Nature and Assam’s present

ARUPJYOTI SAIKIA

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A quick glance at the newspapers published from Assam brings the reader’s attention to the following phrases: river linking, hydropower, erosion, flood, embankment, sand deposition, demand to declare the flood of the Brahmaputra as a national calamity, and so on. These widely popular catchwords are worrying signs of a bigger crisis. Sometime they appear with an alarming tone, often mixed with powerful political slogans. Assam, the land of a hundred rivers, and the mighty Brahmaputra can be another example of human beings’ present experience with the environment.

A mosaic of three distinct geographical spaces – hills, rivers and flood plains – has defined the environmental setting of India’s northeast. A large number of rivers carry water, silt and strong undercurrents to the Bay of Bengal before watering the flood plains. Away from the rivers, there stand ranges of smaller hills to high mountains. In between the hills and rivers there are stretches of flat flood plain. These rivers, their sands, and waters constantly make and unmake the flood plain. Over the centuries, a complex environmental setting was transformed by humans and non-humans alike. These distinct geographical spaces housed the rationale for livelihood activities. Environmental constraints ensured that the human domestication of spaces was confined to a limited area.

For instance, in the Brahmaputra valley, the Assamese peasants chose the fertile flood plain – away from the river bed – as best suited for settlement and agrarian activities. They rarely came close to the riverbanks, and did so only when compelled to seek arable land in times of distress. Control of the flood plain was key to the survival of pre-19th century political kingdoms. Powerful medieval kingdoms would chase away the weaker tribal communities from the flood plain, forcing them to seek shelter deep inside the forested and hilly areas.

The pre-imperial era was the best witness to a careful selection of habitats. Riverine areas and river islands had to wait till the early 20th century for their complete reclamation. The flood plain dwellers, with access to advanced agrarian technology and techniques of warfare, often succeed in retaining control over the flood plain and also constantly push the boundaries of their habitats to the foothills. The distant hills and dense jungles were thus sparsely populated. Hills and flood plain dwellers were dependent on each other, and political and social mechanisms evolved for the sustenance of this relationship.

Of the two million population living in the Brahmaputra valley in 1881, most produced crops, collected fish and only a few lived on trade. Except for a few towns located on either bank of the rivers, their villages were located far away. Their fields spread over sandy alluvium, low lands, and slightly elevated fields. As these fields reach away from both the banks of the Brahmaputra, they usually escaped the whims of the river. During the monsoon, the Brahmaputra’s tributaries flooded them or damaged the land by filling it with non-arable sand.

‘The people of Assam can be said to be relatively happy. Their land does not require much cultivation. The flood waters of the rivers fertilize it so that the people are able to earn their livelihood with little labour’ is what M.K. Gandhi famously wrote about Assam’s floods in the 1920s. Gandhi was not alone. A 1837 report described how ‘the rainy season may be called the carnival of Assam; all the labours on the field are suspended; everyone seems happy and contented.’ Indeed, the early British writers were usually caught between two views of the landscape of the valley. One view depicted a landscape full of extreme rain, unvarying floods and others depicted the general cheerfulness of the people in the rainy season. If some officials were agreeable to the idea of the fertilizing capacity of floodwater, others were equally pessimistic about the full impact of the floods.

 

In the 20th century, the flood was increasingly seen as the foremost enemy of the flood plain. The Brahmaputra came to be remembered, and criticized, more for its floods than for any other reason. There may be multiple reasons for this but I would like to emphasize a few. First, the rural peasantry could not manoeuvre the floods, which it had done with some success earlier. People would move out from vulnerable areas if floods threatened their survival. As the 19th century progressed, with sedentary agriculture becoming a norm, the land under tea plantations expanding, and the introduction of jute cultivation since the early 20th century, there was little space for this kind of manoeuvring. A wide range of governmental regulations restricted the free mobility of the peasants. With this, the peasants’ freedom to move out to new and less flood prone areas (to overcome localized challenges of floods) came to an end, making them more vulnerable. Concern over loss of crops and floods as a destructive force began to gain currency.

Flood intensity increased specially after the earthquake of 1950, but scientists have thrown light on other dimensions of this increasing intensity. After the news of tea, floods became the second reference point for Assam. Loss of human property and agriculture was now quantified. Flooding came to be seen as a danger to the well-being of humans.

 

As floods came to be viewed as a threat to the general well-being of Assam in the last century, governments were expected to regulate the river and adopt measures for flood control. Thus, embankments came to dot Assam’s landscape, leading to a reconfiguration of the flood plain or rearrangement of human settlement patterns. This ensured a new form of relationship between the river and the people who lived around it.

In the second half of the 20th century, the river systems came to be encircled with thousands of kilometres of embankments. The scale and impact of this encirclement was much higher than the pre-19th century human experience of rivers. The results became evident quite early. In the wake of the anger expressed by the rural peasantry against embankments, the Assam government, as early as 1957, constituted a committee to look into the effectiveness of such human intervention on the rivers. Bijoy Chandra Bhagawati, a veteran Congress leader, chaired the committee. The Bhagawati Committee mostly encountered an angry crowd who reprimanded the government for its wrongdoings. The charge was that embankments had led to the loss of the land’s fertility and caused the disappearance of fish from their fields.

Notwithstanding such serious concerns voiced by the floodplain dwellers, embankments became an integral part of the landscape. Technocrat-contractors-politicians, apart from a section of the rural peasantry, collectively pushed for the expansion of embankments. The latter slowly heaped new-found confidence on millions of rural peasantry to move closer to the rivers. Areas under agriculture multiplied. But at the same time the undernourishment of fields became more visible. Embankments remained a defence against the penetrating flood-waters for a few years but eventually it was of little effect. Embankments helped in creating confidence among the people, food production increased and human settlements spread out to wider areas. The poor and the vulnerable reached out to the low-lying areas presuming defence from the floods.

 

Bank erosion had been a factor earlier too but this natural geological process is slowly becoming a threat to humans living along the riverbank. At least until the 19th century, human settlement along the Brahmaputra was rare. The local communities were aware of those places where the river-bank had stability. Guwahati and Tezpur are two towns where urban settlements grew for this reason. But in the 20th century, several factors changed the character of the settlement pattern. This was largely a result of the influx of population into the valley that settled down in the rural landscape.

Within the 20th century, according to Indian census reports, there was a nine times increase in the valley’s population, creating a new burden on the flood plain. Most of the incoming population struggled in search of cultivable land. By the end of the 20th century, the valley’s population had exhausted its agrarian capacity. Human settlement has now spread all along the highly vulnerable river banks. This has exposed an increased number of the population, mostly belonging to the poorer sections, to the threats of river bank erosion. News of houses and agricultural fields being eaten up by the rivers are now regularly reported. Most rivers on the north bank are under the grip of river bank erosion, carrying millions of tons of sand (there is no available data). Some rivers quickly spill out the waters into the fields along the river.

 

In recent months, deforestation in the city of Guwahati has become the talk of the town. A good percentage of people who have squatted on government owned hilly forest lands and wetlands, have identified themselves as ecological refugees from Assam’s north bank districts. A good example of such ‘violence of nature’ is the Dhemaji district. Considered as the rice bowl of Assam, the agricultural fields have now been transformed into a virtual desert due to post-flood sand deposition.1 A 2006 report reveals that one-sixth of the district’s total cultivable land has been rendered unproductive by sand deposition.2 Consequently, the soil texture has undergone significant transformation.

A study reporting the findings of a soil test carried out during 2009-2010 found that of 346 agriculture plots in 148 sample households comprised 54% sand and 36% silt. Also, the net sown area of the district during 1992 to 2005 had reduced by approximately one-tenth of the total cultivable area. An equal area was reported as fallow and uncultivated land. This is a matter of serious concern.

Essentially, as the rivers push the sands out to the fields, with an increasing amount getting deposited, the land is fast becoming uncultivable. Erstwhile cultivated fields becoming untenable in many places of the northern bank is a common story. The deposition of sand to a depth of up to 6-7 feet has been reported. Overall, flood-induced sand deposition has changed the soil texture of the district to a significant extent. Removal of this sand is a daunting task for the farmers. Not all of them have sought refuge in urban employment, some are also creatively trying to harness the obstacles, for instance, by changing cropping patterns. Near irreversible damage to the paddy fields and poor agricultural outcomes from the partially degraded lands is forcing people to look for other income and livelihood alternatives outside the district.

The Brahmaputra also regularly gives birth to new lands. These newly born lands, known as chapori or char, are fertile and rich in nutrients. They do not require a long gestation period to be productive. Given the speedily shrinking ratio of land vis-à-vis population, everyone’s eyes are on reclaiming such newly-born lands. When opposing claimants belong to different religious communities, for instance, Hindus and Muslims in this case, such claims over land often manifest as communal riots.

 

Fish continues to be an integral part of Assamese cuisine. A large floodplain geography of eastern India is bound by a common culinary practice centred around fishes. Fish is still found everywhere and contributed to the nutritional well-being of millions of people for centuries. The Assamese farmer returning home after work, with fish in hand caught on the way, was a typical image. Despite their poverty, millions cherished cuisines prepared from fish. A 19th century scholar thought that ‘the Assamese of all classes eat fish, and the consumption is, therefore, very great… the River Brahmaputra appears to be sufficient to keep up an ample supply for the numerous streams which communicate with it.’

Yes, the vast flood plain or the watery land of the Brahmaputra valley offers space for a great range of aquatic life, especially fish. One knows that glacial water and long duration of rainfall kept the rivers dynamic for most of the year. Water’s own dynamics, flood-plus dynamics, in the language of river ecologists, ensured a regular renewal of the connection between scattered water space and fishes. The latter obviously turned out to be a crucial and easily available component of the people’s nutrition intake. The dead fish left behind crucial calcium from their bones to replenish the floodplain. The increasing complaints about non-availability of fish (only to be replaced by commercially produced fish from states like Andhra Pradesh or Uttar Pradesh) is essentially an anxiety about the life and times of embankment-encircled rivers of Assam.

Aquatic scientists now see the long stretch of embankments across the rivers which prevent the inundation of the flood plain as standing against the biological process of the spawning of various fish species. The result is evident: most Assamese households now complain about a lack of fish from the local rivers thus depriving millions of an important source of nutrition. A dynamic floodplain is crucial for the survival of a culinary culture as well as human well-being.

 

Technocrats or policymakers view the river and its flood plain differently from the way Assam’s rural population looks at it. The dominant view is that the waters of the Brahmaputra are a waste. This enormous gift of nature must be harnessed for the well-being of mankind. Many from the valley agree with this opinion. The idea of the construction of hydropower in the river basin of the Brahmaputra has been around since the 1920s but it was difficult to realize this dream. When the Indian government pushed for a dam upstream of the Brahmaputra immediately after India’s independence, the 1950 earthquake came as a natural warning. However, towards the latter decades of the 20th century, the need for human control of the rivers came to be advocated by people of the state.

A few also argue that the waters of the Brahmaputra have hardly been put to use, making China a powerful claimant in case of any international dispute around user rights. Such arguments are not only naïve but also miss the complex story of human as well as non-human dependency on the flood plain. Unfortunately, such views have gained wide popularity to lobby for hydropower projects in the Brahmaputra river basin.

 

The idea that the waters of the Brahmaputra were being wasted became a powerful argument in the latter decades of the 20th century. Given a general water scarcity in India’s South and other regions, the waters of the Brahmaputra were seen as a solution. River linking remained a powerful idea and was publicly articulated. It was in 1992 that the Government of India began ‘toying with the lofty idea of transferring Brahmaputra water all the way from the heights of the Himalayas down to the southern river systems’ which would augment ‘on the way the flow of the Hooghly river for the maintenance of the Calcutta port.’ This was part of a grandiose plan to create a ‘national water grid to carry surplus water available in some regions to water deficit areas.’

The proposal was to construct a gravity canal linking the Brahmaputra’s two tributaries, i.e. Manas and Sankosh with the Ganga and other peninsular rivers. The Indian planners envisaged intercepting the flows of these two along with small tributaries of the Brahmaputra through a 473 km long canal starting from Manas and dropping into the Ganga upstream of Farakka. A proposal was mooted to construct water storages on the Manas and Sankosh to be released during the dry season.

Protests against the Indian government’s river linking project, which would drain away water from a few rivers flowing through the west of the valley, was an immediate response to this proposal. Parallel to this, anti-hydropower protests gripped Assam since the last few years. This forced the Indian government to temporarily stop work on the Lower Subansiri hydropower project.

 

The Brahmaputra and its flood plain (watery lands of Assam) of the present offer a unique example of a creative space for both humans and non-humans. The Kaziranga National Park is an example where, despite odds, non-humans have created a very supportive environmental space. The idea of floodplains is crucial to the very survival of the Kaziranga National Park. The Brahmaputra and its tributaries, silently or often visibly, contribute to the making and recreation of the flood plain. This is contrary to the technocratic view of the river and its flood plain. Despite nature’s own challenges, humans also creatively adjusted in the dynamic flood plain.

By the early 21st century India has slowly emerged as a global economic power. Along with it has come a never ending appetite for the appropriation of natural wealth for the consolidation of this economic strength. The country, during this ambitious voyage scaling the great heights of an economic power, considers Assam’s rivers and her rural landscape, characterized by the flood plain, as an anticlimax of India’s new found economic power.

How to make an indolent flood plain and its rivers a partner in India’s new economic avatar? Techno crats and Indian policymakers convincingly argue that the production of hydro-power is the only possible answer. This bold technocratic affirmation nevertheless comes without any promise of recreating prospects for coexistence of the rural peasantry and the flood plain. Flood plain dwellers, already facing nature’s wrath, are clearly not enthusiastic with this answer. They insist that their organic relationship with the flood plain not be disturbed.

 

The human experience of rivers and flood plain in Assam is undergoing rapid changes. In the last century, few could have imagined such a dramatic transformation. For instance, floods now come with great intensity. Erosion now hits a greater number of families. On the other hand, human efforts to regulate floods no more holds true. The government investment in such works of regulation has significantly declined, as it increasingly expresses its unwillingness to see such works as a public good. The human-nature equilibrium, centred around its flood plain and created over several centuries, looks like reaching a saturation point in the near future. However, the crisis has yet to enter the imagination of a wider population, except for those who have personally experienced it.

One cannot foresee what will happen next, but the flood plain and rivers will inevitably continue to be a companion to the human journey. The humans (and also the non-humans) will continue to brave the ferocity of nature. But it is also time for a deep reflection to comprehend this complex human journey in nature’s pasts. It is also a time to creatively nourish this man and nature relationship by learning from the environmental pasts.

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