of the project. I stopped them from collecting signatures. Nirma people said if you womenfolk have any questions, you can come (to the dais) and speak up. The only point I wanted to make was that we don’t want Nirma here and all these signatures are wrong, and they allowed me to say this.

Then there was the husband of MLA Bhavnaben (Makawana of BJP, representing Talaja) and his men asked all of us to leave. When we women protested, they said: we had told you not to come, why did you come? We said anybody living within 15 km distance can come for a public hearing, our village was only three kilometres away. Then I said if you want to skin me alive, go ahead, I am standing before you.

I have been fighting this cause ever since.

(Translated from the Gujarati text published in the Nirdhar and Nireekshak journals.)