One-woman protest helps halt huge Indian dam project

It was a victory for protesters who included the Booker Prize-winning novelist Arundhati Roy and the Bollywood movie star Aamir Khan. But mostly it was a victory for a woman who went on hunger strike for 20 days to draw attention to the plight of those living in the shadow of the dam.

Medha Patkar is the most famous human rights activist in India. But when she and fellow activists began a hunger strike in Delhi in March, it was dismissed as just a publicity stunt.

But the weeks passed and the hunger strike went on. After almost three weeks, Ms Patkar's health was deteriorating fast, but she had forced the dam on to the front pages of all India's national newspapers day after day, and made herself a political force the Indian government could not ignore.

She was taken to hospital against her will by police, but hospital staff did not force her to eat - hunger strikes are deeply respected in India, where they were enshrined in the national consciousness by Mahatma Gandhi.

The stand-off pitched her against Narendra Modi, thechief minister of Gujarat state, who called off a visit to Britain last year after human rights activists said they would try to have him arrested for crimes against humanity during the Gujarat massacres of 2002.

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