Left Behind by Progress: The Indigenous Women Excluded from India's Largest River Project

Madhya Pradesh, India - Reaching the women of Kupi village requires navigating 74km (46 miles) of broken roads through hilly terrain from the Chhatarpur railway station. As you enter Panna Tiger Reserve, one of central India's most ecologically rich corridors, the road narrows. During a humid July morning with the monsoon settling over the reserve, turning laterite roads to mud, about 30 women in bright cotton sarees gathered beneath an unnamed bridge over the Barna River in the buffer zone. Their husbands and fathers stood slightly behind them in white cotton kurtas for the Chita Andolan, or funeral pyre protest.

The unlit pyres symbolised what displacement without compensation leaves behind: no home, no land, and nowhere to go. Fifty-year-old Gyan Rani Gond sat slowly onto a pyre, her face carrying frustration and anger. In the background, protest leader Amit Bhatnagar, 43, and other villagers chanted slogans like "Inquilab Zindabad" and "Nyay do ya maar do." Their villages lie in the path of the Daudhan Dam, the central piece of India's first river-linking project, which will submerge 10 settlements in and around Panna Tiger Reserve and displace some 7,000 families.

Gyan Rani belongs to the Gond tribe, one of central India's oldest Indigenous communities. Her family owns 1.2 hectares (three acres) of agricultural land in Pathapur. While her husband, Gayadeen, and elder son, Hardas, received rehabilitation payments, the family received no separate compensation for agricultural land, and the adult women received nothing—including Gyan Rani, her 18-year-old daughter Muliya, her elder son's wife, and Pooja, the 21-year-old widow of Gyan Rani's younger son. Gayadeen believes adult women in his household should have received compensation in their own names, noting the current payment is insufficient to rebuild their lives. One of their houses has already been demolished, leaving only rubble, while a second house where Pooja lives remains under threat.

Legally, India's Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act (LARR), 2013, includes an explanation under Section 3(m) stating that every adult, regardless of gender, shall be treated as a separate family for compensation purposes. However, in practice, officials apply only the conventional definition of family—consisting of a person, spouse, and dependent minor children—leaving women without land titles or names on government lists excluded from compensation.

Ken-Betwa is the first of 30 planned river interlinking projects under India's National Perspective Plan. As of April 2025, a Right to Information request via the Press Trust of India showed no affected family had been fully rehabilitated. While Madhya Pradesh Revenue Minister Karan Singh Verma stated in July 2026 that all eligible families in Panna and Chhatarpur districts had received benefits, protests led the prime minister's office to seek a report over allegations that compensation went to agents instead of families. Following Amit Bhatnagar's 18-day hunger strike, the Chhatarpur district administration ordered a new verification of affected families on July 20, though construction of the dam continues.

Pooja Gond, living in a mud hut near a cowshed in Pathapur, has not received a single rupee in compensation, nor does she receive a widow's pension. When she approached officials after her husband Parshuram's death, she was told her name was not on the list and she would need to pay 100,000 Indian rupees ($1,050) to add it. She walked to Kishangarh and travelled to Chhatarpur, spending 800 Indian rupees ($8), but nothing changed. One of her family's two houses was demolished without notice, and the second house will soon follow. Meanwhile, Muliya, Gyan Rani's 18-year-old daughter, holds a voter ID but was told she was too young for compensation, delaying medical treatment for sores in her mouth.

Bina Agarwal, professor of development economics and environment at the University of Manchester and author of A Field of One's Own, notes that this reflects a contradiction in how the law defines a family, where officials apply the conventional definition while ignoring the explanation that would benefit women if treated as the main text. Bhatnagar, convener of the Jai Kisan Sangathan, estimates that 400 to 500 women, particularly widows, have been excluded because their names were missing from original lists. Following his hunger strike, Bhatnagar was arrested by police on July 19 alongside hundreds of protesters as authorities moved to end the demonstration.

As the Ken-Betwa project moves forward, supporters argue the Daudhan Dam will bring irrigation, drinking water, and hydropower to drought-prone Bundelkhand, while critics challenge the environmental assessment and approval process. For women in villages like Pathapur, however, the immediate crisis is the lack of equitable compensation as their homes disappear beneath the rising waters.