Silent Valley Movement
Topic: Civil Society, Pressure Groups, NGOs and Self-help Groups · NCERT: Class 7, Ch 6 "The State, the Government, and You"
Meaning
The Silent Valley movement was a campaign in Kerala to save the forest of Silent Valley from a hydel (hydroelectric) dam planned on the Kunthipuzha river. The Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP), a people's science group, led the opposition along with scientists and poets. The project was dropped in 1983, and the area became a national park in 1984. It is one of India's best-known environmental movements. It showed that civil society, the space between the family, the state and the market, could change a major government project.
Example
The poet Sugathakumari used her writing to win public support for saving the forest. The KSSP made the scientific case against the dam. Together they turned a local fight into a national debate, and the government gave up the project in 1983.
Don't confuse with
- Appiko movement: a 1983 tree-hugging movement in Uttara Kannada, Karnataka, led by Panduranga Hegde. It fought tree felling in the Western Ghats, not a dam in Kerala.
- Narmada Bachao Andolan: also against dams, but its main concern was people losing their homes and poor rehabilitation. It did not stop the Sardar Sarovar dam.