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Madhya Pradesh election: Ken-betwa river project looms over poll arena

By, Panna/chhattarpur
Nov 08, 2023 06:04 AM IST

The Central government, along with the Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh governments, is implementing the ₹44,605 crore Ken-Betwa project.

At the forest entry gate to the Panna Tiger Reserve in Trikiya, the lone forest guard Hukam Singh, stands stoutly preventing “outsiders” from going to Daudhan village, where work onthe first dam under Ken Betwa River Inter-Linking Project, envisaged two decades ago, is set to start in a few months. Villagers are protesting the project, over compensation for relocation, and this resulted in the state government cancelling the launch of the project by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 4, officials said.

Environmentalists said the Ken-Betwa river inter-linking project will submerge 40% of the Panna Tiger Reserve. (HT file photo)
Environmentalists said the Ken-Betwa river inter-linking project will submerge 40% of the Panna Tiger Reserve. (HT file photo)

“We are not against the project. We just want better compensation,” said Mahesh Kumar Adivasi, a school teacher in Daudhan village, who has five acres of agriculture land within Panna Tiger Reserve buffer area, like thousands of tribals living in small muddy homes in and around the reserve. “We live like crocodiles in a lake,” he added, metaphorically referring to their tough life and said their protest started in August this year to ensure better lives for their children.

The Central government, along with the Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh governments is implementing the 44,605 crore river-interlinking project, the country’s biggest, to benefit 13 districts of Bundelkhand --- six in Madhya Pradesh and seven in Uttar Pradesh. The MP government has decided to pay compensation of 15 lakh for every voter in a family (with husband and wife considered as one voter). Those living in the 21 villages that are to be relocated will also get 80,000 as compensation for their home and will have to pay 5.5 lakh if the government builds a house for them. “The money is grossly inadequate,” said Gauri Shankar Pathak of Jagdamba, another village that is to be relocated. “We will lose our land which has been feeding us for generations.”

KEN-BETWA AMBITION

The then National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in 2003 decided to transfer water from the surplus Ken river to the water deficient Betwa (both rivers in Bundelkhand) through the construction of series of dams and canals so as to provide sufficient drinking and irrigation water to the rain shadow region of Bundelkhand. The project was in limbo for 10 years of the United Progressive Alliance’s (UPA) rule between 2004 and May 2014. The project was revived by the Modi government in August 2014.

In the first phase, the Daudhan Dam is proposed on Ken with a canal flowing through Chhatarpur, Tikamgarh and Jhansi districts and irrigating 6.3 lakh hectares of land every year, that will link the two rivers. In the second phase, a dam, Lower Orr, and two barrages, one each at Bina and Kotha Barrage, will be constructed. The project will also help generate 34 million kilowatts of hydropower, according to the detailed project report.

In December 2021, the Union Cabinet approved the Ken-Betwa Link Project with an aim to boost “socio-economic prosperity” of the backward region of Bundelkhand by providing irrigation to 1.062 million hectares and drinking water to 6.3 million people with an aim to reduce migration. Its cost was estimated at 44,605 crore and it was to be completed in eight years, according to the Cabinet approval. The project received environment clearance in 2016 and forest clearance in October this year from the environment ministry, paving the way for work to start,

The Ken-Betwa interlinking is the first project to be taken up as part of the National Water Linking Project (NWLP), under which the ministry of Jal Shakti has identified 16 links in peninsular rivers component and 14 links in Himalayan ones for inter basin transfer. As of December 2022, the National Water Development Agency has received 49 link proposals from 10 states, out of which pre-feasibility reports of 39 link projects and detailed project reports of six link projects have been completed and sent to states concerned, according to information shared in Parliament.

PROS AND CONS

Environmentalists have said that the project will submerge 40% of the Panna tiger reserve, home to the several species of critically endangered vultures, the gharial and other species such as leopards and sloth bears. Of the total 9,000 hectares to be submerged, 6,000 hectares are part of the tiger reserve. “Panna will lose its best forest to Ken-Betwa and survival of tigers in remaining area will be difficult,” said a retired Indian Forest Service official of Madhya Pradesh cadre, who asked not to be named. The MP forest department has proposed providing additional land for the Panna tiger reserve but the official quoted above said it will take decades to develop a forest there.

Joanna Van Gruisen, whose husband Raghu Chandawat worked on the revival of tiger population in Panna from next to nothing in 2008 to 41 currently, said the project will spell doom for both Panna and Bundelkhand. “The drying Ken river will not help Bundelkhand in any way. Thousands of small water bodies and rivulets will be lost for ever. 40% of Panna tiger reserve will be under water. Tigers and other wildlife will lose their home permanently. It is a colossal waste of money.”

However, the government estimates that the project, once completed, will provide irrigation facilities to over a million hectares of farmland every year, and drinking water facility to six million people in Bundelkhand region. “The project will improve ground water levels and we plan to provide around the clock tap drinking water to every home in Bundelkhand. It will also help to reduce migration and develop Bundelkhand,” said M S Kushwaha, the officer in charge of the project in Madhya Pradesh.

Gyanendra Tiwari, who has been working with villagers for the past two decades in Panna, said the life in Bundelkhand is dependent on rain water. “Lack of irrigation and drinking water have been a bane here,” he said, adding that poor local employment avenues now cause migration for eight to 10 months in a year as compared to seasonal migration (four to five months) may be two decades ago.

At Gudyana village, about 30 km from Panna town, Dhir Adivasi, 45, has just returned from Mumbai for Diwali after eight months. Almost every adult male in this village migrates for work as marginal agriculture land holdings (less than five acres) with no irrigation facility do not provide a reliable source of income even though the village got piped drinking water thanks to the Union government’s Jal Jeevan Mission in 2022.

“Labour contractors come and take us for work to different places. We get a better wage than what we get here working in a stone quarry. We are also able to send some money back home,” said Adivasi, whose father died last year due to silicosis, the ailment he got while working at a stone quarry for two decades. Deepender Yadav, who works at a construction site in Mehrauli, Delhi, said whatever local employment is here is provided on caste lines. “In most places, upper caste youth get work as all prominent leaders are from their castes. We have no option but to go out.”

About 25 km north, in Gond tribal dominated Malki village at the foothills of Vindhya next Panna tiger reserve, there are just two men, less than 55 years of age, in the village of 80 families. “Everyone else has gone for work to other places after sowing the winter crop,” said Sodobha Bai, who sells wood collected from forest every day in Panna town to feed her family of four.

She, like many other women sitting around an elevated cement platform under a Neem tree want a pond or a borewell in their agriculture field for irrigation so that they don’t have to rely on rains for crop success. “Saheb talab banya do (Sir get the pond made),” urged Ram Kali, 70, who gets 1,000 as monthly pension as a senior citizen.

They know a pond can change their lives as it did for Govind Mandal of neighbouring Udki village, in whose farm a 20 square feet pond was dug in 2014 under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MG-NREGA). Before the pond was dug, Mandal was a rickshaw puller in Panna and his son worked as a labourer in Bhopal. “The pond helped me to irrigate my five acres of land and farm production improved. I stopped pulling a rickshaw in Panna in 2016 and my son also came back to village in 2018 as we earned enough,” Mandal, an exception in high migration zone of Bundelkhand, said.

ASPIRATIONAL PROJECT

Mandal is confident that the Ken-Betwa project can positively impact lives of people. “I am in (Panna) forest area and therefore, ground water is good. In other places, the ponds go dry for almost five to six summer months. The project could improve irrigation in drier places,” he said, not sure whether the project will be completed in his life time or not.

Tiwari, like many other migrant workers hopes that Ken Betwa project will check migration and help agriculture to improve lives in Bundelkhand, considered a backward area in MP. “The project will not end migration as many now like the city lifestyle. But it can improve agriculture productivity and reduce distress migration due to frequent droughts,” said Arun Kumar, a Panna based journalist, who has covered Bundelkhand for almost three decades. The National Institute of Disaster Management considers Bundelkhand as one of the country’s most drought prone areas along with Vidarbha in Maharashtra.

According to Chhattarpur based social activist Ravindra Vyas, 53 assembly constituencies are directly and indirectly covered under the project. “The Ken-Betwa project is not an electoral issue like previous assembly elections as not even a stone has moved even 20 years after the project was envisaged. Elections are being fought on caste lines, not on development issues,” he said, with some anguish.

Most people to whom this reporter spoke in Bundelkhand in MP said that the irrigation facilities may still be poor but drinking water availability under Jal Jeevan Mission has improved in the past two years. “Now almost every village has a piped drinking water facility and the rest will get in next few months,” said an official of the mission in Panna. “The project will ensure around the clock water to every home.”

Hukam Singh acknowledges that soon, he will no longer be required to guard the gate which is expected to go under water. “By then, I would have retired,” he said.

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