Longform | Al Jazeera Skip linksSkip to Contentplay Live Sign upShow navigation menuNavigation menuNewsShow more news sectionsAfrica.
Clique aqui para pesquisarpesquisarInscreva-seAs mulheres que o maior projeto de rio da Índia esqueceuÀ medida que a barragem Ken-Betwa desloca milhares, proteções legais sobre compensação estão sendo ignoradas.
From Chhatarpur railway station in Madhya Pradesh, it is 74km (46 miles) of broken road through hilly terrain. The road narrows as you enter Panna Tiger Reserve, one of central India's most ecologically rich corridors, home to tigers, gharials, and vultures painstakingly brought back from the edge of local extinction.
It is a humid July morning. The monsoon has settled over the reserve, turning the laterite roads to mud and the air thick with the smell of damp earth and forest.
Beneath an unnamed bridge over the Barna River, in the buffer zone of this reserve, the women have gathered.
Cerca de 30 mulheres em saris de algodão colorido se dirigem em direção às piras sem iluminação, seus maridos e pais ficando um pouco atrás, vestindo kurtas brancas de algodão.
Não há cerimônia nisso. Nem silêncio. Algumas mulheres conversam baixinho umas com as outras enquanto se acomodam entre os troncos empilhados, uma a uma. Algumas puxam seus saris sobre os rostos.
Outras olham diretamente à frente, expressões fixas, não revelando nada.
This is the Chita Andolan, or funeral pyre protest. The pyres are not meant to be lit. For the women, they symbolise what displacement without compensation would leave them with: No home, no land and nowhere to go.
Fifty-year-old Gyan Rani Gond moves slowly. Her face carries something between frustration and anger as she lowers herself onto the pyre. She does not look away.
In the background, Amit Bhatnagar, 43, leader of the protest, and other villagers fill the air with slogans. "Inquilab Zindabad" (long live the revolution). "Nyay do ya maar do" (give us justice or kill us).
Suas aldeias estão localizadas no caminho da Barragem Daudhan, peça central do primeiro projeto de ligação de rios da Índia, que eventualmente submergirá 10 assentamentos dentro e ao redor da Reserva de Tigres de Panna.
Cerca de 7. 000 famílias enfrentam deslocamento.
Gyan Rani belongs to the Gond tribe, one of central India's oldest Indigenous communities, recognised as a Scheduled Tribe in Madhya Pradesh. Like many families here, hers depends on the forest for its livelihood.
She has come because no one is listening, she says. In her eyes, there is sadness, but no tears.
The adult women received nothing. Not Gyan Rani. Not her 18-year-old daughter, Muliya. Not her elder son's wife. And not Pooja, the 21-year-old widow of Gyan Rani's younger son, who died before receiving compensation himself.
Gayadeen says the money is being treated as a family resource rather than his alone. But he also believes the adult women in his household should have received compensation in their own names.
The current payment, he says, is not enough to rebuild the family's life after displacement.
Uma das duas casas da família já foi demolida. Onde ela ficava, resta entulho: telhas de terracota quebradas espalhadas pelo chão molhado e paredes de tijolo desmoronadas em uma pilha encharcada, escura de chuva.
A segunda casa está sob ameaça. Pooja mora lá, em uma cabana de barro perto de um galinheiro em Pathapur, esperando.
Adjusting her brown-coloured saree to cover her head, she says.
On paper, India's land acquisition law appears to protect women such as Gyan Rani and Pooja. In practice, they say, it is doing the opposite.
The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act (LARR), 2013, passed by Parliament to protect displaced communities, contains an explicit provision: The explanation of Section 3(m) states that every adult, regardless of gender, shall be treated as a separate family for compensation purposes.
In simple terms, Pooja, Muliya and Gyan Rani should each be entitled to independent compensation.
Nenhum deles recebeu um único rupia.
In practice, officials apply only the main text of Section 3(m), which defines family conventionally around a person, their spouse and dependent minor children, while failing to apply the explanation that recognises adults of either gender as separate families.
Women without land titles or whose names do not appear on government lists can therefore find themselves excluded from compensation.
Ken-Betwa is the first of 30 planned river interlinking projects under India's National Perspective Plan. Campaigners fear that if the same interpretation of the law is applied elsewhere, women displaced by future projects could face the same exclusions.
As of April 2025, according to a Right to Information request filed by the Press Trust of India, India's national news agency, not a single affected family had been fully rehabilitated.
The government says that has since changed. In July 2026, Madhya Pradesh Revenue Minister Karan Singh Verma told the state Legislative Assembly that all eligible families in Panna and Chhatarpur districts had received compensation and rehabilitation benefits.
Mas os protestos levaram o gabinete do primeiro-ministro a solicitar um relatório do governo estadual, incluindo sobre alegações de que em alguns casos a compensação havia sido depositada nas contas de agentes em vez de famílias afetadas.
Following Bhatnagar's 18-day hunger strike, the Chhatarpur district administration on July 20 ordered a new verification of affected families, acknowledging that eligible households may have been left out.
On August 6, Union Minister of State for Tribal Affairs Durgadas Uikey told Parliament that his ministry had received no complaint explicitly stating that compensation already disbursed had failed to reach beneficiaries.
Construction of the dam, meanwhile, has continued.
Families whose homes have already been demolished have largely been left to fend for themselves. Using compensation, where it has been paid, they are trying to buy land and build new homes independently.
None has yet been formally resettled by the state, and many say the compensation they received was insufficient to rebuild their lives.
A partir do local do protesto em Kupi, a estrada se estende por mais 70km (43 milhas) dentro da floresta, em direção às aldeias cujo desaparecimento as mulheres se reuniram para resistir.
The track is unmarked and largely unmaintained. The monsoon has washed out stretches of laterite, leaving behind mud and loose stone. Rain-washed forest lines both sides of the road.
Kupi will be the last village to disappear. When the Daudhan Dam is fully operational, it will be the final settlement swallowed by the rising waters.
Pathapur sits at the end of that road, quieter still. Several houses stand half demolished. Others are intact but marked, their walls bearing the invisible stamp of government orders.
The Barna River runs nearby, its waters feeding into the Ken, the river that the Daudhan Dam will one day hold back.
In the village, Gyan Rani’s daughter-in-law Pooja Gond meets a visitor at the door of her home and offers a cup of sweet black tea.
Pooja tem 21 anos, é magra e de voz suave, com um inchaço no lado direito do rosto devido a uma picada de abelha na noite anterior. Ela fala em uma voz baixa e monótona, o tipo que não vem apenas da timidez, mas de um cansaço mais profundo, o cansaço de alguém que já perdeu muito e não tem energia para se expressar.
She was one year into her marriage when her husband Parshuram died. He was a daily wage labourer. He developed severe abdominal swelling. The family sought treatment from a local doctor, but Parshuram's condition worsened.
No formal diagnosis or post-mortem was ever carried out. Their one-year-old son later died after what the family believes was typhoid fever, although there was no formal medical confirmation.
Pooja has not received a single rupee in compensation. Neither has her sister-in-law, who has voted but whom officials describe as underage. Pooja herself does not receive a widow's pension.
Officials tell her she is too young for that too.
The compensation built two small rooms. That is all the family has to show for the home they are losing.
Cada vez, os funcionários coletavam seus documentos. Cada vez, nada acontecia.
One of the two houses her family occupied was demolished without notice. Pooja was there as neighbours watched and the family asked officials to stop. Nobody listened.
Officials told her mother-in-law they were demolishing this house first. Nobody told the family where they were expected to go.
They moved into the house that remains.
It is a small mud house with white walls and a hay-and-terracotta-tiled roof. Faded tribal hand-painted art runs along the walls, its colours worn thin by rain and time.
A wooden door opens into a small courtyard. Inside, a wood-fired mud oven sits in the kitchen.
Esta casa é a próxima. Pooja sabe disso, mas ela não sabe para onde irá.
If relocation becomes unavoidable, she says she wants to remain close to the forest. She does not want to move to a city.
Then there is also Muliya, Gyan Rani's 18-year-old daughter. She has a voter ID. She has voted. Officials told her she was too young for compensation.
She has sores inside her mouth that have not healed. Her sister-in-law Pooja speaks for her. If compensation comes, Pooja says, Muliya would use it for treatment.
For an 18-year-old fighting to be recognised as an adult by the state, compensation means something immediate: The chance to see a doctor.
Every summer, she collects mahua flowers and chironji from the forest to sell. Mahua also feeds the family, is used in traditional cooking and medicine, and forms part of Gond cultural life.
The forest gives us everything," she says.
O que aconteceu com Gyan Rani, Pooja e Muliya não é uma falha administrativa, afirma Bina Agarwal, professora de economia do desenvolvimento e meio ambiente da Universidade de Manchester e autora de A Field of One's Own.
Isso reflete uma contradição em como a lei define uma família.
Article 3(m) of the LARR Act defines the family conventionally," Agarwal says. "But the explanation that follows treats every adult as a separate family. If the explanation became the main text of the law, it would unambiguously benefit women.
In practice, officials apply only the conventional definition of the family, she says, meaning wives, widows and adult daughters are routinely excluded from compensation lists.
The solution, Agarwal argues, requires no new legislation.
Financial compensation should go into the bank accounts of all adults in the family separately," she says. "Land should also be registered jointly, with equal rights for women.
De volta ao local do protesto, Amit Bhatnagar, 43, convocador do Jai Kisan Sangathan, uma organização de direitos dos agricultores, senta-se calmamente ao lado do rio Barna enquanto os slogans se erguem ao seu redor.
For nearly four years, he has organised resistance to the Ken-Betwa displacement. During that time, he says, hundreds of protesters have faced criminal cases, while electricity, water and ration supplies have been disrupted in some affected villages.
Bhatnagar says the problems do not end when compensation is paid. He has documented cases where men spent the money on expensive motorcycles and alcohol, leaving nothing for their families.
Some, he adds, were later involved in near-fatal accidents on those same bikes. Money intended to secure a family’s future, he says, was gone before replacement land had even been found.
From his experience working in the affected villages, Bhatnagar estimates that 400 to 500 women, particularly widows, have been excluded from compensation because their names never appeared on the original lists.
There is no independently verified count of how many women have been excluded.
After two weeks on hunger strike demanding that officials address the issue, Bhatnagar, now even leaner than his usual frame, explains he was arrested by police on July 19 along with hundreds of protesters as officers moved in to end the demonstration.
Authorities said the action was taken because of rising water levels and monsoon conditions.
A prisão de Bhatnagar pôs fim ao último protesto. As questões levantadas pelos manifestantes, no entanto, vão muito além da vila de Kupi. Ken-Betwa não está transformando apenas uma bacia hidrográfica.
Como o primeiro dos 30 projetos de interligação de rios planejados pela Índia, pode estabelecer um precedente para como as pessoas deslocadas pelos projetos que se seguem sejam compensadas.
Ken-Betwa is India's first river-linking project under the National Perspective Plan. When complete, the Daudhan Dam will submerge 10 villages inside Panna Tiger Reserve and displace thousands of people.
Supporters say it will bring irrigation, drinking water and hydropower to drought-prone Bundelkhand.
Critics have challenged the environmental assessment and approval process. But for women in villages such as Pathapur, the more immediate concern is how compensation is distributed, and whether the interpretation being applied here will be repeated as India's river-linking programme expands.
Officials approached by Al Jazeera either referred questions to publicly available government material or did not respond to specific questions about compensation for women affected by the project.
Back in Pathapur, Pooja sits in the verandah of the family's remaining house and points towards the rubble where the first one stood.
Se ela receber alguma compensação em seu próprio nome, ela diz, a primeira coisa que faria é pagar pelo tratamento de Muliya.
For now, she waits. She knows the second house will fall. She just does not know where she will go after it does.
Our ChannelsOur ChannelsShow moreAl Jazeera Arabic.
Our NetworkOur NetworkShow moreAl Jazeera Centre for Studies.
Al Jazeera Centre for Public Liberties & Human Rights.
Em números
- From Chhatarpur railway station in Madhya Pradesh, it is 74km (46 miles) of broken road through hilly terrain
- A partir do local do protesto em Kupi, a estrada se estende por mais 70km (43 milhas) dentro da floresta, em direção às ald
Fontes
Informação baseada em material público de Al Jazeera, reescrito pela redação ULTRA NOTÍCIAS.
