It has also raised troubling questions about the cost of development for India as its economy booms, raising the living standards of many but leaving millions more by the wayside, commentators say.

“The dam campaign has come to symbolise the injustice in India regarding displacement of so many people (for development projects) without adequate resettlement,” UN special rapporteur on adequate housing Miloon Kothari said.

She has accepted the clock cannot be turned back on the dam, which is near completion. But she wants the government to abide by a Supreme Court order banning construction to raise the height of the Sardar Sarovar, the biggest dam in the complex, until 35,000 villagers are resettled and given cultivable land.

Workers are racing to raise the dam from 110 meters (360 feet) to 122 meters. Critics say the dambuilders are seeking to present the Supreme Court with a fait accompli when it hears the issue April 17.

Water Resources Minister Saifuddin Soz and two other ministers have travelled to the site to review resettlement efforts. But critics have called their whistle-stop tour a sham and have asked a trio of prominent citizens to make their own independent inspection.

“This is symbolic of a last battle in a sense ... against what the Indian state is doing which is economic growth, not distribution (of wealth) and development,” said Jawaharlal University international relations professor Kamal Mitra Chenoy, who joined the fast.

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