: Planned diversion of North Indiaâ€™s Betwa river will displace residents of 4,000 villages #IndiaNEWS Frail and bent over his walking stick, Raja Ram squatted by the bushes of the denuded forest-scape

Planned diversion of North Indiaâ€™s Betwa river will displace residents of 4,000 villages #IndiaNEWS
Frail and bent over his walking stick, Raja Ram squatted by the bushes of the denuded forest-scape around his village. His buffalo, whom he lovingly named Chandgaya, grazed on the hillock dominated by the invasive Prosopis juliflora shrubs. Behind the hillock and abutting Gendora village lay the Rajghat reservoir, where a dam shackled the monsoon-bloated Betwa river and submerged nearby land.â€œOur old village is under these waters. I had 17 acres of land there where we used to grow makka [maize], jowar and red wheat. We used to be independent,â€? the 80-year-old said.The Rajghat dam on the Betwa river, a tributary of the Yamuna, is an inter-state project of the Indian states of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. Despite numerous small and medium irrigation schemes, by the 1970s, Indiaâ€™s hilly Bundelkhand region continued to remain one of the most backward in the country. Drought was a perennial problem in an area where agriculture was mostly rain-fed. The Rajghat dam on the Betwa was envisioned to be a multi-purpose, multi-state venture to bring irrigation, food and water security to the region. A network of crisscrossing canals was to provide water for winter cultivation in 2,600 sq km of erstwhile rain-fed agricultural land and powerhouses at the dam were...Read more

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