Now Reading: Widows excluded from compensation for India’s biggest river project
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Widows excluded from compensation for India’s biggest river project
Widows and adult daughters in Madhya Pradesh’s Pathapur village say they have been excluded from compensation for the Ken-Betwa river project, India’s biggest river-linking scheme. Pooja Gond, 21, lost her husband and infant son but has received no widow’s pension or compensation. Officials demanded a bribe of Rs 1 lakh to add her name to the list, which she could not afford.
Muliya Gond, 18, who has a voter ID and has voted, was told she is too young for compensation. She has untreated mouth sores and says she would use the money to see a doctor. One of the family’s two houses was demolished without notice. Pooja fears the remaining mud house will be next but has not been told where the family will go.
Economist Bina Agarwal says officials routinely apply a narrow definition of ‘family’ in India’s land acquisition law, excluding wives, widows and adult daughters. She argues compensation should be paid into separate bank accounts for each adult, and land should be jointly registered with equal rights for women.
Indian Opinion Analysis
India's Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (LARR) Act, 2013, was meant to prevent the kind of exclusion Pathapur's Gond women face. Its provision that each adult in a family is a separate unit for compensation is routinely ignored by officials, who default to a narrower definition that treats only male-headed households as eligible. For tribal communities like the Gonds, land is not just an asset but a source of livelihood, cultural identity, and food security, the forest provides mahua, chironji, and fuel. The act mandates that landowners get land in exchange when possible, yet Pooja Gond's plea for land rather than cash shows that promise remains largely on paper. With over 1.5 crore people displaced by development projects since independence, according to government estimates, the pattern of women being last to receive compensation or being excluded altogether is longstanding. Watch for whether the Madhya Pradesh government revises its compensation lists for the Ken-Betwa project's project-affected families, and whether any court petitions are filed on behalf of widows and adult daughters.
Source: aljazeera.com
This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above. Methodology and corrections.
