Veteran social activist Medha Patkar today asked the older generations learn to sit back and give space to younger generation as they are rising and speaking up. Speaking at inaugural sessions of the three-day 11th National Convention of the National Alliance of Peoples Movements (NAPM) in Patna she cautioned that they are not a force that can or should be stopped.

At a time NAPM celebrating 20th anniversary, she said “we will not get so caught in self-critique that we lose focus of the larger struggles.” She expressed severe concern that electoral politics and political parties are becoming increasingly opportunistic, exclusive and anti-poor. She asserted that people’s struggles have to lead the way towards a better tomorrow.

“We have to fight the battles of our own lands, forests, rivers but we also need to locate ourselves in the larger ongoing struggles the world over,” she added. She also chose the occasion to invoke and congratulate the various movements rising across the country including land rights struggles in Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha and the Narmada valley, the struggle for self-determination in Kashmir, the fight for Transparency and Accountability or the Dalit student’s movements across campuses.

More than 1000 representatives of 200 organisations from across 20 states came together on this occasion. She said that “we are meeting here to send out a strong message on the need for all of us progressive individuals, rights based organisations and people’s movements to come together and create an alternative world at a time when there is a rising threat on our Natural Resources, our Constitutional values and the principles of Equality and Justice.”