Page:Sharad Joshi - Leading Farmers to the Centre Stage.pdf/300

 adequate rest in Maharashtra. When Gunwantbhai heard about that, he phoned Ambethan and said to Joshi, “Come straight to Surat to our home. Here you will get good rest.” Joshi happily came. After Joshi had stayed with us for eight days, they took him to Vadodara at a naturopathy centre. Both had great faith in the treatment offered there. During his stay Joshi felt even better.’

It was during this visit that Joshi for the first time was drawn into a major controversial issue of independent India; construction of the Sardar Sarovar dam on Narmada river. It happened almost by chance. During his stay in Vadodara, whenever possible, Joshi would travel with his two friends by car visiting nearby areas. Once while going to Surat from Vadodara due to torrential rain they had to discontinue the journey. Roads were flooded with knee-deep water. They spent a night en route waiting for the water to recede. Paradoxically, the newspaper pages were full of scenes from Kachch and Saurashtra which had not received even a drop of rain and the specter of the worst famine in decades loomed large. Floods in South Gujarat and drought in rest of the State; there was continuous discussion amongst the three of them on this anomaly. One conclusion that emerged out of that discussion was about the need for Narmada dam. While incessant rain was one reason for the floods in South, the other was restrictions put on the construction of the dam. Enormous quantity of water flowing through Narmada could not be stored in the dam, whose height was restricted to only 80 meters; half of the proposed plan. The water was flowing over the dam into the surrounding areas; flooding the entire region. Had that water gone into the dam with a greater storage capacity, it could have been stored and the excess water could have been released systematically into the Farmers on the National Agenda

Q

279