Every year, like clockwork, images of Assam drowning in the swollen Brahmaputra flood the Indian media. Every year, the response to the disaster is reduced to a statistical exercise, the tabulation of lives and livelihoods lost, crops and wildlife consumed. Sometimes ecological devastation as both cause and consequence of the disaster enters the discourse. But the stories of ordinary people who bear the brunt are rarely told. Or, when told, they are forgotten as soon as the news cycle moves on. Another year rolls around and the story is repeated.
It’s almost the same elsewhere in India: the human suffering and how it’s tied to economic and ecological causes and consequences of a calamity is often overshadowed by a focus on statistics and debates seeking to assign blame.
To help rectify this, Newslaundry travelled in Assam and Bengal to get a sense of how the lives of common folk have been upturned by two of the deadliest natural disasters to hit the country in 2020 the Brahmaputra floods and the cyclone Amphan which together took at least 221 lives.
In Assam, where floods devastate usually the same marginalised people year after year, we visited the six worst-affected districts, covering about 1,300 km along both banks of the Brahmaputra as well as the world’s largest river island, Majuli. In Bengal, we focussed the coverage on the Sundarbans, the mangrove delta wrecked by Amphan.
In the northeastern state, one of the major problems facing the disaster-hit people is river erosion and the resultant landlessness.
Assam has lost 4,270 sq km of land more than Goa’s total area to river erosion since 1950, and 2,500 villages have been wiped out. At least 3,800 sq km of the eroded land was highly productive farmland, according to a draft report prepared five years ago by the state’s environment department, which identified continuous changes in the Brahmaputra’s course as a key reason.
The report pointed out that costs associated with both flooding and the erosion of land have been rising as it has also triggered migration, causing conflict over land and posed a threat to general economic development.
Yet, it is only this year that erosion has been pushed to be considered a natural calamity, so that populations affected by it are entitled to state compensation. Funds allocated under the Disaster Damage Repairing Scheme do not reach the erosion-affected people, according to a report in NENow. In fact, the state government does not even have any account of the number of displaced people, especially in lower Assam.
Assam has a network of 423 embankments built over the last six decades, but nearly 300 are past their use-by date and can no longer withstand the surging waters. At least 180 of the embankments were breached this year alone.
People hit by natural calamities in Assam are entitled to be compensated for the loss of homes, fields, and livelihoods. A family that loses its home in the floods is entitled to Rs 95,100 from the State Disaster Response Fund, for example, and a farmer should get Rs 12,200 per hectare to desilt their farmland. Similarly, fisherfolk are meant to receive Rs 1,500 a month under the PM Matsya Sampada Yojana during the lean period, from April 1 to July 1, when fish breed and they are not allowed to work. A scheme to compensate fisherfolk for loss of work in the flood months as well is on the anvil, according to Rakesh Kumar, secretary of the fishery department.
In reality, few people receive any compensation, mainly because their claims are mired in bureaucratic red tape.
Ceaseless erosion of the river banks has profound ecological and economic consequences, of course, but in Biswanath Ghat Puroni Gaon, it threatens cultural heritage as well. Several of the temples that this village in Biswanath district is famous for sit precariously on the edge of the river, as do a few houses. It seems only a matter of time before the rest of the bank is eroded and the structures are washed away.
Most of the houses lie beyond the usual flood line, but the river is inching closer and turning more hostile. The floodwaters rise further and further every year, said Tritho Das, 35, who has lived in the village all his life. We have also noticed that the island in the middle of the river and our own bank are being eroded, bit by bit. The river is widening and siltation is increasing, making it shallower and muddier than it used to be.
Diganto Das, 48, from Dokhimpath Koibotro, is a witness to the damage erosion has caused to the island and its people. Over the years, Majuli has shrunk because of erosion. If erosion continues at this same rate, which it will, where will we live?”
Has he thought about leaving the island which is shrinking before his own eyes? Diganto laughed. This is my birthplace. All my ancestors were born here, he said. And even if I wanted to leave, there is no way I could. I don’t have the money to just walk into Jorhat town and buy a piece of land. I have to take all my struggles in stride and survive. This is my land, and I shall die here.
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