It was the amount that a negotiating team was prepared to offer as compensation at the meeting for which Medha never showed up. They will start a worldwide e-mail campaign. They will force some of the people who are either displaced or are in danger of being displaced, into becoming martyrs. It's a crying shame. Protest movements are good and necessary in relatively somnolent, corrupt nations like India where citizens more often than not get taken for a ride in the name of development.
Examples are all over the place.
State-run power projects routinely create bands of landless people whose futures are traded for a pittance. The seamy side of development is a fact. The movements highlight that, and they ought to. But the danger is that sooner than later, such protest movements get carried away. More precisely, the people who mastermind protest movements get carried away.