‘State-Formation From Below': Social Movement Of The Dam-Evictees' and ‘Legal Transformation' Of The State In Maharashtra (India), 1960-1976

Dam-evictees’ movements in Maharashtra have a long history. Peasants in Maharashtra fought the first struggle against dams in early 1920s, which opposed the Mulshi dam built by the Tatas. Significantly, this is the first known movement organized by the dam-affected persons in India and throughout the world. However, for various reasons, this movement failed. From 1960 onwards, the dam-evictees’ movements in Maharashtra are being led by a federally structured organization named, Maharashtra Rajya Dharangrasta va Prakalpagrasta Shetkari Parishad (MRDPSP; Maharashtra State Dam-affected and Project-affected Farmer’s Organization).

  Many of the demands of MRDPSP, such as—equity in water distribution and civic amenities for the rehabilitated villages, have been largely fulfilled by the state. Moreover, these movements of the peasants have considerably transformed the structure of the state in Maharashtra. As a result of their mounting resistance, Maharashtra government mooted the first rehabilitation law in India, in the year 1976, which was further amended and replaced in the year 1986 and 1999. Though the movements of the dam displaced still continue to operate, in this paper I mainly discuss and analyse the initial period of the movements from 1960 to 1976, when the first rehabilitation law was formed in Maharashtra that legally empowered the dam evictees.

  In this paper I argue that, dam-evictees’ movements in Maharashtra, were largely successful in getting their ‘material’ demands fulfilled because of having a long ‘historical legacy’ of movements against hydropower projects and mainly by their strategy of — a) raising purely local ‘ecological concerns’, in strategic disjuncture from global environmental issues, b) increasingly rationalizing their demands through legal ‘rights based approach’ and c) orienting their movement towards claim-making on the Maharashtra state resources, through recurring cycles of conflicts and negotiations that ultimately caused the ‘legal transformation’.