📍Ken-Betwa Link: Development or more mindless discrimination?

Linking the Ken and Betwa rivers has become an issue once again. Members of the communities living along these rivers are protesting this in novel ways, lying on simulated funeral pyres in the river waters, starting hunger strikes in a submerged state, or standing in the river with nooses around their necks. “We’ll turn into Durga and Kali,” say the women protesting in chest-deep water. The images are powerful, disturbing, they tell you how much this move has upset those who live along the river and venerate it.

I have travelled through this landscape a few times over the years. In Panna the Ken river flows with a rare serenity, almost stillness. The forests are alive with biodiversity, the terrain rugged yet beautiful, and the river sustains not only wildlife but entire communities of farmers, fishers, forest dwellers and pastoral families. To stand on the banks of the Ken is to understand that rivers are not merely channels of water to be engineered on drawing boards. They are living ecological systems. Which is why the Ken-Betwa river-linking project is deeply troubling.

The project is being promoted as a solution to Bundelkhand’s water crisis, with promises of irrigation and drinking water for drought-prone districts. But beneath the language of development lies a familiar and disturbing reality: Forests will be destroyed, the ecology dented. Thousands of people will lose their homes and ancestral lands, and they will lose their livelihoods. India’s track record on rehabilitating persons displaced by dams and development projects is very poor, in fact rehabilitation in India has rarely been just or complete. Rather than equitable development, this project too, like earlier dam projects, will help some and discriminate against many others.

Independent estimates suggest that more than 22 villages would be displaced, affecting over 7,000 families in Panna and Chattarpur districts, and of these, 20 villages would be completely submerged by the Ken-Betwa project, many of them Adivasi communities dependent on forests and river ecosystems for survival. The Daudhan dam, the cornerstone of the ₹45,000 cr Ken-Betwa Link Project (KBLP), alone will submerge large areas, including parts of the Panna Tiger Reserve. The irony is painful: a project meant to solve distress in one region will create another geography of suffering elsewhere.

This is a familiar playbook and India has seen it before. When the Bhakra-Nangal dam was built after Independence, it was hailed as one of the “temples of modern India”. It is located on the Sutlej along Bilaspur in Himachal Pradesh and Rupnagar in Punjab. Yet behind that grand national narrative lay the 371 submerged villages which took away everything from some 36,000 families — their homes, assets and livelihoods.

Families were promised cultivable land, rehabilitation and a better future. Decades later, many oustees were still fighting legal battles for proper compensation and land rights. Reports have documented how displaced families were pushed onto barren or disputed lands, while many landless workers and labourers were excluded entirely from compensation because they did not possess formal land titles. This pattern repeated itself across India. 

The Hirakud dam in Odisha displaced more than one lakh people and submerged over 300 villages. Many never received proper rehabilitation.

The Pong dam displaced more than 30,000 families from Himachal Pradesh, many of whom were relocated to Rajasthan with promises of fertile agricultural land. Several families reportedly received arid land without irrigation or clear ownership rights. Some are still fighting for justice after half a century.

The Narmada Valley Development Project, which includes large structures like the Sardar Sarovar Dam and other dams on the Narmada river, led to massive displacement. Over two lakh rural and tribal people lost their homes and lands to reservoir submergence without fair compensation. The Narmada project also caused severe environmental damage, like submergence of dense forests, destruction of local wildlife habitats and obstructed the migration paths for fish. Official statements usually assert that rehabilitation has been completed, but independent investigations document missing land allotments, fake registries, uncultivable plots on a large scale and thousands of excluded families. Even today, many displaced families continue to seek their just dues and compensation. This is the history of “development” and discrimination in India.

Such discrimination results in livelihood collapse. The forest gatherer loses access to forest produce. The fisher loses the river. Tenant farmers, artisans, cattle grazers, boatmen and agricultural labourers disappear from official compensation records because they do not exist in government records. This is why people in the Ken-Betwa region are anxious. They know of the government’s track record on rehabilitation.

Equally worrying is the ecological blindness underlying the river-linking approach itself. Experts have warned repeatedly that the hydro-dynamics of Indian river systems are still inadequately understood. Climate change has already altered rainfall behaviour across India. Rivers that appear “surplus” today may not remain so tomorrow. Yet massive irreversible interventions are being pursued with astonishing confidence.

Bundelkhand’s water crisis is real. But it cannot be solved through ecologically disruptive mega-projects. Destroying the environment and upsetting the natural balance can never provide sustainable solutions, which is what we should be seeking, not shortcuts that have failed time and again. Rivers are not pipelines. Their flow patterns, seasonal rhythms, sediment loads, groundwater recharge functions and biodiversity relationships are deeply interconnected.

Dry regions in India built sustainable systems to ensure water access using decentralised water systems — tanks, ponds, watershed structures, forest protection and groundwater recharge practices adapted to local ecology. Instead of strengthening such systems and improving them, we choose to chase gigantic engineering solutions because they appear politically dramatic. The tragedy is that in such projects, the benefits and burdens are rarely borne by the same people. Water and electricity flow somewhere else, to urban centres and commercial agriculture. But the people who surrender their forests, villages and ancestral lands are often left with nothing more than broken promises.

This appeared in The Asian Age: https://www.asianage.com/opinion/columnists/suman-sahai-ken-betwa-link-development-or-more-mindless-discrimination-1981618

 📌 WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY 2026: WHAT EXACTLY ARE WE CELEBRATING?

Today is WorldEnvironmentDay. A day for speeches, hashtags, photo-ops with saplings, solemn pledges and carefully crafted messages about our love for nature.

But forgive me for asking - what exactly are we celebrating?

The environment that we are systematically destroying? The forests we are cutting down for mining? The rivers we are poisoning with industrial waste and sewage? The mountains we are blasting in the name of infrastructure development? The biodiversity we are driving to extinction? Or the tribal communities we are uprooting from lands they have protected for

generations?

Nothing captures the hypocrisy of this annual ritual better than what is happening in the Hasdeo Forests of Chhattisgarh, one of India’s richest forest ecosystems, often called the 'Lungs of Central India'.

I’m not against generating energy or against development, but the question is why the easiest solution always seems to be sacrificing forests, biodiversity and indigenous rights.

Year after year, governments assure us that environmental protection is a priority. Prime Ministers and assorted others speak passionately about climate change, sustainability and green growth. Yet on the ground, forests continue to disappear under excavators and mining clearances.

World Environment Day has increasingly become an exercise in collective self-congratulation and is reduced to mere tokenism that allows governments, corporations and even citizens to feel virtuous for a day while the destruction continues uninterrupted for the remaining 364.

For decades, the scientists, environmentalists, and everyone concerned have been warning that the climate crisis is no longer a future threat. It has already entered our homes: the heatwaves, floods, droughts, crop failures and disappearing water sources are real-life

manifestations.

I am pained to say that while leaders plant ceremonial saplings and deliver speeches on sustainability, an estimated 5 lac trees are proposed to be slaughtered in Hasdeo forests; over 15000 Adivasi families will be impacted, whose lives depend on these forests for their livelihoods, for their very survival. Let that sink in. If this is environmental protection, what does environmental destruction look like?

Forest Fires On The Rise In A Warming India: Make It Part Of Climate Policy

In the 405th report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment, Forests and Climate Change, the demand for grants included a section on Forest Fire Prevention and Management. This must be welcomed given the growing forest fires in India, especially in the mountain states.

India’s forests are increasingly vulnerable due to rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, prolonged dry spells and extreme weather events. These are no longer abstract projections; they are now visible on the ground as devastating forest fires. Forests that were once naturally moist and resilient are now like tinderboxes.

Forest fires are now frequent and have a devastating impact on biodiversity, wildlife and the overall environment. Forests in Uttarakhand used to catch fire in the dry summer season every year, but now occur at other times as well. I have watched with despair fires as early as February and March, sometimes earlier. The forest department recorded over 60 fires in the February- March period, that scorched over 40 hectares of forest land. Repeated fires also weaken the regenerative capacity of forests, making them more vulnerable to future climate shocks.

Climate scientists have warned for decades if we can’t control global warming, wildfires will become more frequent and more intense. Now wildfires are becoming more and widespread, even in tropical rainforests, where they are not typical and are particularly damaging. Hotter, drier weather caused by climate change and poor land management create conditions for more frequent, larger and higher-intensity wildfires. In the heatwave of Summer 2026, large forest fires have become frequent, and have burnt large tracts in over 12 states — from Uttarakhand in the north, Gujarat in the west, to Andhra Pradesh in the south, with Madhya Pradesh being the worst-affected.

Focusing on the Himalayan belt, the standing committee recommended that the ministry develop a protocol to reduce and cope with forest fires using modern technologies, including satellites and drones for early detection and alerts, identifying the cause and nature of the fires, and the best way of dousing the flames. Even more welcome, the committee recommended adequate budgetary support to state governments to develop a proactive, AI and data-driven prevention and management approach to minimise ecological damage due to forest fires.

Traditional forest management systems are proving inadequate against the scale and speed of climate-driven fires. This is where Artificial Intelligence can become an important tool for timely action. Globally, AI is already being used for forest fire prediction and prevention. In California, the “Alert California” programme uses AI-enabled cameras and machine learning systems to identify smoke plumes in real time. The system can detect fires at a very early stage, often before they become visible to the local authorities. Early detection has significantly improved response time.

Australia is using AI models that combine satellite imagery, temperature, wind speed, humidity and vegetation dryness to predict fire-prone zones in advance. This allows authorities to deploy personnel and equipment strategically before fires break out.

In parts of Europe, drones equipped with thermal imaging sensors patrol vulnerable forests during peak fire seasons. These drones can identify abnormal heat signatures even at night and in inaccessible terrain. Canada has also begun integrating AI-based monitoring with indigenous land management knowledge to improve fire resilience.

India has the scientific and technological capability to develop similar systems. The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) already provides satellite-based forest fire alerts, but these remain largely reactive. AI can help shift the approach from reaction to early detection and prevention. At present the Isro model does fire detection and monitoring via satellite, this effectively detects and monitors forest fires in near real-time, improving identification speed and enabling better mapping of fire-prone areas. This system, however, has limitations, being primarily reactive. It lacks the capability to predict fire outbreaks and address underlying causes like dry conditions, human activity, and monoculture plantations.

The response capacity and the efficacy of alerts is exacerbated by the usually inadequate staff and resources of local forest departments. The satellite-based system has another limitation in fire detection because smaller fires under dense canopy or cloudy conditions can get missed. In order to achieve an effective early warning system, Isro needs to combine satellite data with weather forecasts, humidity levels, wind conditions, vegetation dryness indices, and include local community intelligence.

Countries having more effective management of forest fires use a multi-pronged approach, using drone surveillance, automated camera systems, and very importantly, the infrastructure to effectively record local responses . This integration of ground intelligence with satellite monitoring and AI-driven mapping of fire risks enables them to predict forest fires, not detect them after they have started burning.

India needs to up its act and improve its systems which should be easily done, given the solid foundation of Isro’s satellite proficiency. We need to integrate AI-based tools for predictive analytics and real-time ground integration. India’s system is technologically capable of detecting fires, but advanced global systems are increasingly focused on anticipating them before they become disasters. Involving forest-dwelling communities, drone surveillance, AI-based fire-risk prediction models, and stronger ground preparedness are crucial for a preventive approach to forest fire management. A national AI-driven Forest Fire Early Warning Grid should contain AI models predicting fire-prone districts weeks in advance, mobile alerts sent directly to village communities and forest guards and AI-generated evacuation and containment plans based on terrain and wind direction.

However, technology alone cannot protect forests. Indigenous and local communities possess deep ecological knowledge of forest behaviour, moisture cycles and safe fire practices. AI systems must work alongside community knowledge rather than replace it. We need to treat forest fire prevention as part of our climate adaptation strategy.

Investments in AI-based ecological monitoring today may prevent enormous ecological and economic losses tomorrow.

The Link to the article  - https://www.asianage.com/opinion/columnists/suman-sahai-forest-fires-on-the-rise-in-a-warming-india-make-it-part-of-climate-policy-1963375

 📌 Forests taken away from the guardianship of forest dwellers.

In India as in other parts of the developing world, many communities call the forests their home and have lived there over generations. This community of forest dwellers have traditionally derived their livelihoods from the forest which has included forest produce and agriculture.

Colonial policies which used the forest as a timber resource have historically been antagonistic to forest dwellers. Later national policies declaring certain parts of the forest as protected areas, national parks and conservation zones put further pressure on forest dwelling communities forcing displacement and marginalization.

To undo these gross violations of the rights of forest communities, the Government of India enacted the Forest Rights Act in 2006. This law recognized the rights of forest communities to live on and cultivate ancestral forest land. It also gave them legal rights to collect and use Non Timber Forest Produce (NTFP) and also sell these collections. In recognition of their role in conserving the forest, The Forest Rights Act (FRA) granted forest dwellers the right to protect and manage community forest resources. In this way, the FRA made tribal communities the legal custodians of India’s most ecologically significant landscapes. But this did not last long.

In 2023, the government brought an amendment to the largely positive Forest Conservation Act 1980 which militates directly against the earlier rights granted to forest dwellers under the FRA 2006. The Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act, 2023 has removed the mandatory clause that the Gram Sabha had to give its consent before any forest land could be diverted. This was the one institutional mechanism through which forest communities could exercise binding authority over their forests. By the treacherous amendment of 2023 amendment, this right was taken away, opening the forest to rampant exploitation.

https://theindiantribal.com/2026/05/15/weakening-tribal-forest-rights-could-undermine-indias-climate-commitments-and-carbon-sink-targets/