Bundelkhand's Ken-Betwa Protests Are a Verdict on How India Builds
On the banks of the Ken river in Chhatarpur district, hundreds of women have, over the past several months, lain down on mock funeral pyres, faces smeared with river mud. Others have waded into the water with ropes knotted around their necks, or buried themselves waist-deep as a symbolic burial of the living. These are not isolated acts of despair. They are organised, named forms of protest — the Chita Andolan, the Jal Andolan, the Mitti Andolan — devised by a peasantry that has run out of ordin