Narmada Bachao Andolan leader Medha Patkar,lies on a bed,with her eyes closed in the sixth floor of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi.

She has been fasting since the last 19 days. Every hour, she takes a glass of water.

In last twenty years, Patkar has fasted for more than 320 days at various points of time seeking justice for people (mainly tribals and villagers) displaced by the construction of big dams over the Narmada river. For her, big dams just cannot be a vehicle of development.

But now she alone does not voice this opinion. The series of events, triggered off by Saifuddin Soz's statement that the height of the Sardar Sarovar dam will not be raised, has got the entire nation to stand up and take note of the issue of development and the manner it is engaged in.

A fasting woman has put Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in an unenviable situation to select between displaced tribals and the villagers' just demands for better and timely rehabilitation and the militant middle-class and farmers' just demand for more drinking water and water for irrigation.

The importance of her fasting also lies in the fact that a chief minister has been forced to go on counter-fasting to more loudly emphasize the counter-point of what Medha is representing.

This time her fast has caught the nation's attention, of course, at a huge cost to her health and her two colleagues Bhagvatibai and Jamsing's health. Jamsingh bhai, a tribal from Narmada valley is in a separate room of AIIMS. When his health deteriorated police 'detained' him and forcibly took him to hospital. He has been given intravenous glucose to stabilize his health.

On March 8, 2006, the Narmada Control Authority gave permission to raise the height of the Sardar Sarovar Dam to 121-92 metres. Four days later, Medha and some 50 activists sat on dharna in New Delhi. Medha has sat innumerable times on dharna. So, initially, nobody took her or her agitation seriously.

But the scene changed when on March 27, Patkar and two others activists went on a hunger strike, the most potent political weapon popularised by Gandhiji to protest against injustice. Today she risks damaging her kidneys permanently due to fluctuating ketone (product of fat metabolism) level due to constant fasting. Her left leg is wrapped in bandage. She suffers from a painful skin disease called Psoriasis.

Her health could not be worse than this. She has not washed her hair since a month nor is she capable of walking or sitting. Her health may be failing but her resolve is as strong as ever.

It's important to see how long we, the self acclaimed literate and cultured people of India, use to behave apathetically ?