The Brahmaputra river has eroded bighas of land, rendering thousands of people homeless and unemployed, says Anup Sharma
Firoja Begum spends much of the day looking at the river that passes through her backyard. The monsoon rain for the last few days has swelled the Brahmaputra, triggering panic among her and hundreds of others who live near the river. The waves of the river have grown larger, hitting the banks and it won’t take many days for the river to reach her home to erode it.
The 34 year old Firoja and many in the village have already lost their paddy fields to the river. The pace of erosion has become much faster in last few years and huge portions of land are eroded overnight.
“We cannot sleep at night. There are terrible sounds of waves hitting the banks. When we lost our paddy fields, we lost almost everything. This is what we have now but we have no idea how long we can live here,” says Firoja, a resident of Borbhita village under Chenga revenue circle, pointing at her house. Borbhita is located in the south eastern part of Barpeta district. The mighty Brahmaputra that flows by the district has eroded hundreds of bighas of land already, rendering thousands of people homeless and robbing them of their only livelihood option — agriculture.
Data reveals that more than 70 villages have been eroded in the Chenga revenue circle by the river since Independence.
A widow, Firoja’s house is located just on the edge of the river. But the situation was different 10 years ago, the river then flowed far from her house. Every year, the Brahmaputra has been coming closer. With the river’s water level rising, Firoja has already started dismantling the tin roof and bamboo walls of the house to save them for building a temporary shed to live somewhere else.
She is among hundreds of families in Barpeta district, who have been suffering due to climate change and induced erosion. Categorised as below poverty line (BPL), they have always been fighting a tough battle for survival. The erosion of river bank has reduced many of them, once wealthy farmers, to landless people and daily wage earners.
“I came to this village in 1990 after my marriage. I have been living here since then. My husband was a farmer and we lived a good life till our lands were eaten up by the river. We grew paddy and the yield was good, we could even sell a portion of the paddy yield. Equally good was the cultivation of jute and vegetables. My three sons have grown up here. How can we leave this place and where will we go now?” Firoja says, wiping her tears.
Two of her sons have completed their graduation. The youngest, Rajibur Rahman has passed his class 10 exam last year. “He scored well in Class 10 — first division with good marks in four subjects. But I may not be able to fund his studies further if we lose our home,” adds she.
Some of the people in the village, who have lost their homes earlier, have migrated to other places while a few others have made the embankments nearby their home.
“Please go and see how people are living on the embankments. The government has not done anything for us. Politicians come to us only ahead of elections. We vote for them every five years in the hope that steps will be taken to save our land. We are not given anything beyond promises and assurances,” says Rukeya Khatun, a septuagenarian of the same village.
Fellow villager, Mainul Haque, 29, only remembers accompanying his father to their paddy fields when he was a child. “I don’t know how much land my father used to own here. I was too young then. The river has not left even an inch behind,” he says.
“My father died a few years ago and there is no land to cultivate. I had to work to sustain my mother. So I chose to go to Guwahati to work as a construction labourer when I was 15. It’s very hard to work on construction sites but there is no way out. Had the river not taken our lands I would have been a farmer like my father,” adds Mainul, gazing into the river.
Along with the rest of the world, climate change has affected Assam in different ways. The analysis of weather data over the past few years show that there is a trend of climate variations there. For instance, more rainfall within a short period of time has impacted the hydrology of the rivers leading to erosion of river banks.
The Brahmaputra’s hydrology is also affected by the rising temperature. Originating in the glaciers of Tibet region, the river is affected by the melting of snow in the glaciers in the upper Brahmaputra catchment. The attenuation of river flow due to the melting of snow in the Brahmaputra basin affects the downstream discharge of the river. This increase in discharge due to the significant retreat of snow gives rise to severe catastrophic problems such as flood and erosion.
Assam’s State Action Plan for Climate Change says that the annual mean temperature in the state has increased by 0.59 degrees celsius over the last 60 years (1951 to 2010) and is likely to increase by 1.7-2.2 degree celsius by 2050. Climate projections in the state action plan also predict that extreme rainfall events will increase by 38 percent.
The char dwellers of Assam are classic examples of how climate change affects people. These people have become marginalised economically. The climate change has resulted in continuous shifts in rainfall pattern as well as an increase in temperatures of the island and resulted in erosion of large tracts of land. The condition of the char dwellers is worsening further as most of them have lost their cultivable lands.
A 2012 study by the Centre for Environment, Social and Policy Research (CESPR), in collaboration with the Indian Network on Ethics and Climate Change, noted that the widespread loss of livelihood options for thousands of people across Assam was due to climate disasters, particularly floods and erosion.