An Indian woman bathes along the banks of the Betwa River near the Orchha palace fort in Orchha in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh on Jan. 4, 2019.XAVIER GALIANA/AFP/Getty Images
For 23-year-old Munna Lal, a resident of Koni village, located in the water-scarce Bundelkhand region of central India’s Madhya Pradesh state, each day begins with a three-kilometre hike through the forest to reach the nearest canal.
“Our village has a few communal taps, but they often run dry during the long summer months. It takes us about three hours to reach the canal, bathe and return,” he said. “Children often miss school because they can’t make it back in time.”
A first-of-its-kind river-linking project, inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the end of December and now under construction, is being touted by the Indian government as an ambitious solution to the region’s severe water problems.
According to the World Bank, India is the most water-stressed country on the planet, with just 4 per cent of the world’s total water resources for a country that is home to 18 per cent of the global population. Nearly 80 per cent of farmers rely on groundwater for irrigation, though it often dries up.
The project involves constructing a sweeping 221-kilometre canal to connect the Ken and Betwa rivers, which flow through Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. With an estimated cost of US$5.2-billion, the river link aims to transfer surplus water from the Ken River to the Betwa, provide irrigation for arid areas, ensure a steady drinking-water supply for more than six million people across both states, and generate hydro power and solar energy. More than 6,300 people across 10 villages will be displaced during the construction of the river-linking system, set to be completed by 2030, according to a government report.
The Ken-Betwa project is a component of the much larger plan: the National River Linking Project, designed to connect 30 rivers across the country via canals and reservoirs with a projected cost of US$150-billion. It could be vital in addressing the country’s water-distribution challenges.
But the benefits of the national water grid will be unevenly distributed. The residents of Koni need access to water, but they will be evacuated elsewhere. Instead, other parts of Bundelkhand will have improved water supplies for drinking and irrigation once the Betwa has more water flowing into it through a canal.
That has angered residents such as Mr. Lal. On the day the project was inaugurated in late December, hundreds of tribal residents from Koni and 20 surrounding villages took to the streets in protest.
“We’ve been asking for proper rehabilitation,” Mr. Lal said. “Some of us were given some money to relocate to another village, but it’s not enough to buy land and build a house. Our lives are tied to the forest. I’m not sure our village will benefit from this project, but if they expect us to move, we need fair compensation and decent housing.”
Advocates of the river-linking project argue that it will bring long-term developmental benefits, despite initial displacement.
“It will transform the entire region climatically, environmentally and bring about socio-economic upliftment of the people,” Prashast Kumar Dixit, chief executive officer of the Ken-Betwa Link Project Authority, which is implementing the project under the government’s National Water Development Agency, said in an interview with The Globe and Mail. “Wildlife will also thrive once there is more water. It will improve conditions for farmers and also check urban migration. It will also help avert flooding disasters, regulate water distribution and make it available to people all year round.”
The state governments are addressing displacement concerns, and people can choose between financial compensation or relocation options, Mr. Dixit said.
The idea of linking rivers was first proposed by British army officer and irrigation engineer Sir Arthur Cotton in 1919, and debated by subsequent governments in India but rejected for financial and environmental reasons.
Advocacy groups and opposition parties have challenged the project, raising questions over the lack of transparency and the expected impact on Indigenous communities and wildlife.
In 2019, a Supreme Court-appointed committee to evaluate the project had flagged several concerns, including displacement of human settlements, the submergence of millions of trees, and the flooding of the Panna Tiger Reserve, home to one of India’s largest tiger populations. It also noted the threat posed to the habitats of vultures and the endangered gharial crocodile by the proposed 77-metre-high dam.
After several regulatory setbacks, Mr. Modi’s government secured the final clearance from the forest department in 2023. But environmental experts warn that the project could have the opposite effect of what is intended.
“The government has pushed the project through despite objections by experts. Instead of benefiting Bundelkhand, this project will devastate the region – destroying the tiger reserve, harming the rivers and disrupting local ecosystems,” said Himanshu Thakkar, an environmentalist and co-ordinator of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People.
“Moreover, there is no publicly available data to support the claim that the Ken River has surplus water while the Betwa is deficient,” he said.
“I was part of the Ministry of Water Resources’ expert committee on river linking, and we weren’t provided with this data either. There has been no peer review of the information.”
A 2023 study revealed another problem: Because hydrological processes are interlinked, increased irrigation from the transferred water through the river link could alter precipitation patterns, potentially reducing rainfall in September by up to 12 per cent in already water-stressed regions of India.
On the ground, there are looming worries of a loss of livelihood, said Mukesh Kumar Gond, a leader at Jaya Adiwasi Yuva Shakti, an organization that advocates for tribal rights.
“Farming has already been halted by forest officials, and they have stopped access to forest produce that we depend on. We’ve been offered a compensation package, but we should receive much more, along with a housing settlement and guaranteed employment for one person per family in the project,” he said.
Some of the tribal residents being evacuated have received about 1,250,000 Indian rupees (around $20,500) a hectare, but some activists and residents say they deserve at least double that based on their assessment of the land’s market value and the costs of relocating and building new homes.
Amit Bhatnagar, a social activist and a leader of the opposition Aam Aadmi Party, said the affected villages’ tribal populations should be stakeholders in the decision making to ensure they reap the benefits. Local residents have been told the project will benefit them, but there has been no assurance given in writing, he said.
“The project appears to be a political tool aimed at winning votes in key election areas from which corporates and middlemen will profit,” he said. “If the local people are to benefit, it should be debated transparently, and they should have the choice to leave their homes or not.”
Environmentalists say it’s also important to step up local efforts to conserve water, restore lakes and replenish groundwater. The state government, non-profits and civil-society groups have previously organized community water conservation projects, with success in the some of the region’s villages.
More than 19 per cent of Indians lack access to drinking water, the highest rate in the world. Some experts, such as Srinivas Chokkakula, president and chief executive of the Centre for Policy Research, argue that the water crisis requires more expansive measures.
“We may reject specific projects or links, but the paradigm of inter-basin transfer remains critically important for India’s water security with growing urbanization and energy demands and emerging risks associated with climate change that are likely to cause more frequent, intense and extreme events of droughts and floods,” he said.