After 1947 the government settled displaced Punjabi farmers in the Terai, the marshy forested belt at the foot of the Himalaya in what is now Udham Singh Nagar district of Uttarakhand and adjoining Uttar Pradesh.
It was malarial, forested and almost uninhabited. The families cleared it, drained it and farmed it, and within two decades it was among the most productive agricultural tracts in northern India. The Pantnagar agricultural university was established there in 1960, the first of its kind in India.
The district is now Sikh in a substantial part, Punjabi-speaking, with gurdwaras in every settlement, and it grows what Punjab grows.
It also produced conflict with the local Tharu and Buksa communities and with existing residents over the land, which is documented and is not part of the Punjabi account of the settlement.
It is the largest planned resettlement of Punjabi farmers anywhere in India and it worked, and it is almost never mentioned in accounts of Partition rehabilitation, which focus on the urban refugees.
The district is named for Udham Singh, of Sunam.
The Terai was malarial forest and grassland until DDT and mechanised clearance made it farmable in the 1950s and 1960s.
Allotments went to ex-servicemen and to displaced families from west Punjab, and Punjabi cultivators cleared and settled it with the same package they had used at home.
Udham Singh Nagar district is now substantially Punjabi speaking with its own gurdwaras and its own mandis, and it is one of the most productive agricultural tracts in India.