MORE BATTLES: While the availability of milk and nutritious supplements for children varied from camp to camp, there was no evidence anywhere of educational services. A relief centre in Dhubri district. Photo: Ritu Raj Konwar
PTI
A relief camp in Dhubri district, Assam.
With winter approaching, addressing the issues of livelihood, housing
and clothing for those displaced by floods and strife assumes greater
urgency in the shelters in Assam
The latest wave of floods in Assam has affected over a
million people in 16 of the State’s 27 districts. More than two lakh
people displaced by the rising waters that submerged nearly 2,000
villages have sought refuge in over 160 so-called relief camps in Assam.
Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim are also reeling from flash floods and
landslides that have claimed at least 35 lives across the three States.
The question is what happens after the initial drama of rescue operations, evacuations, airdropping of food, et al,
ends. After all, the present crisis merely compounds the lingering
misery and penury from an earlier round of floods, which inundated more
than 5,500 villages in 23 districts from mid-June onwards, caused at
least 125 deaths, and devastated the already precarious lives of nearly
2.5 million people, washing away homes, livelihoods, livestock and
crops.
On a sunny day just before the onset of the
renewed deluge, women in Boramari Kocharigaon, a hamlet in Lahorighat
block of Morigaon district accessible only by boat, displayed remarkable
stoicism as they told visitors that half their village had been lost to
the river. They seemed resigned to the prospect of eventually losing
their own homes, too, but may not have imagined that their worst fears
would come true so soon. Many, if not all, of them must now have joined
previously displaced neighbours living in makeshift shelters on either
side of a narrow mud path at a slightly higher level than the
surrounding areas.
Erosion, silent factor
Many
such slender ridges host recurrent batches of refugees dislocated over
the years by the mighty, magnificent and capricious Brahmaputra,
brimming over now, shifting course every now and then. Some have been
living in such “temporary” homes for years. It is difficult to imagine
where others currently residing along the crumbling banks of the river
and its tributaries — sure to be dislodged sooner rather than later —
will retreat to.
The silent emergency of erosion does
not make news but it has reportedly claimed nearly 4,000 square
kilometres of land, destroying more than 2,500 villages and displacing
over five million people in Assam. According to a recent study by
Archana Sarkar of the National Institute of Hydrology (NIH) and R.D.
Garg and Nayan Sharma of IIT-Roorkee, 1,053 sq. km. was lost to erosion
between 1990 and 2008.
The figures come to life as a
young civil servant mentions in passing that his own village no longer
exists. Further probing into this astonishing statement revealed that
not only his village, South Salmara in Dhubri district, but several
neighbouring ones had also vanished. He estimates that nearly 70 per
cent of the South Salmara-Mankachar subdivision is now in the
Brahmaputra. The NIH/IIT-R study confirms that on the north bank of the
river Dhubri has lost the maximum area (104 sq. km.) to erosion.
Assam’s
State Disaster Management Authority is reportedly seeking recognition
for erosion as an ongoing disaster requiring an urgent, concerted,
multi-pronged and sustained response that can address the short- and
long-term basic and livelihood needs of the affected population, as well
as environmental concerns.
The recent rains must
have also worsened the situation in several so-called camps where large
numbers of people continue to live in abysmal conditions over two months
after being displaced by the conflict that erupted in late July in
parts of Lower Assam located within the Bodoland Territorial
Administrative District. A substantial section of the nearly five lakh
people who fled to nearly 350 camps then have apparently managed to
return home. But close to 40 per cent of them are still in over 200
camps, having lost their houses and assets to arson and looting, or held
back by the land verification process initiated by the State government
and the Bodoland Territorial Council, or simply too frightened to
return to villages in areas dominated by the “other” community involved
in the violence.
A day after the latest downpour
began, the camp in Bhawaraguri in Chirang district was already
ankle-deep in water. “Camp” is actually a misleading misnomer. People
from seven nearby villages, including some Bengali-speaking Hindus, who
had sought sanctuary in the village boasting a significant number of
educated, professional Bengali-speaking Muslims, have had to vacate
local schools to enable them to reopen. They were in the process of
fashioning provisional shelters for themselves in the low-lying school
ground, using whatever materials they could somehow secure. Members of
the Bodo and Rajbongshi communities still staying at the Mongolian Bazar
camp in Noyapara (Chirang) faced the prospect of moving into the slushy
school compound as classes were soon due to resume after the extended
break. In Gambaribeel (Kokrajhar), the space where temporary housing was
to be provided for the Bodo families currently living in and around the
local school was also waterlogged. The rudimentary shacks housing well
over 10,000 Bengali-speaking people in a huge open field near Kembolpur
in the Gossaingaon subdivision of Kokrajhar district were hardly
weatherproof either.
Health services
Considering
the health hazards posed by such living conditions it was encouraging
to learn that delivery of public health services was fairly regular and
on the whole satisfactory, though mental health is obviously a neglected
area despite the evident trauma induced by violence, fear and
displacement. Nutrition is clearly a problem, with official food relief
essentially restricted to rice and dal, occasionally augmented by
potatoes. While the availability of milk and nutritious supplements for
children varied from camp to camp, there was no evidence anywhere of
educational services. Local schools are belatedly beginning to reopen
but they are unlikely to be able to accommodate all the displaced
children, especially from densely populated camps. Residents of
Bhawaraguri were worried about the future of older students, too, with
persistent safety concerns preventing them from travelling to attend
college. Clothes were also in short supply, with most people having fled
homes in panic and few usable garments distributed by way of relief,
official or non-governmental.
No one seems to know if
and when the nearly two lakh people still living in camps — at least 85
per cent of them Bengali-speaking Muslims — will be enabled to return
to their villages or provided with decent temporary accommodation
elsewhere. Livelihood remains a challenge for many of those who have
ventured home but face an unofficial economic boycott. With winter
approaching, the issues of housing, clothing, and so on, assume even
greater urgency. Clearly there is much to be done long after the water
recedes and violence subsides.
(Ammu Joseph
accompanied the Oxfam India team visiting areas where the organisation
is providing humanitarian assistance to disaster and conflict affected
people in Assam. Email: ammujo@gmail.com)
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