Where was the Mitti Bachao (Save the soil) Movement started in India?

Concept

The Mitti Bachao Andolan ("Save the Soil" Movement) is a grassroots environmental movement that arose when large irrigation projects damaged farmland. The governing idea: water-intensive dam irrigation can raise the water table and concentrate salts, causing waterlogging and soil salinisation that ruin previously fertile fields — so affected farmers organise to demand drainage, compensation, and a change in irrigation practice.

Application

This movement began in 1977 in the Hoshangabad (now Narmadapuram) region of Madhya Pradesh. After the Tawa Dam was commissioned on the Tawa river, canal irrigation raised the water table in the command area; large tracts of farmland became waterlogged and saline, and yields collapsed. Local farmers mobilised under the banner "Mitti Bachao" to demand remedial drainage and compensation, making it an early farmer-led environmental movement in India.

Cross-check

The defining cause — waterlogging and salinity from the Tawa Dam — ties the movement to the Tawa command area, which lies in Hoshangabad district of Madhya Pradesh. None of the other listed places is associated with the Tawa project or with this movement, which confirms the location in Madhya Pradesh.