Sardar Sarovar

Narmada River Valley Trip Report

The reservoir of the Sardar Sarovar dam, which is being built on the Narmada River in India, will submerge 245 villages and displace over 43,000 families. Each year, the rains of the monsoon season add more water to the reservoir, permanently submerging villages and towns. This process will continue until the reservoir is full.

On December 31, 2006, the wall of the Sardar Sarovar Dam in India’s Narmada valley was raised to 122 meters. The Sardar Sarovar Dam is the largest in a series of dams, reservoirs and canals that control the flow of the Narmada River, the fifth largest river in India. With this height increase, the dam will flood more than 37,000 hectares of forest and agricultural land and raise the number of displaced people to 320,000. Many of the affected people are indigenous advasis and farmers, who are left with no viable option for resettlement. On the first of January, hundreds of affected people gathered to protest the injustices of this large dam project.