tw // forced displacement, state violence, destruction of indigenous land
there is something happening in madhya pradesh (india) right now that not many people are talking about.
it's called the ken-betwa river linking project. ₹44,605 crore (40 million USD). india's first ever river interlinking project.
the project is being built inside the panna tiger reserve. to make way for the daudhan dam, over 6,000 hectares of protected forest land will be submerged. 12,000 trees have already been felled inside the reserve. estimates for the total number of trees that will be destroyed across the project range from 2.3 million to 6 million. the supreme court's own central empowered committee flagged this. the panna tiger reserve had tigers declared locally extinct in 2005. it took years of work to bring them back. the project will now drown the habitat that recovery was built on. it also threatens the ken gharial (crocodile) sanctuary and critical vulture nesting sites downstream.
22 villages are directly affected in the first phase alone. over 7,000 families. gond and kol adivasi (tribal) communities who have lived on this land for generations, whose entire existence — food, income, culture, identity — is tied to jal, jangal, zameen — water, forest, land. they are being told to leave.
most families have rejected the rehabilitation package. the compensation is below market rate, surveys have discrepancies, and many families have received nothing at all. homes have been demolished during the monsoon season. people are living in the open, in the rain. there are videos of a tribal family sitting among the rubble of their home circulating on social media. the administration says precautions were take but families say they were inside when the walls came down.
when they protested, the government of india filed false criminal cases against them. cut off electricity to villages. demolished schools. and then, on july 19 at 5am, police moved in and forcibly broke up a 17-day sit-in on the banks of the barana river. the protest leader amit bhatnagar, who had been on hunger strike for 11 days, was taken away. the police say he was hospitalised because his health "worsened." (exactly what happened with sonam wangchuk) the protesters say he was detained before he could speak to the media about alleged corruption of ₹400 crore (4 million USD) in the project. the protesters' slogan was: nyay do, ya maar do — give us justice, or kill us.
this is being done in the name of providing water to bundelkhand, a drought-prone region. that's a real problem that deserves a real solution. but the people being displaced are asking something reasonable: show us the surveys. pay us fair rates. give us land for land, not just cash. consult our gram sabhas the way the law requires.
india has some of the most biodiverse forests on earth. the adivasi communities who have protected that land for centuries are not obstacles to development. they are the reason any of it still exists. and they are being evicted, intimidated and arrested so a dam can be built inside a tiger reserve that the government's own courts said should not be touched.
