April 21: Internationally recognized activist

Medha Patkar to present an activist’s perspective on development

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12:04 p.m., April 15, 2011--Medha Patkar, an award-winning activist whose work has shaped development in India, will discuss “Livelihoods and Development: An Activist’s Perspective” this month at an Energy and Environmental Policy Colloquium.

The program is scheduled from noon-1:30 p.m., Thursday, April 21, in the Ewing Room of the Perkins Student Center. Lunch will be provided. 

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Patkar serves as national convener of the National Alliance of People’s Movements, which includes peasant, tribal, dalit (socially oppressed), women, youth and labor groups across India and works to challenge globalization- and liberalization-based economic policies. The alliance advocates alternative livelihoods-based development, designed and decided directly by the people. 

In addition to her work with the alliance, she is an organizer for Narmada Bachao Andolan (“Save the Narmada River” campaign), a nonviolent resistance movement that opposes plans for dams and canals that would disrupt the lives and livelihoods of millions of farmers, grazers and tribal communities whose ancestors have stewarded this watershed for centuries. 

Patkar has been recognized internationally for her work, receiving a variety of honors including the Right Livelihood Award, the Goldman Environment Prize, the BBC Green Ribbon Award and Amnesty International’s Human Rights Defender Award. 

Her efforts are credited with building successful civil society cases that led to the withdrawal of the World Bank from the Sardar Sarovar dam project on the Narmada and the dissolution of state contracts with Enron for an unneeded power plant in western India. 

She has led teams to organize relief efforts in the wake of cyclones, tsunamis and earthquakes across India and has effectively challenged government plans and policies that would displace and burden at-risk communities after these calamities. 

Currently Patkar is engaged in an Indian Supreme Court case questioning the government’s continuation of dam and canal projects in the Narmada Valley. 

In addition to awards, Patkar’s work has brought her false government charges, police assaults, threats and intimidation. 

The colloquium is sponsored by the University’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy and the graduate program in energy and environmental policy. 

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