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Evening was just about to fall when floods struck Machhiwal on August 26. The village in Punjab’s Amritsar district is 4 km from the Ravi river. At around 3.30 pm, government officials rushed to the village, warning of a flood. In half an hour, the swelling Ravi had engulfed Machhiwal with a speed and ferocity the village residents say they had never seen. “My neighbour Paramjit Singh was swept away in front of my eyes,” says Karm Singh, a farmer. Paramjit Singh’s body was found two days later a few kilometres from the spot. “How can we prepare for such a disaster in 30 minutes?” asks Karm Singh, standing in the backdrop of floodwater covering land as far as the eye could see.
Even 10 days after the flood, Machhiwal remains under water. Everyone in the village has been affected by the flood. The disaster has left Paramjit Singh’s neighbour Mahinder Singh homeless and taken away his source of livelihood. “We took a loan of Rs 3 lakh to build the boundary wall of the house and to buy a dozen goats. Everything was swept away; just two goats are left,” he says. The all-pervasive grief has brought about a solidarity among the village residents. “Our neighbour Tarsem Singh has suffered more than us. That man’s entire house has been washed away,” says Karm Singh. Tarsem Singh’s family has taken shelter at Karm Singh’s home.
Villages like Machhiwal, which lie downstream of the Ranjit Sagar dam on the Ravi, do not face a major threat of flooding due to the security provided by the dam and their positional advantage of being a few kilometres away from the river course. But this time, the situation took a different turn. Water levels at the Ranjit Sagar dam reached close to its maximum capacity of 527 m by the third week of August due to heavy inflow caused by incessant rain in the catchment area. On August 26-27, the authorities released more than 0.2 million cusecs of water to prevent overflow and to keep the dam safe. On August 27, the floodwater reached the Madhopur barrage, where old infrastructure and lack of maintenance worsened the situation. Around mid-day, the barrage breached, submerging villages in Gurdaspur, Pathankot and Amritsar districts. The 2-km embankment named Dhusi Bundh, which protects the village from the river, breached at several places leading to flood in far away areas, even reaching the international border. The overflo-wing Ravi washed away nearly 30 km of iron fencing on the India-Pakistan border and the Border Security Force (BSF) had to abandon several checkposts. “In Gurdaspur, nearly 30 to 40 of our border outposts were submerged,” said AK Vidyarthi, Deputy Inspector General of BSF Punjab Frontier.
Elevated points in villages, like the top of a culvert or an embankment, have become the shelter places. Many residents have used tractor trolleys to store whatever valuables remain. In Sajada village, near Machhiwal, Suchha Singh who has been displaced by the flood, says, “Fifteen houses of poor people like us have been completely submerged. Our friends have given us these trolleys so that we can keep our belongings.”
Perhaps for the first time in living memory, all the rivers of Punjab flooded simultaneously. An analysis of satellite data by Down To Earth (DTE) shows that about 7,000 sq km of Punjab’s 50,362 sq km was flooded, with the inundation concentrated along the Beas, Ravi, Sutlej and Ghaggar rivers. “If you see the overall coverage or the extent of the impact, 2025 appears to be high,” says Akshar Tripathi, assistant professor, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Patna. He adds that the water seems to have covered a larger area compared to the worst floods in the state’s history—floods of September 1988 and July 1993. Here’s how the disaster unfolded.
On August 25, water levels at the Bhakra dam on the Sutlej river reached 508.6 m, which is only 3.4 m below the danger mark of 512 m. On August 26 the authorities had to open the dam’s gates. The water engulfed 77 villages in…
This article was originally published in the September 16-30, 2025 print edition of Down To Earth