The slow stream of tractors on the road from Harsud to Chhanera tugs a strange load. Families accompanied by the odd goat or two, sit on piles of torn-down doors and window frames. The flight from Harsud has begun.This is a town that is no longer supposed to exist. In the next three months much of it will go underwater and some 5,600 families will be ‘‘affected’’. On paper, that should not matter. Even as the Indira Sagar Dam rises to its current height of 245 metres, affecting 34,000 families, the people from Harsud are supposed to have been ‘‘resettled’’.That assertion is a lie. In fact, the state government is hurriedly trying to put up temporary shelters by June 30 for at least 7,000 persons. And the township of Naya Harsud, supposed to have come up 15 km away, is in no condition to receive the uprooted. Till last week, only 175 families had shifted to the new town, which still does not have sewage facilities and where water is being supplied by tankers. But as the prospect of submergence looms, time is running out. ‘‘We got our compensation amount just one month back, how could we have shifted earlier,’’ asks Kusum Bai, whose labourer husband and four children are trying to settle into a tarpaulin shelter. ‘‘You can see for yourself how things are here. The sewage lines have not been laid, the farmers don’t let us use their fields. And the school here has not even started functioning.’’In January this year, while the Narmada Hydroelectric Development Corporation was congratulating itself on the commissioning of the first two 125 MW power generating units of the project, the publicity focused only on how the project was proceeding ahead of schedule. The problem is that it’s also proceeding ahead of any viable resettlement.Even the compensation package began to be distributed only in April, leaving no time for families to shift. Now, at the old township, people are busy tearing down their houses while their new homes are not ready to receive them. ‘‘My eldest daughter is in Class X, while there is a building for a middle school at the new township, there is no high school,’’ says Kiran Nagaur, a shop owner who is busy loading his belongings onto a trolley. Then another thought strikes him. ‘‘Even if I set up a shop, who will I sell to till the town is ready?’’But for the government, people like Nagaur are less of a problem. At least they will be out of harm’s way. The trouble is most residents show no inclination to move by June 30. ‘‘Whoever allowed the height of the dam to be raised without considering our plight should be jailed,’’ says Saubhag Shand, the Nagar Panchayat chief.At the Naya Harsud site, engineer (civil) I.K. Khatri says it will take another two months before basic facilities can be provided. But the authorities are in no mood to listen to him or the people who must now be moved.After a press conference, where Industry Minister Kailash Chawla, deputed by CM Uma Bharti to visit the site, admitted that not a single house had been built so far at Naya Harsud, the vice-chairman of the Narmada Valley Development Authority, Pradeep Bhargava, was asked about this town that ‘‘had been resettled on paper’’. Bhargava countered, ‘‘I would take away the term ‘on paper’. They have been resettled.’’
