• 30 large dams are being or have been built on the Narmada.
• Sardar Sarovar is the all important terminal dam 149 km from the Arabian sea.
• The dam’s design parameters have been fixed by the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal Award which heard views of  Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, all riparian states (states through which the river flows) disputing on sharing the Narmada waters.
• Rajasthan was added to the dispute, though not a riparian state and was given equal voice to be heard by the Tribunal.
• People of the Narmada valley, mainly tribals and farmers who would be displaced and dispossessed by the dam were not heard.
• The tribals have very little cash economy and are highly independent people who grow the required food-grains in the monsoon on their lands and collect minor forest produce from the surrounding jungles and barter them for potatoes, onions or in some cases sell them to make some money that they use to buy for their simple life-styles.
• Every married couple in tribal families lives in a separate hut that is made by the entire village putting in the labour with local material such as wood from the forests.
• The economic cost of a tribal house taking into account the wood that goes in it can be very high