In early September, Chikhalda, a small village in Madhya Pradesh’s Dhar district, drowned. A week later, I saw what was left of the submerged village from a boat. The boatman first rowed over a stretch of flooded corn and wheat fields. As he turned the boat to the left, we glided over what used to be a tar road—a state highway connecting the nearby town of Kukshi to another small town, Barwani. The boat floated over a watery graveyard of shops that used to sell kachoris, samosas and sweets. We passed a bus stop where farmers, labourers, boatmen and shopkeepers would wait to be taken places. Further up, as we entered the main square of this drowned village, the boatman pointed to a bust of Mohandas Gandhi perched atop a blue pillar, also submerged.
Chikhalda was a bustling rural settlement at the time of its sinking—750 houses, 56 shops, three schools, a large playground and 36 religious sites, including a Jain temple, two dargahs, and a Muslim graveyard. Locals took pride in the village’s archaeological history which suggested that the area’s rich black soil was home to the first farmers of the central Indian region. All of it went under water. Chikhalda, situated in the Narmada Valley, is just one of 178 villages of Madhya Pradesh that have been partially or completely submerged by the Sardar Sarovar Dam. The Sardar Sarovar is the largest dam on the Narmada River.
But why and how did Chikhalda drown?
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