No One Had a Tongue to Speak ─ The Untold Story of One of History's Deadliest Floods

This volume uses interviews and archival research to document the Machhu dam disaster of 1979, when monsoon rains in the Indian state of Gujarat caused the two mile-long dam to disintegrate, flooding the city of Morbi and its surrounding agricultural villages and killing thousands of people. The authors also describe the history of the dam, the aftermath, and the judicial investigation into the collapse. Sandesara, a researcher and son of a Machhu flood survivor, is pursuing degrees in medicine and social anthropology at the U. of Pennsylvania. Wooten is a writing teacher who pursued a degree at Harvard, where the two authors met and began their research. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Utpal Sandesara (Philadelphia, PA), the son of a Machhu flood survivor, is pursuing an MD and a PhD in social anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. As a Harvard Frederick Sheldon Prize Fellow, he worked as a researcher for Peru’s Ministry of Health, preparing a report on the integration of prenatal care with testing and treatment of HIV and syphilis in the national health system.

Tom Wooten (New Orleans, LA) teaches writing at KIPP McDonogh 15 School for the Creative Arts in New Orleans as a Teach for America corps member. As a Harvard Kennedy School research fellow, he traveled to New Orleans to conduct interviews with the leaders of the city’s neighborhood-based recovery efforts.

While pursuing degrees in Harvard University’s Social Studies program, the authors traveled to India, where they did the field research that is the foundation of this book.