In ‘troubled waters’: After selling her village house, 54-year-old lands in ‘river of sorrow’

Because land in the river is cheaper than outside the bundh, Devi had sold her house and five kanal land in the village to buy two acres in the river. She hoped her fortune would surge. But it was the Sutlej that surged thrice in 2019, 2023, and 2025 since she bought land and constructed a house in the river. “This is not what I had imagined when I bought the land,” she said.

Her son is a drug addict and is currently admitted to a de-addiction centre. She, along with her husband and livestock, has been living on the dhusi bundh in temporary huts, waiting for the water to recede.

“We need a safe place to live and a permanent site to rebuild,” she said, adding that token rations arrive but financial help is unreliable. In 2023, she received ₹5,000 per killa for two killas, after a deduction in the form of a bribe.

Settlements and landholdings date back to the era before the Harike Headworks was constructed, according to Sukhwinder Singh, a leader of Kisan Mazdoor Sangarh Committee, who owns 18 acres of land in the river. “The land between both embankments is fit for farming and some people have built houses there. This was actually land at higher plains and rivers used to flow through lower areas. But bundhs made this upper area into riverbeds. Bundhs were not constructed on the natural river path,” he said.

Flood exposure determines the land value. “Outside the embankment, a killa is worth Rs 30–35 lakh; inside it’s worth Rs 9–10 lakh,” said Sukhwinder, adding that repeated floods in 2019, 2023 and this year have driven prices down and complicated sales or relocation options for families who might otherwise move to safer sites.

Gurmel Singh of Kutti Wala village, an ex-serviceman who bought land inside the bund in 1993, maintains this year feels worse than 2023. “Our six acres are under water. Houses are ringed with floodwater. Handpumps aren’t working. Medicines and drinking water are hard to arrange,” he said, adding that there are seven households in his hamlet. While inhabitants of four houses are staying back in water, the remaining have moved out along with their livestock. More families have been affected in the broader river belt. He said families stock ration for 10–30 days when Harike levels rise because market access becomes difficult, but beyond that “there is no other arrangement we can make” under the current system.

Sand is more of a problem than a solution. Farmers insist that deep sand burial after floods has rendered some of the fields uncultivable for two years, with some tubewells reportedly buried under eight feet of sand and 500–600 killas near the headworks still not reclaimed since 2023.

Sand comes with the flood. Farmers were not allowed to sell the sand on their land accumulated after floods. They allege that only favoured contractors profit while locals are barred from sand mining on their own lands. Jagtar Singh, who has 10 acres of land in the river, said: “If we had mining rights, we could survive by selling sand.”

Tarn Taran Deputy Commissioner Rahul Sindhu asserts that the population actually living within the floodplain is limited — about 300 to 350, plus roughly 250–300 in Par Jaloke village — while most habitation lies outside the bundhs. However, the DC acknowledges that “more than 30,000–33,000 acres in river areas” of privately owned land are affected in the current spell.

The DC said that a new policy permits farmers to remove up to three feet of sand from their own fields after waters recede for land improvement; deeper burial cases were seen in 2023 and some owners didn’t have the resources to clear the fields.

Sukhwinder said they first requested the Chief Minister on January 9, 2014, to acquire the land between bundhs as per the 2013 Act — at a price four times more than market rate plus 100% resettlement allowance — and resettle families outside the floodway, even if the state later converts the belt into forest or wildlife use. As an interim measure, they proposed registered seasonal leases for cultivation akin to charagah, or else assured community rights for fishing and sand removal. The government, however, didn’t respond to their suggestions.