Author: Suchandana Gupta, TNN
Publication: The Times of India
Date: September 15, 2012
URL:   http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Reality-bites-Khandwas-made-for-TV-protest/articleshow/16404681.cms?referral=PM

Welcome to the village which was in the eye of the storm with 'jal satyagrah' for the past three weeks, where people displaced by the Omkareshwar dam were recorded by television cameras in neck-deep water, agitating for compensation and land. It's a story of how the entire media was taken for a ride with the help of mobile phones, which came in handy for keeping tabs on TV crews.

 The spot shown on TV channels where the agitators protested is not the village proper but the banks of a canal running into the Narmada. The canal, locally known as Kaveri, runs between the villages of Ghogalgaon and Toki. Both the villages are on a higher altitude while the demonstration spot was on a slide outside Ghogalgaon running into Kaveri. Even as viewers across the country were outraged by what they saw, in reality, the water hereabouts is just knee-deep. When TOI inspected the place of demonstration after the water receded, the spot was found to be only two feet deep.

 "We were sitting in water," said Mehtab Giri, a villager who joined the protest. "First, we laid bricks and stone slabs on which were placed iron doors used for sluice gates of the dam. This would help us sit comfortably during the protest. There were two such rows: the first near the shore and the other two steps behind."

Local journalist Anant Maheshwari, present on most days during the agitation, said, "Whenever the media took shots, the second arrangement in the slightly deeper water was used. Agitators waded into water to show the level sometimes chin-deep and at others, neck-deep. When they stood up, it was hardly till their waist." And they weren't in water all the time; they frequently walked in and out of the canal.

 "We stayed in water for 17 days but occasionally did come out, at times to go to toilet," said a protester, Radheyshyam Tirole. Asked whether he slept in the water, Tirole said, "How can anyone sleep in the water?" Another villager Chaen Bharati Goswami said, "We slept for three hours during the night. We stepped out of the water to bathe and eat, etc."

 Another villager said the agitators walked out of water and sat on dry land under the NBA 'shamiyana' when the media wasn't present. "Every time they stepped out, there were medical teams applying ointments to their feet," he said. The agitators also kept changing.