- Lived:
- b. 1 December 1954, Bombay (Mumbai) → the Narmada valley, where she has spent four decades between tribal hamlets, courtrooms, jail cells and fasts — living, as of September 2026
- Field:
- social movement leadership — founder of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, the "Save the Narmada Movement," and a convener of the National Alliance of People's Movements
- The Big Idea:
- A country may build what it decides to build — but not by pretending the people in the way do not exist. She lost the dam and changed the rules: since her movement, resettlement and rehabilitation are conditions India must meet, not favours it may grant.
- In their words:
- "Koi nahi hatega, bandh nahi banega" — "No one will move, the dam will not be built" — the movement's slogan, chanted in the valley since the late 1980s (she leads it still, as of September 2026)
- If you remember one thing:
- The Sardar Sarovar dam stands, full to its crest — and every large project in India now carries, written into law and lending rules alike, the obligations one woman standing in rising water forced the state and the World Bank to accept.