A few weeks after a number of constructions, together with homes and a crematorium with a Kali temple, had been washed away by the river Ganga, villagers at Pratapganj and Mahestola in Murshidabad’s Shamsherganj block organised an elaborate puja however to a deity that they had by no means seen or worshipped in the previous — a goddess wearing all-white, seated on a gharial and fish.
“This is Goddess Ganga. The people here are desperate and are trying everything to stop the erosion,” says Satyam Sarkar, a member of Bogdadnagar panchayat samiti.
Several homes have been lowered to rubble, and lots of others are poised precariously on the eroding banks of the huge flowing river alongside this stretch bordering Dhuliyan municipality.
The extent of erosion is such that hundreds of folks from close by and far-off areas began coming right here on daily basis, Sarkar, a neighborhood Trinamool Congress chief, says. “It was like a mela (fair), they were coming to see the erosion. We had to put up barricades to prevent people from coming.”
Four months after the large erosion in September 2022 left a whole bunch of folks homeless, Pratapganj and Mahestola are footage of devastation. Elaborately constructed two-storied homes on the edge of the river lie vacant. A component of a highway working parallel to the river has caved in, and hundreds of sand luggage have been positioned alongside the river to stop additional erosion. Now, in the winter, the river flows calmly with a number of small fishing boats flying Indian flags out in the water.
Delawar Hossain, a buddy of Sarkar, says that just a few hundred metres downstream, a burial floor at Sadikpara was swept away this monsoon. “At Kamalpur, my village, which is about 3 km downstream, a masjid, a health centre and a primary school are hanging on the edge and can fall into the river any day,” he says.
A main faculty and an anganwadi centre at Pratapganj inform the story of sufferings. One room at the anganwadi now serves as residence to 4 households. On a Sunday afternoon, Menaka Ravidas is busy cooking lunch for her household as she narrates how her residence was washed away: “It was at about 9 a.m. on September 6, the river was in full spate and in minutes took away our house. Since it was morning and not night, we could somehow escape.”
Outside the anganwadi centre, there are few cabins made of jute sticks the place households displaced by the Ganga have discovered shelter. Several households are taking shelter at Pratapganj Primary School after their properties had been washed away. Five-six households are huddled in each classroom. Clothes are left to dry throughout the faculty compound and youngsters play in the lecture rooms. For greater than two dozen households, there are solely two bogs and two bogs.
“How can we live like this and for how long?” Jyotsana Sarkar, a lady in her forties, asks. Satyam Sarkar says that he has ready an inventory of 140 households who’ve been displaced, however admits that there’s not sufficient land the place they are often accommodated. “We, five brothers, live together,” Sarkar says, pointing at their homes after which expressing his biggest worry in a whisper: “The river is only a hundred metres away.”
In the ‘meander belt’
Kalyan Rudra, Chairman of the West Bengal Pollution Control Board and creator of Rivers of the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna Delta, describes the erosion of the Ganga each upstream and downstream of the Farakka Barrage as “anthropogenically-induced erosion”. He explains that the rivers of Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) delta generally tend to oscillate and erode in an space which known as the meander belt.
“Normal oscillation of the river was interrupted after the construction of the Farakka Barrage. It reduced the cross-sectional area of the river, it reduced the water holding capacity and compelled the river to change its course,” Rudra contends. The main goal of the Farakka Barrage Project was to divert an enough amount of Ganga waters to the Bhagirathi-Hooghly river system by means of a 38.38-km-long feeder canal for preservation and upkeep of Kolkata Port by bettering navigability.
Rudra factors out that the barrage has transformed the river right into a stagnant pool holding 87,000 million cubic metres of water and the river has deposited sediment upstream in Malda, notably between Farakka and Manikchak. Citing a number of publications, he says that the sediment load carried yearly by the Ganga has been estimated to be round 736-800 million tonnes.
This sediment deposition is resulting in the emergence of chars (river islands) in Malda. Here, based on Rudra, the river is eroding on the left financial institution, and the comparatively sediment-free water downstream Farakka is eroding the proper financial institution in Murshidabad; in each these circumstances, West Bengal is shedding land.
“If we look at the map of Malda, we see that the river has formed a mighty bend between Manikchak and Farakka Barrage and more than 200 sq. km have been eroded along the left bank of the river,” says the river knowledgeable. He argues that an pressing train is required to designate the boundary between West Bengal and Jharkhand and establish the chars in the river as West Bengal territory.
It is tough to find these bends alongside the financial institution of the river in Malda, the place the river seems to be a number of kilometres large. Despite the calm, uprooted timber, huts razed to floor and enormous areas on the river financial institution lined with sand from the river are tips to how the river impacts the area. In the Hukmatola space of Gopalpur gram panchayat of Malda’s Manikchak block, the river financial institution appears to be like prefer it has been hit by a tropical storm. Everything appears to be damaged, homes, cattle sheds, even timber. A bit lady tries to seek out one thing from the rubble of what seems to be her home.
On November 21, 2022, the villagers going through recurrent erosion held demonstrations outdoors the workplace of the District Magistrate, Malda. They now level at a char that has fashioned between two banks of the river, exacerbating the erosion on the left financial institution, one thing Rudra had referred to. Like in Pratapganj in Murshidabad, Gopalpur gram panchayat’s Md Mustafa Sheikh faces an analogous scenario — there may be not sufficient land to settle the folks displaced by erosion.
Point of entry
In Malda, Ratua MLA Samar Mukherjee insists that one must see the level from the place the Ganga enters West Bengal to grasp the complicated river morphology and “diagnose the disease” of erosion. He explains that the river enters his constituency at Mahanandatola, the place sand is deposited for a number of hundred metres on the financial institution of the river. His ancestral home, the place he lives alone with a number of canines, is lower than 500 m from the river.
The mighty river enters the West Bengal plains from Rajmahal hills of Jharkhand’s Sahebganj district after a protracted journey of about 2,000 km from the Himalayas because it begins to interrupt away into distributaries. The Ganga divides into two main distributaries, Padma and Bhagirathi-Hooghly, at Mithipur in Murshidabad district, which is positioned about 40 km downstream of Farakka. The Padma carries the bulk of the discharge, flows about 65 km alongside the India-Bangladesh border, and at last leaves Indian territory at Jalangi. The Bhagirathi-Hooghly department, which is fed by waters from the feeder canal of the Farakka Barrage, flows southward from Mithipur for about 500 km earlier than merging into the Bay of Bengal at Sagar Island.
People take shelter in Paratapganj Primary School in West Bengal’s Murshidabad district after their home was swept away on account of Ganga erosion in Dhuliyan space.
| Photo Credit:
DEBASISH BHADURI
In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 17, 2022, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee referred to the river erosion in Manikchak block: “In fact, the extent of erosion has been so severe that the distance between the two banks of rivers, the Ganga and the Fulhar, has come down to only 1.5 km at Billaimari village of Manikchak block in Malda district, from its earlier distance of 4 km in 2004, thus posing serious threats to the adjoining villages and even to the safety of the National Highway 131A.” She had additionally written a letter to the Prime Minister on February 21, 2022.
A go to to Billaimari, simply adjoining to Mahanandtola, reveals that Banerjee’s considerations usually are not unjustified. While the Ganga is eroding on the left financial institution, the Fulhar is eroding on the proper financial institution, with native residents sandwiched between the two rivers.
The complete village of Billaimari appears to be taking shelter on the embankments. Just a few a long time in the past, when the Fulhar was overflowing, the villagers sought refuge on the banks of the Ganga; over the previous few years, it’s Ganga which is in spate. Along the financial institution of the Ganga, massive agricultural fields have changed into desert, with sand deposited by the river. Roads have been swept away, and a remnant of an previous bridge might be noticed.
“We are facing erosion every year. This year again we lost a hundred houses,” says Abdur Rauf, an aged villager of Naya Billaimari. Amidst the crowd of villagers is younger Shamshul Johar, a daily-wage earner in Kashmir who explains how the altering course of the river modified the course of his life, compelling him to drop out of faculty. With yearly, the river is consuming into land, agriculture has suffered and younger folks like Shamshul have little possibility however emigrate out for work. They work as building staff in the western and southern States; and with their financial savings they construct the homes that are in flip swept away by the river.
Villagers at Pratapganj in Murshidabad and Gopalpur and Billaimari in Malda say that boulder pitching alongside embankments is the solely resolution to their plight. “We cannot stop the river,” factors out Rudra, including that for the previous three a long time, embankments safety in the type of boulder pitching on the banks has not yielded the desired outcomes. He argues that solely engineering options is not going to work and requires adopting the holistic science of river administration in addition to complete land use plans for weak areas.
Emphasising that the GBM delta is one of the youngest deltas in the world the place land is but to solidify, Rudra says there’s a have to generate consciousness amongst the folks: “People should understand that this is the land of the river and the river needs space to play.”
The Chief Minister, in her communications, highlighted that the Farakka Barrage Project Authority ought to take up anti-erosion work each upstream and downstream in a extra complete method — which Rudra endorses. He reckons that the quantity of folks displaced by the river in the previous few a long time will not be lower than 2,00,000 in Malda and Murshidabad districts, and says the prime precedence ought to be rehabilitation of folks displaced by the river erosion. He emphasises that individuals staying on the chars will need to have entry to all civic and social infrastructure, like well being and training.
A current publication, “Impact of floods and river-bank erosion on the riverine people in Manikchak Block of Malda District, West Bengal” by Rakhi Das and Gopa Samanta, particulars the socio-economic profile of folks dwelling in the chars and the riparian mainland: “Migration is a common phenomenon in the study area. People come from Jharkhand and other parts of Manikchak to live in the chars. They live in these temporary houses as they cannot afford to make permanent houses because of high land cost and… uncertainty of land, since it can be washed away by the river at any point of time.”
Samanta, a professor at the University of Burdwan, says folks dwelling in areas liable to erosion constantly make micro-adjustments to outlive, and the chars, the place folks displaced by the erosion have taken shelter, are largely “ungovernable spaces”.
Awaiting options
At a gathering of the National Ganga Council in Kolkata on December 30, chaired by the Prime Minister nearly, the Chief Minister raised the challenge of erosion in the complete Dhuliyan area (which incorporates Pratapganj) of Murshidabad district. She blamed the Farakka Barrage for the river erosion.
While the river erodes and eats into the landmass, it has for hundreds of years additionally remained a topic of awe and veneration. The river erosion will not be solely restricted to Malda and Murshidabad, however is felt in Kolkata and as much as the mouth of the river. Recently, elements of Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden arrange in 1787 on the western financial institution of the river in Howrah have additionally suffered erosion.
At the mouth of the river, the place it meets the sea at Gangasagar, yearly on the event of Makar Sankranti, lakhs of folks descend on Sagar Island to take a dip. The seaside in entrance of Kapil Muni temple the place the river is believed to satisfy the sea is severely eroded and the pilgrims are turned away to different seashores.
Only just a few metres from the eroded seaside, the administration, with a lot pomp, organised an elaborate ‘Ganga Aarti’ much like Varanasi’s.
