Tulsiram Yadav, 51

Chikalda/nanakbedi village, Badwani district

“I WAS in school when I first heard of the dam in Gujarat and how we could lose our land some day. But it was only some decades later, in 2001, when we received a notice saying that our land would be acquired, that it hit home,” says Tulsiram Yadav, standing in his field in Chikalda village.

The land he stands on —13 acres of the family-owned 16 acres — was acquired by the government in 2004. Back then, the two brothers got a little over Rs 13 lakh as compensation, which they used to buy 16 acres in Nanakbedi, a few kilometres away. “We put in some money of our own,” Yadav says. They also returned the residential plot they were given by the Narmada Valley Development Authority (NVDA) and invested the Rs 50,000 they received for it to buy more land.

He says he is glad he took the compensation. “I now grow crops on both my plots

— the one in Chikalda and in Nanakbedi,” he says, adding that the family lives in Chikalda. Rules allow land owners to cultivate their original land until it is submerged. In some cases, land gets submerged only during the monsoon and farmers often go back to cultivate once the water recedes. While the family grows wheat on the Chikalda land, in Nanakbedi, they now grow sugarcane after a new sugar factory came up nearby a couple of years ago.

“I keep shuttling between the two plots because both require attention,’’ says Tulsiram, adding that one of his two sons helps him in the field; the other works for the state electricity board. He thinks he can do this for another five years, “maybe even more”. “I think it will take another five years before the dam reaches its full height. Until then, I will get to keep both my plots,’’ he says.

Jahriya and family moved out of their submerged village to land offered by government. Of the 4,621 families entitled for land compensation, 239 got land