No-nonsense guide to international development

On the banks of India's river Narmada, where I write this, a battle is raging between people and devel opment. For the past 17 years, communities here have fought non-violently against the destruction that will be wrought to their homes and livelihoods by the con struction of the massive Sardar Sarovar dam. This year, with the dam height newly raised and a torrential monsoon, we are almost certain to witness the tragedy we have feared for so long. Thousands of families will lose lands and livelihoods, homes and livestock, with negligible compensation.

This battle in Narmada is part of a wider war against a perverted paradigm of development which is being imposed by means of an unprincipled, unscientific, and undemocratic process. The Narmada people's movement is one of several of its kind - the Zapatistas in Mexico, indigenous communities in the Amazon and in Canada, farmers in France, India and Philippines, and fishworkers in Japan. These move ments do more than symbolize the profound resist ance the prevailing development model provokes. They constitute a struggle on behalf of a different con ception of what development ought to be.