Two decades ago the village of Anjanbara on the banks of the Narmada River in Alirajpur District in Madhya Pradesh hit the international news headlines because of a fierce clash between its Adivasi residents and the police. A team of the Government of Madhya Pradesh accompanied by a substantial police contingent had gone to the village to forcibly survey it as part of the legal procedures for determining compensation to be paid to the residents who were to be displaced as a result of submergence that was to occur due to the construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam downstream in Gujarat. The Narmada Bachao Andolan had petitioned the World Bank to withdraw its funding to the construction of the dam and an enquiry commission set up by the World Bank had advised it to withdraw from the project given its huge social, economic and ecological drawbacks. Following this the World Bank had given the Government of India a six month period in which to address all the shortcomings pointed out by the enquiry commission. The major point at issue was the lack of rehabilitation for the people to be ousted by the construction of the dam and so the Government of Madhya Pradesh in its high handed way had sought to force the people to agree to monetary compensation for their land in violation of the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal Award which had stipulated that every land holder and his adult son were to get at least 2 hectares of irrigated land each.
The clash between the police and the people of Anjanbara soon escalated into one between the state and the Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath (KMCS) and as a result a number of members and activists of the KMCS and also some supporters who had come from outside to help were arrested and incarcerated in jail apart from being beaten up in custody and paraded handcuffed in the streets of Alirajpur. Eventually, the KMCS filed a petition in the Supreme Court of India of human rights violations by the state and this was upheld by the judges who not only castigated the state and its minions for their rampant violations of human rights but also initiated action against them. Thus, Anjanbara and the KMCS became internationally famous for sometime as international human rights groups too became vocal against the Indian Government and as a result the World Bank withdrew from the Sardar Sarovar Dam project.
The people of Anjanbara, the name means "valley of Anjan (Hardwickia Binata) trees" had been active against the dam since 1986 and continued to fight for its cancellation right up to 2014 or so when finally seeing that the dam and submergence was to become a reality, they decided to opt for resettlement in Gujarat. However, not only were not all people given land in Gujarat but also the land itself was not good. Most of the land could not be farmed in the monsoons as it remained water logged. Some of the land was occupied by others who did not want to give up cultivation in favour of the new allottees. So a substantial number of people of Anjanbara are still there in the village cultivating the forest land atop the hills. This land is of poor quality as compared to the land that has been submerged and so the people are in difficulties. Moreover, the village atop the hill does not have road connectivity and lacks electricity and so life is so much harder.
The biggest problem is the lack of potable water. The people have dug a few wells but these are underlaid with hard rock and so the water dries up in summer. Even now in winter the water availability is very low as shown in the picture below where a woman has to painstakingly fill water from a shallow spring. In summer the people have no recourse but to descend all the way to the river Narmada below to fetch water which is a very tiring exercise.
The people are trying to make the most of a bad situation by undertaking soil and forest conservation work to improve artificial and natural recharge as shown in the pictures below.
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