Budha Nallah's Toxic Legacy: How Ludhiana's Industrial Heart Poisons Punjab's Fields
On a cold morning in Ludhiana, mist hangs over fields that once belonged to my grandfather. Wheat seedlings struggle through the soil, their green color muted by a grey sky. I returned from London in early October, as I often do, and went straight to the land that defined my family's survival. Each visit now brings a deeper feeling of loss.
Our land sits in Baranhara Talwara, a village southwest of Ludhiana. Agriculture here slowly gives way to factories and drains. What was once fertile ground now feels fragile and tired. It becomes more unfamiliar with every passing year.
The Dark Ribbon of Pollution
A few meters away, the quiet breaks. A dark, slick ribbon of water cuts through the fields. It carries industrial runoff and a stench that sticks in your throat. This is Budha Nallah, one of India's most polluted waterways. It flows beside land my family rebuilt after Partition.
Ludhiana serves as Punjab's industrial heart. People call it the Manchester of India. The city anchors a global textile supply chain. Dyeing units, electroplating factories, bicycle manufacturers, and mills pack its landscape densely.
Punjab gets its name from Panj-aab, meaning land of five rivers. Yet Budha Nallah shows how easily freshwater lifelines get sacrificed for growth. The 14-kilometer canal channels Ludhiana's untreated sewage and industrial waste into the Satluj River.
Over decades, it changed from a freshwater stream into a symbol of regulatory failure. It also represents political neglect. The canal carries prosperity's costs into the bodies and lands of people living closest to it.
A Family's Personal Connection
For my family, this story hits close to home. My maternal grandfather, Sardar Shaam Singh Sidhu, fled Sargodha during Partition in 1947. That city now lies in present-day Pakistan. He left overnight with his wife and two children. He abandoned land and livelihood.
Arriving in India with nothing, he chose Ludhiana to start again. Without formal education, he returned to what he knew best: soil. He cleared land by hand, farming wheat, rice, sugarcane, peanuts, and lentils.
People knew him across nearby villages for setting broken bones without charge. He lived by sewa, meaning service without expectation. For him, land represented reclaimed dignity.
As Ludhiana industrialized, the water beside his fields began changing. My uncle recalls the late 1960s, when the canal darkened and carried a faint chemical smell. By the 1970s, it turned murky. By the 1990s, the stench became constant.
During monsoons, black water spilled into fields. Crops wilted. Buffalo refused to drink. Today, stepping toward the canal feels like crossing an invisible border. The air grows warm and metallic. The soil hardens into something lifeless, with grass growing in broken patches.
Scientific Confirmation of Crisis
Scientists have confirmed what farmers knew for decades. Studies document dangerously high levels of:
- Heavy metals
- Toxic chemicals
- Pharmaceutical residues
- Untreated sewage
Biochemical and chemical oxygen demand levels routinely exceed safe limits by 20 to 40 times. During floods, made worse by climate change, the canal spreads contamination across homes and fields. It leaves a tar-like residue behind.
A City Divided by Pollution
The crisis divides Ludhiana. In affluent neighborhoods, infrastructure keeps the canal at a distance. People there dismiss the pollution as inevitable. On the outskirts, Budha Nallah runs beside homes and fields. It shapes daily life there.
In Baranhara Talwara, I met a man barely thirty who looked decades older. He spoke of chronic cough, stomach pain, and exhaustion. Doctors could not explain his symptoms. When I asked what he hoped would change, he shrugged.
"We stopped expecting help long ago. All we want now is clean water."
Ludhiana sits in Punjab's Malwa region. People have called it the cancer belt since the early 2000s. Studies show cancer rates nearly double the national average.
Villages along Budha Nallah and downstream areas report clusters of:
- Digestive and reproductive cancers
- Developmental disorders
- "Cancer households" where illness spans generations
These communities depend on contaminated groundwater. The pollution does not stop here. Budha Nallah drains into the Satluj, carrying industrial waste across rural Punjab and into Rajasthan. River water remains essential for drinking there.
This is not a local problem. It represents a regional public health crisis.
Failed Government Action
The state has long acknowledged the pollution. Yet action has faltered repeatedly. The Punjab Pollution Amendment Act of 2025 raised brief hope. Then criticism mounted over diluted enforcement and expanded exemptions.
As elsewhere in India, economic growth was allowed to outweigh ecological protection. Industry won the battle.
For the past decade, my work took me into UN boardrooms, climate funds, and global companies. I advised on sustainability, human rights, and environmental strategy. I spoke at the UN General Assembly, Climate Week, and Harvard about justice and systems change.
None of it prepared me for standing on my family's land. I realized how little policy can protect poisoned soil. Seeing Budha Nallah through the lens of ancestry clarifies a simple truth: human rights are not abstract. They live in bodies, water, and land.
The Path Forward
In recent months, I began working with local officials, students, NGOs, and foundations to push for reform. But the scale of change required is immense. Punjab needs:
- Transparent water data
- Strict enforcement of effluent standards
- Upgraded sewage systems
- Region-wide health screening
- Emergency remediation for high-risk villages
- Political will insulated from industrial pressure
People along Budha Nallah do not need sympathy. They need protection. My grandfather rebuilt his life on this land after one border shattered it. Now another border runs through it, invisible but lethal.
Budha Nallah is not just a polluted canal. It serves as a ledger of choices made and avoided. It represents communities left to absorb the costs of progress.
Unless we intervene decisively, it will become the inheritance of another generation. That generation will have no land left to rebuild on.
