Assam’s climate refugees are having a tough time shifting homes and fortunes as rivers continue to erode their land, livelihood and existence, says Anup Sharma
When you ask 42-year-old Diganta Pegu about his house, he points towards the middle of the mighty Brahmaputra river, which has swallowed up his house and 20 bighas (6.6 acre) of fertile paddy fields. A resident of the fragile Majuli Island, the wild waters after a heavy monsoon tossed about his existence into shreds, forcing him to live like a nomad. He has been living at Takar Chuk village under Dhakuakhana sub division in lakhimpur district of Assam since 2009. But he is not sure how long he can stay here… the hungry tides of the river have already started to scare him.
“It’s there (pointing his index finger towards the middle of the river)… can you guessij We were in Majuli since generations. My father and grandfather were all farmers and this river used to be our lifeline until it became very angry. Every year, the fury of the river has been increasing and many people are losing their paddy fields, houses and livelihood,” said Pegu, a member of the Mising community of Assam, traditionally called the river people. The Misings have depended on agriculture along the rich silt-laden banks of the river and fishing. The women are nimble-fingered weavers. Pegu is one of the thousands who have been reduced to a “nomadic” tribe by the impact of climate change on the rivers of Assam, which are over-flooding because of glacial melt and extreme precipitation. This has resulted in huge erosion of landmass and erratic floods, forcing thousands of people to shift from one place to another.
Once a wealthy farmer, Pegu is now living in a small chang ghar (traditional bamboo house on stilts) with his 11-member family. The eight male members are now contract farmers and supplement the family income by working as daily wage earners during the lean season. “This is what we have now. A little over one katha of land. At one time, I owned around 20 bighas of land. However, we have lost all our agricultural lands due to erosion,” said Pegu, who has shifted four houses since misfortune hit them. “We have built this house in 2009. However, we do not know how many years we can live here. If there is erosion here, we have to leave for a different place,” he added.
Originating from the glaciers of northern Tibet, the Brahmaputra is one of the major trans-boundary rivers of Asia that flows through China, India and Bangladesh. With an estimated average discharge capacity of 19,800 m3/s, it is a lifeline for millions of people. While the agrarian economy of the people living on the banks is dependent on the annual flood that brings vital nutrients to the flood plain, its voluminous onslaught has had a negative impact by eroding a huge landmass over the years and depositing huge amounts of sands into the paddy fields, making them difficult to cultivate.
located about six km away from lakhimpur town, the residents of Ghagar are witnessing a similar fate due to the hungry tides of the Subansiri river. One of the major tributaries of Brahmaputra, this has also been wreaking havoc on people living on its banks since last several years.
“When we were young, the river was far away from our village. I remember walking for quite sometime to see the river from my home. However, things are changing with the passage of time. Since 2005-2006, the river has been eroding a huge landmass every year and we have lost over 15 villages in the last 12 years. I have been living with my family at Ghagar ghat since I lost my home and paddy fields in 2006,” said Dilip Mili, a Mising youth and a resident of Ghagar Alimur village, which was submerged.
“There are hundreds of people like us. We have been appealing to the government to rehabilitate us but nothing has happened so far,” said Nitul Mili, another of the community. Nitul, who used to be a happy farmer earlier, now runs a small shop at Ghagar ghat selling betel nut and leaf, tea, cigarette and similar stuff to people who come to board the local ferry.
“Our Ghagar village was located about 10 km away from lakhimpur town about six years ago. However, now it is only six km away from the town,” said Noren Pegu. The village elders explained that Ghagar was once a small rivulet separate from Subansiri river. “The Subansiri is eroding our side very fast and it subsequently merged with Ghagar and became a single river,” said Noren. “This year we are here but we do not know when we have to leave this place. The way the river is eroding the banks, we have to relocate from here too soon,” he added.
There were hundreds of houses, a forest office, hospital and school building in the areas earlier, which have been lost to the river over the past several years, triggering a livelihood crisis. The river banks at most of the places have skeletal remains of bamboo and concrete abutments — a short-term strategy adopted by the state government to check erosion. locals, however, say these are not sufficient to address the problem.
The landscape near the road from Dolohat Tiniali along the Singora river in lakhimpur district is dotted with concrete signage testifying that lakhs of rupees have been spent under government schemes to stop erosion. “The works to stop erosion exist only on paper. Nothing happens in reality. The contractors take out the money showing false works but it never percolates to the right infrastructure along the banks,” said Purna Gogoi, president of the Naoboicha unit of the All Assam Students’ Union (Aasu), an influential students’ body in the state.
“There has been negative impact of climate change on the rivers. The erratic climate conditions have led to severity of impacts like erosion and sedimentation on agricultural lands, which have made people homeless and compounded the problem by triggering livelihood crisis among affected people,” said Dr Dhrubajyoti Saharia, a professor in the geography department of the Gauhati University. “Sedimentation is another major issue, making huge tracts of the state barren and unfit for agricultural purposes.”
“The change in temperature and patterns of rainfall in the northeast indicates that climate change impacts will be felt more seriously now. The change in the rainfall pattern has led to the recent volatility of the rivers. The Himalayas are fragile mountains and unusual rainfall triggers massive erosion. Besides, the northeast region is also located on Seismic Zone V and the subterranean activity and movements also lead to erosion,” said Dr. Partha J Das, who heads the Water, Climate and Hazard (WATCH) division of Aranyak, a biodiversity and conservation organisation.
Although the Revenue and Disaster Management department of Assam government failed to provide the data as to how much of the total landmass the state has lost due to erosion in last ten years, former Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, during a meeting with the Group of Ministers in New Delhi on 2013, on record stated that the state loses about 8,000 hectares of land due to erosion every year.
As the flood and erosion continue to maroon people, a human crisis looms large. There has been unwanted migration from rural areas to urban areas, leading to unwanted population pressure on these areas. Although the erosion-affected people receive compensation in the form of a lumpsum amount for loss of their house —more if it is a pucca house and less if a kaccha house — and rations, this initiative is far from being sufficient to help these people start a life afresh after brief intervals.
In the absence of a clear and strong policy to rehabilitate these people in some safer place, many communities of the diverse Northeast would be reduced to being nomads.