Prime Minister Narendra Modi has received blessings of hundreds of villagers from Kutch’s Rayan village today. The holy waters of River Narmada have reached from 734 kms afar. For 75 years after independence, there have been parts of India where drinking water is a luxury. Something, many of us take for granted.
PM Modi has been receiving criticism from his all quarters. His haters do it because they don’t like the things he is doing, his supporters are upset with him because they feel he is not doing enough, that there could be so much more he could have done. Some of this is unfair and some is fair. After all, that is how healthy democracy is, holding the elected representative accountable. But, despite all this, one thing is for sure, the man has his heart in the right place.
Locals in Kutch celebrating the arrival of Narmada water in Modkuba canal at Rayan village near coastal Mandvi town pic.twitter.com/ZgtY13CcNp
— DeshGujarat (@DeshGujarat) July 6, 2022
Hear those Bharat Mata Ki Jai chant?
At modkuba village ( kutch ) welcoming Narmada Maiya ( midnight 1:15am ) pic.twitter.com/luFnsIYs80
— Manohar Patel (@Manohar78709799) July 7, 2022
Villagers are welcoming Maa Narmada post midnight by firecrackers.
કચ્છ મોટી ખાખર માં નર્મદા મૈયા ની વધામણી કરતાં ગામવાસીઓ
— Hindustani भावना દેઢિયા 🇮🇳 (@hindustanishern) July 6, 2022
નમામિ દેવી નર્મદે 🙏🙏 pic.twitter.com/IlJ8QadQeO
Young, old – all have come to welcome the waters of Narmada. See how everyone is cheering, their eyes welling up? For them, the river is the Goddess, the mother one prays to.
Local farmers in Kutch making video of arrival of Narmada water for irrigation for the first time at Bhujpur village of Mundra taluka earlier today. One of farmers can be heard saying – Modi hai to mumkin hai. pic.twitter.com/4q5AvXDrbR
— DeshGujarat (@DeshGujarat) July 6, 2022
“We are welcoming the goddess”, a man can be heard saying in Gujarati in the video above. “We are farmers, we will of course be happy to see the Narmada waters reach us,” another person says. “Wah, sarkar, wah Modi,” he says.
The Narmada waters have travelled almost 750 kms from the Sardar Sarovar Dam to reach this far off village in Kutch.
This was dream of Narendra Modi when he was the chief minister of Gujarat. Imagine seeing a project of this magnitude being realised in your lifetime. Something you had to fight so hard for because you faced opposition from neighbouring state governments ruled by Congress, central government ruled by Congress-led UPA and then Congress-friendly ‘activists’ who seem to have sole purpose of stalling any infrastructure development project for years, just because.
As the then chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi launched the Saurashtra Narmada Avtaran Irrigation (SAUNI) Yojana in September 2012. SAUNI word in Gujarati means “everyone’s”. Through SAUNI Yojana, 115 dams in the arid Saurashtra region will be filled by diverting flood waters which overflow from the Sardar Sarovar dam in South Gujarat, a couple of kilometres away.
A spider pipeline network of 1,125 km long was involved. SAUNI Yojana will provide benefit of Narmada water to 737 villages of 11 districts and 31 cities in the Kutch-Saurashra region.
Imagine keeping all these people, animals in drought-prone area deprived of water, just because you don’t like one man, Narendra Modi.
In September 2019, PM Modi celebrated his birthday at Kevadia in Narmada district in Gujarat. On September 15 that year, the reservoir dam reached full reservoir level (FRL) of 138.68 metres for the first time ever. This was significant and a proud day for Gujaratis. In June 2014, a month after Prime Minister Modi swore in, the final approval came which breathed a new life in the project that UPA sat on for years. In May 2017, Narmada waters reached the parched Kutch.
At last in June 2017, the project whose foundation was laid in 1961 by then Prime Minister Nehru, was inaugurated by now Prime Minister Narendra Modi. When people of Rajkot received Narmada water they were overjoyed.
I have extended family in Bharuch, Gujarat. My grandmother was born and brought up there. I have grown up hearing stories how she saw the Dandi March led by MK Gandhi pass by. “My brother used to swim across the river,” she would say about the Narmada. She taught me Narmadashtakam, a composition by Adi Shankaracharya offering salutations to Goddess Narmada. Whenever we would visit Bharuch, my father and grandmother will bow down to the Narmada while crossing the Golden Bridge and recite ‘Namami Devi Narmade’ which connects Ankleshwar to Bharuch.
The foundation stone of the project was laid back in back in 1961 by the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Ever since then it has been marred by protests by activists like Narmada Bachao Aandolan founder Medha Patkar, who have claimed that the dam’s water might displace about 40,000 families as their homes would be submerged. They have claimed that the rehabilitation process of these families is still not complete and that the water supply in the dam be stopped until its done.
In 2017, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the much publicised 138-metre Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada river at Dabhoi, Gujarat. It was a landmark of sorts considering the amount of delays the project had experienced owing to protests by various activists. This increase in height from 121.92 metre to 138.68 metre has quadrupled the dam’s storage capacity led to 4.73 million acre feet.
PM Modi, while inaugurating the project had said that when the World Bank (which had earlier agreed to fund the project), refused to give loan citing environmental concerns, the temples of Gujarat organised funds for the dam. He also added that no other project in the world had so many hurdles.
As the Narmada waters reach further in Kutch and farmers of Gujarat welcome Maa Narmada, my heart is full. I have tears in my eyes even as I sit far away in Delhi-NCR, away from home.
नर्मदे, सर्वदे|
