Sometime last year, Dattu Valvi took up temporary work offered by the state forest department in his village Mogarbara in Gujarat, about 120 km away from Surat. The job required him to drive a tractor carrying a filled water tanker to irrigate young saplings that the department had planted.

Soon after, Valvi drove through a dry forest with trees of teak; timru, the leaves of which are plucked to make bidis; mahua, whose seeds are used to make oil, and several other medicinal herbs. About three kilometres in, he trailed the tractor up a small hill. White cemented pillars and barbed wire enclosed a stretch of forest land here, within which were the new saplings that needed watering. A metal gate announced that this area belonged to the forest department; Valvi entered to begin his work.

Valvi knew this area well. After all, for decades, he had cultivated a piece of land nearby, at the bottom of this slope, on the banks of the Tapi river. A few kilometres downstream, the waters pooled in the reservoir of the Ukai dam, which was built in 1972.

As Valvi drove through the fenced land, watering the saplings, he came to a startling realisation – some way down the...

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