Ecocide at Ken-Betwa
A people’s movement against the Ken Betwa river link project is taking root in Panna. Will it pit them against the so-called benefit zone of the project?
Gyanendra Singh, a farmer in Panna district, is a worried man these days. His land lies along the Ken river in Madla village. The last few years had been kind to him, he had taken a good crop of wheat each season, the high-yield seeds and water from the Ken coming to his aid. But all that is at risk now, mainly due to the dam proposed at Daudhan under the Ken-Betwa river link (KBRL) project.
But even as the ambitious project moves into the final stages of environmental clearances, an anti-dam people’s movement is taking root in Panna, the district that will bear most of the ‘cost’. For many like Gyanendra, who stand to lose their home and livelihood, the fuzziness in the details of the clearance process has only added to their fears.
In the second week of June, a group of a hundred-odd people submitted a clutch of petitions to the Panna district collector raising various concerns about the project. The petitioners, part of the newly formed Panna Vikas Manch, were led by the soft-spoken Dilhar Kumari, the titular rajmata of the
erstwhile Panna princely state. The delegation included politicians from the BJP and the Congress, residents of Panna town and a new class of green activists, beneficiaries of the trickledown effects in the local economy from the revival of the tiger population in the Panna national park.
Under the KBRL project, a 73.8 metre-high dam is proposed to be constructed on the Ken river at Daudhan in Chhatarpur district. The dam will transfer excess water from the Ken to the Betwa through a canal and will irrigate areas in Tikamgarh and Chhatarpur districts of Madhya Pradesh and Jhansi and Hamirpur districts of Uttar Pradesh. The dam will submerge about 90 sq. km of land, of which about 61 sq. km will be critical tiger breeding habitat in the 543 sq. km Panna Tiger Reserve. Meanwhile, while the dam comes up, water availability downstream in Panna district will be affected. It will also split up the park, creating an island habitat— one that wildlife experts feel cannot sustain a big cat population.
“All this while we were told that industries and other development work couldn’t happen in Panna because of the national park,” says Kumari. “Now that the park has finally begun to help the local people, they are going to submerge a large portion of it.” The rajmata, who has contested the assembly elections on a BJP ticket from Powai segment once, adds, “About 40 per cent of the district is forest. We will go to the villages along the river, explain to the people the truth about the project.”
A total of about 7 per cent of the agricultural land in Panna district is irrigated, making it a very deficient district in this regard. Migration in search of work is common in these areas. “What we are saying is that Panna stands to lose with this project,” says Shyamendra Singh, son of the BJP MP from Khajuraho, Nagendra Singh. “The people of Panna will get nothing from the dam. In fact, they will be left with no water in the river—the lifeline for everybody living alongside it.”
Shyamendra, a former Madhya Pradesh state wildlife board member, says that in 1956, four dams were pro-
posed on the Ken—the Ken Multipurpose, the Patne Major, the Midhason Diversion and the Bhitari Mutmuru—which were reapproved in 2006 but never built. “The people of Panna want these dams built first, after which the government is free to make the dam at Daudhan. These four dams will ensure water for the people of Panna,” he says.
“We hear the project will bring water to parched Bundelkhand,” says Yusuf Beg, president of the Stone Quarry Workers Sangh in Panna. “We also hear it will help more dams come up in Vidisha and Raisen. How will this happen when we don’t have enough water ourselves?”
As per the National Water Development Agency (NWDA) document on the project, of the 1,020 cubic mm water to be diverted from the Ken, 659 cubic mm will be to the Betwa while 312 cubic mm is to be utilised along the way. The Betwa command will then be in a position to have four dams—Barari, Neemkheda, Richhan and Kesri—to irrigate 1.3 lakh hectares in Raisen and Vidisha districts.
Another petition to the DM raises doubts over Ken even being categorised as an ‘excess’ river—the premise on which the dam was announced. “The NWDA doesn’t share data on water flow, saying it is a secret,” says Professor Brij Gopal of the Centre for Inland Waters of South Asia in Jaipur. “But from what is evident to the eye, the river is dry at many places. Also, studies by the National Institute of Hydrology, Roorkee, have pointed to both reduced rainfall and discharge. Where is the water flow that is being talked about?”
“The secretary, ministry of water resources, had asked the Central Water Commission not to sanction any dam till it ensures ecological flow in the river. Are they following orders in the KB Link case?” asks Bhavna Kumari, Shyamendra Singh’s wife, who is also part of the manch. She says the KB Link seems like an experiment that may or may not work out. But it could result in damage that can’t be undone.
Meanwhile, how are people in Tikamgarh and Chhatarpur—the areas expected to benefit from the project—taking it? “The people are cautious about the outcome,” says Mastram Ghosh, a resident of Niwari town in Tikamgarh district. “We will be happy if water comes here, but the socalled advantages are so far in the future that no one’s really excited about it.”
“We welcome the project if it gets us water. But people here feel that most of the benefits will be reaped by UP while MP makes the sacrifice,” says former Niwari MLA Brajendra Singh Rathore.
So, will the movement in Panna now take the shape of a campaign like the Narmada Bachao Andolan? “There are so many deprivation issues in Panna. If people get organised, it can become a potent movement,” says Sachin Jain of the Right to Food Campaign. “It’s ironic that the state can’t see the negative aspects of a project that civil society can.”
Presently, the project is under the consideration of the Supreme Court’s central empowered committee (CEC), just a step short of clearance by the Union ministry for environment and forests. A large part of the doubt in the minds of the people is due to the dodgy way in which the multistep wildlife and environmental clear
ances have been handled by the government. In the initial days, the then field director of the Panna Tiger Reserve, R. Sreenivasa Murthy, had objected to the project in writing. Murthy was soon promoted and moved out of the park. After his transfer, Murthy’s successor did not object as strongly and the project was passed by the MP state wildlife advisory board. The objections raised by independent members M.K. Ranjitsinh, Belinda Wright, Khageshwar Naik and Deepankar Ghosh at the crucial meeting of the board were ignored by the MP government. Needless to say, the exofficio government members remained mum at the meeting.
The objections of the expert committee of the National Wildlife Board were also ignored. When the project came to the environmental clearance phase, the expert appraisal committee’s (EAC) objections were cleared by its chairman weeks before he went on to become head of the NWDA—the user agency for the KB link project—overlooking the evident conflict of interest. “The NWDA says it has not carried out a survey of the forest area. So how do they know what the extent of submergence will be?” asks Prof. Gopal.
During the forest clearance approvals under the Forest Clearance Act (FCA), another interesting aspect came to light. The number of trees estimated to be cut in the submergence area kept mysteriously increasing rapidly. As per the initial project report submitted, a total of 32,900 trees were to be cut. This was amended to 1.1 million after the conservator of forests, Chhatarpur, conducted his own tree count. A further amendment in the numbers was done in 2016, where the number of trees stood at 1.4 million. By the time the FCA clearance came, it had topped 1.8 million. The FCA panel pointed out that in the next 810 years, by the time the project is completed, the total number to be cut would have increased to 2.3 million as trees whose girth is less than 20 cms now would have attained critical mass by then. So clearly, the number of trees to be sacrificed was suppressed initially to ensure approval for the project.
After all this, it’s no wonder that even public representatives from the ruling party are not so excited about the project. “The government needs to tell us what is happening. I am from the BJP, but for me, Panna comes first,” says Ravi Raj Singh Yadav, president of the Panna district panchayat. The Panna Vikas Manch has now demanded that a fresh round of public hearings be held so that the people can question the government on what the project entails.
Meanwhile, a prominent prodam voice has emerged in the form of former MP Lokendra Singh, also a scion of the erstwhile Panna ruling family. Loken dra Singh, who played a crucial role in the formation of the national park, now says the dam will benefit everyone with the electricity it generates. “The dam can be made and the park can be saved too. I demand that another 200 sq. km. of forests be added to the park. Those who are opposing the dam are doing it for the sake of opposing it,” he says. Lokendra Singh’s argument is countered by Shyamendra who says that if new areas are added to the park, people living there would have to be moved out and this will result in another displacement.
But what of the people whose houses will be submerged, the ones living at ground zero, Daudhan? “I am resigned to what is happening, but the government should at least ensure that we are taken care of,” says Janki Prasad Yadav, a resident of Daudhan, the village where the dam is proposed. The residents of Daudhan and halfadozen other villages that will be submerged seem keen to move out and the reasons are not hard to guess. The villages haven’t seen any ‘development’ in the form of schools, electricity or other state schemes since they were part of the Panna national park for a long time. “We didn’t get compensation when the park was made, but this time we will not budge till compensation is paid,” says former sarpanch of Daudhan, Shyamlal. Clearly everyone, from Panna to the benefit areas in Tikamgarh and at Daudhan, are aspiring to a better life.