Dhar, Madhya Pradesh: M, the anganwadi worker in Katnera, moved with quiet authority—her saree draped neatly over her head, kind eyes watching the children intently. 

An Adivasi woman, she spoke softly, choosing her words with care. “Four feet of water came in,” she said, pointing to the watermark the floodwaters left on the walls.

M remembered the 2023 flood vividly—the day she lost nearly everything. 

It was 16 September, the eve of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s birthday. Waters from the swollen Uri-Baghni river surged into her home in Katnera village, in Dhar district of southwestern Madhya Pradesh (MP). The house, which also functioned as the anganwadi or government creche in the village, was submerged. 

Among the losses was her anganwadi register, a vital document tracking children’s health, nutrition, and immunisation, as well as records of pregnant and lactating women.

With help from neighbours, M fled to a relative’s home in a nearby village called Raswa. On returning, she found her furniture and grain sacks ruined. 

Her supervisor’s response, she recalled, was: “How come the register was washed away and you weren’t?”

Wary of surveillance, government workers like M dare not speak out publicly. 

“A complaint could cost me my job,” she said. With the rains returning in 2025, however, her anxiety has returned. 

The anganwadi in Katnera is a lifeline offering nutrition, early education, and health services for children, M said, and another flood would leave a generation of Katnera’s mostly tribal children and new mothers more vulnerable than ever. 

Seasonal flooding in Katnera, a riverside Adivasi village, began after the Narmada was dammed in 2000, worsening after the Sardar Sarovar dam’s height was raised in 2006 and 2017, and the dam was filled to its full capacity in 2019. 

In 2023, rising waters from the backflow—the rise in water levels upstream during rains due to the dam structure obstructing the river’s natural course—submerged 333 homes.

Despite the widespread destruction, residents of Katnera were denied recognition and compensation as ‘project-affected’ people. A contested recalculation of the dam’s backwater levels in 2008 had quietly struck nearly 16,000 families across three states off the official list of project-affected families. 

In 2023 , Katnera’s residents were left without compensation, rehabilitation or any legal acknowledgement of their vulnerability even as floods devastated homes and crops. 

Katnera—where the majority of residents belong to the Bhilala tribe—is home to a population that is over 75% Adivasi, and 48% illiterate, according to the 2011 Census.

MP ranks fourth in India’s multidimensional poverty index, with over 25 million classified as poor. In Dhar district alone, 40.5% of people are classified as poor, a figure that rises to 48% in rural areas, where families face severe and overlapping deprivation in nutrition, health, sanitation, fuel, and education. 

Dhar also tops the state in child undernutrition, with 35,950 underweight children, or 16.31% of the 220,000 children enrolled in anganwadis. In low-lying villages like Katnera, poor infrastructure and repeated flooding sharpen existing risks.

Resistance In Rising Waters

The vulnerability was starkly visible when the floods came. 

While many villagers rushed to evacuate to the nearby town of Nisarpur, 4 km to the south, or relatives’ homes in other villages, others waded through neck-deep water to save their cattle, dragging them out one by one. Some managed to tether the animals on higher ground; others let them loose, praying they wouldn’t drown. Still others tried, in vain, to salvage sacks of harvested wheat and cotton. 

That same night, nearly a hundred villagers, including women and children, staged a chakka jam (road blockade) on national highway 47 that links MP with Gujarat. Narmada Bachao Andolan activists, including Bhagwan Septa, rushed to the scene to support the villagers.  

As residents raised slogans demanding long-promised entitlements such as the Rs 5.80-lakh grant to build houses and land in lieu of land submerged, the tehsildar or block-level officer and then the district’s  sub-divisional magistrate arrived, police in tow. Some relief was promised, including cash compensation for damages, and 50 kg wheat for each affected family. 

A survey followed. Of 333 families surveyed, only around 60 received compensation, a few thousand rupees. 

Speaking to Article 14, Vishal Dhakad, the sub-divisional magistrate of Kukshi. attributed the floods to heavy and  excessive rainfall within a short period of time.

Article 14 also made phone calls and wrote emails to the Narmada Control Authority, and the Narmada Valley Development Authority (NVDA) seeking their comments on the struggle of the people of Katnera. No response was received. 

‘Modi’s Birthday, Our Death Day’

Floodwaters had seasonally lapped against doorsteps in Katnera, turning fields into inaccessible islands locally called tapu, but the 2023 deluge was unlike anything residents had ever seen. 

After days of heavy rainfall across the Narmada catchment, and following a delay in opening the sluice gates at the Omkareshwar Dam upstream and the Sardar Sarovar Dam downstream, the river breached its banks. 

In MP alone, 193 villages faced varied levels of submergence in 2023. Maharashtra and Gujarat were affected too.

“We begged the Narmada Control Authority (NCA) on the evening of 16 September to open the gates of the Sardar Sarovar and release the water,” said Jitendra Mandloi, a resident of Katnera, “but they only acted after the prime minister’s birthday celebrations at the Statue of Unity and the Adi Shankaracharya programme at Omkareshwar had both wrapped up.” 

The Statue of Unity, a 182-metre high tribute to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel at Kevadia, Gujarat, was inaugurated with much fanfare by the prime minister in 2018. In 2023, MP’s then chief minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, unveiled the 108-foot ‘Statue of Oneness’ of 8th Century Hindu philosopher Adi Shankaracharya in Omkareshwar, in MP. 

In following years, dam gates were  kept shut in the days leading up to Modi’s birthday on 17 September (here, here, here, here and here), ostensibly to preserve an aesthetic backdrop to the statues, said activists. In 2019 (here and here) and 2023 (here, here and here), the closure of the dam gates caused backwater floods upstream, and then downstream, once water was released. 

“Modi ka janam din, humara maran din (Modi’s birthday is our death day)!” said Kamla Yadav, a dam-affected oustee and a veteran of the Narmada Bachao Andolan. Back at the village, this slogan was echoed by many. 

In 2023, the Omkareshwar dam gates were opened on 15-16 September, despite days of rain, the delay reportedly on account of events around the inauguration of the Adi Shankaracharya statue. When the water was finally released, around 700 homes and shops immediately downstream in Khandwa district were devastated. 

The floods and destruction occurred despite meteorological warnings of heavy rainfall across the valley issued as early as 13 September.

Village Submerges, But Not Officially

Nestled along the Uri-Baghni, a northern tributary of the Narmada, Katnera has long experienced seasonal flooding, intensified since 2019 when the  Sardar Sarovar Dam’s height was raised and filled to its full reservoir level.

Yet, puzzlingly, official records say the majority of Katnera is no longer ‘affected’ by the Sardar Sarovar dam. State authorities, including the SDM, now attribute the village’s flooding to excess rainfall and flash floods, denying any link to dam operations. 

Earlier official records of the Narmada Valley Development Authority (NVDA) showed otherwise.

The Narmada Control Authority’s (NCA) original resettlement and rehabilitation plan listed Katnera as a submergence-affected village. In 2006, 71 families were officially recognised as project-affected when the dam height was raised to 121.92 metres. Another 78 were added when the height was raised to 138.68 m in 2008, bringing the total to 149 affected families. 

The same year, a controversial recalculation of backwater levels by the NCA removed 15,946 families across Madhya Pradesh from the official submergence list, including the majority of Katnera’s families. 

Katnera’s backwater levels, for example, were revised downward from 141.98 m to 138.94 m. This meant that the number of affected families was reduced in the records from 149 to 37.

Social activist Medha Patkar, among the most prominent leaders of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, said, “The exclusion led to complaints and discussions with officials, who then assigned the inspection to the executive engineer. His unscientific and poorly founded report concluded that there was ‘no risk to Katnera’ and recommended a small safety wall if needed.” 

The Indian Social Institution, a civil society and research organisation, in a  report submitted to the Planning Commission in 2001, estimated that between 1951 and 1990, 21.3 million people were displaced by development projects, of which 40% were tribals, with 75% of the total displacement due to dams. 

In 2011-12, the parliamentary standing committee of the ministry of rural development reported that 60 million people were displaced or affected by development between 1947 and 2004, with 40% of the affected being tribals, besides 20% Dalits and another 20% OBCs. Other studies placed the figure at 70 million affected between 1947 and 2010, with 80% of the affected people belonging to marginalised groups.

Despite the magnitude of the challenge, India lacks a national database tracking the number of people resettled. 

The parliamentary standing committee acknowledged in 2011-12 that only one-third of the displaced had been rehabilitated. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) noted that most displaced receive neither adequate relief nor meaningful rehabilitation. 

Exclusion By Hydraulic Models 

The original backwater levels (BWL) for the Sardar Sarovar dam, calculated by the Central Water Commission (CWC) in 1984 using field surveys and the HEC-IIB hydraulic modelling (a software that estimates water flow and flood modelling), placed Katnera well within the submergence zone. 

However, in 2008, a subcommittee of the NCA revised the model using a new simulation model, resulting in significantly lower BWLs.

This “scientific revision” reduced the number of affected villages in MP from 193 to 176 and the number of project-affected families from 37,754 to 21,808, effectively excluding 15,946 families from 17 villages. These thousands lost their ‘project-affected’ status overnight, and with it, the right to resettlement and rehabilitation, even though their lands and homes continued to be inundated year after year.

On paper, all affected families were shown to have been resettled in either Madhya Pradesh or Gujarat, with none pending to be rehabilitated.

The NCA’s annual report for 2022–23 acknowledged having rehabilitated 32,219 families already in Madhya Pradesh, far more than the revised total of 21,808 affected families after the BWL revision. In effect, thousands were halfway through rehabilitation before the process was suddenly suspended following a new BWL calculation.

‘Techinical Infirmities’

In 2009, an expert committee under the chairmanship of Devendra Pandey, former director general of the Forest Survey of India, appointed by the ministry of environment and forests, rejected the revised BWL calculations done by the NCA subcommittee on both technical and legal grounds. 

The report said the revised calculations “have many technical infirmities” and that “Back Water Levels calculations are to be carried out by the Central Water Commission (CWC)… not by a sub-committee of the NCA” as mandated by the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal (NWDT) award in 1979.

The expert committee also objected to the NCA’s use of 137.17 metre as the “maximum water level” instead of the legally mandated 140.21 metre. It said the tribunal had directed that calculations of BWL be done using  140.21 as the maximum water level. 

The report also criticised the NCA for replacing the Central Water Commission’s earlier hydraulic model with a less appropriate one. While the CWC’s 1984 calculations had relied on the older HEC-IIB model to predict river water flows, the NCA used the MIKE-11 model, justifying it as “more advanced and robust.” 

The committee said MIKE-11, a one-dimensional analysis tool, was better  suited to “river valleys that are long and narrow,” whereas in the case of the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP), “the submergence… is widespread to 1.77 km average width away from the main stream involving 245 villages.”

The committee raised concerns about the use of reduced flood values in the calculations. While the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) was built to handle a maximum flood of 30.7 lakh cusecs, the Narmada Control Authority (NCA) based its estimates on an observed flood of 24.5 lakh cusecs, which was further reduced to 16.9 lakh cusecs. The committee said these reduced figures were not appropriate. 

It also criticised the use of an outflow of 10 lakh cusecs from the upstream Indira Sagar dam to calculate backwater levels, calling it unsafe. In this regard, the committee noted that decisions about rehabilitation and environmental safeguards must consider the backwater effects of the highest possible flood, and not lower estimates.

Floodwater Levels Underestimated

In effect, the government-appointed expert committee said backwater levels had been underestimated, and the revised methodology had failed to capture the actual spread of submergence, along with the number of villages, families, and individuals who needed to be compensated, resettled, and rehabilitated.

Activists told Article 14 that some of the assumptions made in the revised BWL calculations had been repeatedly proven untrue, such as the notion that dam gates would remain open when floodwaters arrived.

Independent fact-finding teams including an eight-member delegation in 2015 found that the revised BWL calculations underestimated actual flood levels. 

Medha Patkar also demonstrated that actual BWLs in Madhya Pradesh’s villages could exceed the government’s calculated figures. In years such as 2017, 2019 and 2023, actual floodwaters far exceeded the projected limits. 

“For any dam in India, submergence levels, whether maximum water level, full reservoir level or backwater level, must be calculated based on the dam wall height and the 1-in-100-years flood benchmark,” Patkar told Article 14. 

“In 2023, the rainfall was still within the 1-in-62-years range, yet the resulting submergence reached levels close to, and in some cases beyond, even the CWC-calculated BWLs,” said Patkar.

The destruction that followed was being wrongly attributed to natural flooding, she said, rather than to “flawed recalculations and dam mismanagement”.

Despite these findings, the NCA has refused to review or revise the backwater levels and number of affected families. Article 14 wrote to the NCA seeking its response to Patkar’s comment, but no response was received.

Vishal Dhakad, the SDM of Kukshi, said that he could not comment on the water level revision as it was done by higher officials. Asked if his office could recommend a review of the BWL following floods, he said that as the 2023 foods was “a flood-like situation that can happen anywhere, it should not be the criteria to revise backwater level”.

A Sleight Of Data

This revision of backwater levels enabled authorities to reduce the official count of project-affected families, whose rehabilitation was a legal requirement before dam construction could proceed. 

In June 2014, the Narmada Control Authority granted clearance to raise the dam height from 121.92 metres to 138.68 metres, claiming that rehabilitation was complete, a claim that has been widely contested.

In 2015, the Independent People’s Tribunal, chaired by four retired high court judges, found the government’s claims of full or substantial rehabilitation to be false.  

Proceeding with raising the dam height without complete resettlement breached not only the NWDT award but also multiple Supreme Court directives that explicitly require rehabilitation to precede construction. 

In 2000, the apex court ruled that further raising the dam’s height would be pari passu (on equal footing) only with complete implementation of relief and rehabilitation work. In a further clarification in 2005, the court reaffirmed that no submergence would be allowed to take place until settlement and rehabilitation of the oustees, whether temporarily or permanently affected, was complete.

Nevertheless, the process moved ahead. By 2019, the sluice gates were fully installed and closed, allowing the reservoir to reach its maximum capacity, triggering widespread submergence in several upstream areas, including Katnera.

Unfinished Business

In Katnera, many villagers find themselves suspended in a state of limbo, some awaiting promised monetary entitlements despite having been allotted house plots years ago.

Of the Rs 5.80 lakh mandated as resettlement grants for house construction on these plots, only seven of the 37 families who remain officially recognised as affected in Katnera have received the sum. 

The rest were denied aid after being retrospectively removed from the list of project-affected families, even though their houses had already been acquired and transferred to the ownership of the NCA years earlier.

Eighty families in Katnera who lost part of their farmlands for a road also remain uncompensated. 

Under the 1979 NWDT award, any family that lost 25% or more of its agricultural land to submergence by the dam was entitled to irrigable land equivalent to the land lost, with a minimum of 2 hectares (5 acres) per family. 

However, state governments diluted these entitlements in their respective resettlement and rehabilitation (R&R) policies. In Madhya Pradesh, oustees were offered either 2 hectares of land or a cash alternative of Rs 5.81 lakh under a special rehabilitation package. If the offered land (drawn from the state’s land bank) was refused, often because it was uncultivable, waterlogged, saline, or located far away, the family could opt for the cash compensation instead. 

However, many families found that Rs 5.81 lakh was inadequate to buy 2 hectares of cultivable land.

A total of 681 families, including several in Katnera village, rejected both the offers—poor quality land and inadequate cash compensation—and took the matter to court. 

‘We Have Lost Everything’

In February 2017, in the case of the Narmada Bachao Andolan vs Union of India & Others, the Supreme Court ordered that each of the 681 families be paid Rs 60 lakh. It also directed that similarly affected families be paid the same compensation.

Not a single family in Katnera, despite being eligible under this ruling, has received the Rs 60 lakh compensation.

In Katnera, nearly 60 families were allotted land in Gujarat as compensation, which they were compelled to accept even though the land was uncultivable and waterlogged. Some families returned to Katnera; others quit farming altogether to work as construction workers. 

Many who remain in Katnera manage to grow just one crop during the  months when the land does not get inundated. Even then, disaster often strikes. 

Standing crops of cotton,  soyabean or maize are lost to sudden flooding, and no compensation is provided. During these events, fields remain waterlogged, homes unsafe, and livelihoods precarious. 

Amrit Lal (55) and his wife Laxmi (50), both landless farm labourers, lost two walls of their home and 250 kg of wheat they received as a payment in-kind for their labour during the previous harvest season. 

“My wife and I broke our backs all season for it,” said Lal. “We have lost everything. Not even the 50 kg sack of wheat that the SDM promised came to us.”

‘The Sarkar is Toying With Us’

Puran Ishke (39), a Dalit agricultural labourer who has returned to the village after years of working as a textile block printer in the city, said the government first listed them as project-affected and gave them a plot of land. 

“Then they said we’re not affected, so no Rs 5.80 lakh for a house,” Ishke told Article 14 bitterly. “Then we got flooded again. This time, boats rowed through the village streets, cattle died, and crocodiles came into homes.” 

“If we’re not within the submergence area, how did we get submerged? Kul milaake, sarkar humare saath mazak kar raha hai (In sum, the government is toying with us),” said Ishke. 

When current chief minister Mohan Yadav visited Dhar in June 2025, villagers like 60-year-old Santhi Bai hoped he would address the condition of flood-hit villages like Katnera.  

“He didn’t even mention our village. He just praised (schemes like) Laadli Behna and Kisan Kalyan,” she said, referring to state government welfare schemes. “What good are those if our land keeps drowning?” 

At a pre-election meeting in Madhya Pradesh’s Khargone in November 2023, addressing beneficiaries of the ‘Ladli Behna’ scheme, former chief minister Chouhan assured women from the Narmada Valley that they would be paid full compensation for losses incurred on account of the dam. 

Ishke credited the Narmada Bachao Andolan, which completed 40 years of struggle on 16th August 2025, for standing by the displaced amidst government apathy, but said he fears for its future. 

“Medha tai (sister) still speaks for us, but even she’s hounded now,” he said. “If she says anything they don’t like, false cases come her way too.”

As the monsoon arrived, dread returned to Katnera. 

The struggle in the Narmada Valley would move forward, said activists and dam-affected residents, but amid a growing silence from the State. 

*Identities withheld on request

(Ambika Subash is a PhD candidate in economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Centre for Economic Studies and Planning.)

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