The river that got one hundred and eleven villages back

By Earth to Sea News · August 2026

In Azamgarh, village councils cleaned eighty nine kilometres of the Tamsa, then planted sixty five thousand fruit trees along her banks.

The Tamsa river winds through Azamgarh district in Uttar Pradesh past hundreds of villages that have always depended on her, and by this year she needed help: silted, narrowed and crowded at the edges. What happened next is the good part. One hundred and eleven gram panchayats, the elected village councils, joined a single effort under the Namami Gange programme in February, and the work moved quickly from meetings to mud: desilting the channel, clearing the banks, and opening the river's path along an eighty nine kilometre stretch.

Then came the masterstroke, sixty five thousand fruit bearing trees planted along the banks, so the restored river now shades and feeds the very villages that saved her. Early reports describe clearer water, birds and fish returning, and better soil and irrigation for the farms nearby. Rivers are usually rescued by agencies and experts, and those helped here too. But the Tamsa was brought home by her neighbours, a hundred and eleven councils of them, and every mango and guava along her banks will spend the next fifty years saying thank you.