Narmada bachao andolan online:exploring discourses of representation and resistance

Mira, K. Desai and Putul, Sathe (2013) Narmada bachao andolan online:exploring discourses of representation and resistance. Journal of Media and Social Development, 1 (2). pp. 74-86. ISSN 2320-8244

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Abstract

Globalisation has lead to social and cultural capital,cultural imperialism and counter flows, technological innovation and its interaction with the society, digital divides in the communication networks and extension of economy beyond nation/states. Development issues in the context of globalisation have emerged as one of the major sites where issues of human security, environmental degradation, ecological imbalance and climate change have been extended beyond geo-political boundaries. People's movement in the era of globalisation has emerged as civil spaces where formation of communication network through technology creates 'sociology of particular' type of human actors subjected to similar type of oppression share their experiences and thereby creates 'Internet' society. Internet provides opportunities for direct involvement and intervention by human agency in creation of knowledge networks.This paper examines Internet as a site of struggle by people's movement like Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) using two specific websites as binary constructs of pro-movementand pro-dam locations and one web log stream (covering the web log spot and its 39 comments). The reasons for choosing such locations too reflect the researcher's curiosity for perceiving the meaning and representation about the most known movement of recent times; Narmada Bachao (Save Narmada). Narmada dam conceived in the Nehruvian era with the active role of State suggests the growth of capitalist production in Indian agriculture, which was well on its way during 1960 to 1990.Sardar Sarovar Project trajectory is not one confined to development issue alone but also representation of nationalism, governance and cultural politics.Rooted in cultural studies, the paper uses content analysis and textual analysis method and explores meanings of 'people', 'struggle', 'society' as posed by pro-NBA, pro-dam groups and group of audiences (blogger and the respondents to the web log) as producers of their own texts. The paper examines movement as a site for multiple discourses and website as representation and resistance. The idea is to explore the intersections of Movement, State, People, Internet technology and users of that technology.The websites chosen for the purpose of analysis are: www.narmada.org, friends of river Narmada (pro-movement site) and www.supportnarmadadam.org (pro-dam site) and the web log chosen is http://prajatantra.blogspot.com which claimed itself as space "reflecting the hopes, expectations, fears and frustrations of the common man, the centrepiece in a democracy, who is forgotten more often than not". The analysis clearly reveals Internet websites as post-modern spaces, reflecting multiple voices and representations, wherein audiences/blogger spaces still indicate 'conformity' with the 'hegemonic' pro-state voices. It is interesting to note the diversity of presentation in pro-movement versus pro-dam websites. The paper concludes that Internet as a location for 'global civil society', represents, confronts and negotiates the 'global' and 'local'

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Narmada Bachao, Blogging, People's Movement.
Subjects:	A Arts and Humanities > Education
Divisions:	Department of > Education
Depositing User:	Dr Raju C
Date Deposited:	04 Feb 2021 10:07
Last Modified:	04 Feb 2021 10:07
URI:	http://eprints.uni-mysore.ac.in/id/eprint/15692

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