The world's largest river island (VI)

After the flood

The floods are here in earnest. Although Majuli is inured to the cycle of floods, it has been the worst flooding in ten years. Last time too, the devastation was just after the elections, and some people have now jocularly begun to draw a connection between the AGP coming to power, and the floods starting! This time the flood affected the upper reaches of the island, a tribal majority area that is generally better off than the lower part. Also Ujani Majuli is generally unprepared for floods. Many years of good crops and safe embankments had lulled them into a sense of complacency, so the dhan-bhorals were not built high, and there was no rush to winnow and thresh, the way that it is in the Namuni part, accustomed as they are to floods, and taking advantage of every clear day to get as much out of the way as possible. But nature is a great leveller. The embankments breached at four points, and water quickly swept through the villages, destroying property and standing crops in its wake. In Jengrai-mukh, the main town Ujani Majuli, the flood swept away the newly constructed school hostel building. All that is left now is the tin sheets, a stark reminder of what was. The water rushed through the middle of the island, and swept away the main bridge and road between Garamur and Kamlabari, the most important thoroughfare on the island. Completed this year, reportedly at a cost of eighteen lakhs, there is only a half-submerged broken bridge to show for that.

Why was the devastation so bad this year? Many theories are being put forward, by lay people and experts alike. Anando Hazarika, professor of Geography in Majuli college, feels that the breach in the dyke at Dhemaji caused the floods. But why did it breach at Dhemaji? Again, Hazarika feels folly of the embankment policy of the government. All along the Brahmaputra, we have embanked our valuable cities — Jorhat for its tea, Dibrugarh for its university and oil, Guwahati because it's the capital, and so on. So how will a river, accustomed to carrying a silt load of over a million tonnes a day react? It will search for weak spots, and break them. And with an ageing set of embankments — many have not been rebuilt in forty years — there are plenty that are vulnerable. But even before that, the river will vent its fury, like a caged tiger, on parts that for some reason or the other have not been embanked — usually because the people are too poor, and too weak politically to demand it. Like Majuli. But even if we couldn't prevent it, surely we could predict it? In this age of reason and science, with computers being able to draw correlations between a butterfly flapping its wings in Seoul and a tropical storm in Japan, surely there must be some kind of cause and effect operating, that if not preventable, is at least predictable?

I went to check on Dilip and his family last week. I had stayed with them for a fortnight a couple of months ago, and though there were bits and pieces of news that filtered in, I wondered about how they would be managing, with the water rising so rapidly all around. I was not really worried, because their house is on an elevation, and it seemed that if that was submerged, the entire island would go under.

I reached there in the afternoon, a difficult cycle ride, having to cross the breached embankment-road in a perilous country boat. The road was unrecognisable. A week ago it was the picture of a quiet Assamese village scene, a winding road through the paddy fields, dense clumps of bamboo on both sides, thatched houses dotting the landscape, the occasional cluster of shops at every tiniali along the way. Now I was riding past miles of devastation, with families having abandoned their flooded houses and shifting to the road, putting up frail bamboo, tin, polythene shanties. All along the way, young men were either desperately working filling sandbags to protect the road, or just sitting in a group, nonchalantly whiling away their time playing cards. The children were playing, oblivious to the tension, splashing around in the water, peering out from behind their new homes. As I kept cycling, the tension, bordering on fear, kept mounting. Although the road was not breached, the water was insiduously yet threateningly lapping at the sides, a gentle reminder of the possibility. The scene had none of the ominous portents of a cyclone, or a storm — it was a gradual wearing down of defences. There was time to prepare this strength. Looking at them from the outside, they seemed not to be troubled by the fear that I was feeling, or doubt, and were just going about their daily chores in a matter-of-fact way, laying out the grass for the cows to eat, putting up the houses, having baths, engaging in conversation.

Till the night of July 12 it seemed as if the worst of the floods would pass the family by. Thye had dinner as usual, on the kitchen floor, and though there was a strong wind outside, it seemed safe, and like any other evening. At around one in the morning, Baideo was the first to wake, hearing the sound of the waves beating against the kitchen walls. By the time she had woken up and reached there, half of the kitchen was gone, lost in the waters of the Luit, and water swirled around the house, knee-deep. She woke up Kokai and Dilip, and they spent a sleepless night huddling together on the bed, that because of its height served as an improvised chang, or platform. By early morning, here was a semblance of order in the chaos. Another improvised chang was constructed near the door, using as a base two pieces from a boat the family had earlier, and with a simple bamboo mat covering. That serves as the cooking space. The propped-up bench against one wall still serves as a bench, and the footstool, on which I used to sit out in the morning and contemplate the world go by, has become a stepping stone between the two changs. A raft fashioned out of four banana trees is the only way of communicating with the all (embankment), where a large number of families have already moved.

As I sat there, catcing up on conversation and time, it seemed like a set in a surreal play. Bhagirath, Dilip and I were on one chang — the large bed which Dilip and I used when I stayed there — Kokai was sitting, legs up, on the bench, and Baideo and Dilip's sister on the cooking chang. Later Gopinath, the son-in-law, also joined us, and sat with his wife. All around us the water was swirling, and occasionally we would sight a fish, and more often, frogs. Although it was early afternoon, the light was dim, partly because of the overcast sky and the continuous drizzle, and partly because we were sitting indoors, with only the door allowing a shaft of light to come through. As we sat there making small talk and joking, the water kept rising. In the three hours it went up by a few inches, enough to almost submerge the footstool, and now lapping at the foundation of the bhoral. The bhoral is the last refuge of the family between certain hunger and safety, housing as it does all the Ahu dhan that was harvested just before the Jengrai embankment breached and brought the Luit to their doorstep. If that submerges, there is little recourse left.

If the water continues to rise like this, they will shift to the ali, perhaps tomorrow. But they have no money to buy the tin that they would require for the roof, so shifting is the last option. In spite of this looming threat, there is good cheer all around, at least on the surface. Baideo continues to poke fun at my accented Assamese, describing in detail to the others my embarrassing encounters in the past. Kokai is pensive, but seems casual and unconcerned about the water. 'What will you do when the water reaches the chang level,' I ask. He says, 'I'll just raise it a bit.' A difficult ask, for an old man, to fashion a truss for a huge bed, standing waist deep in water. Gopinath interrupts my thoughts confidently. 'It won't rise much more', he assures me. 'This land is already so high that before we submerge, the embankment is bound to give way somewhere else, and the water will recede once again.'

Small, ordinary facts of life have become impossibilities. The hand pump, once ten feet above the ground, is under water, so they are managing with boiling the water around them. But firewood stocks are low, and difficult to come by, and before long it will be down to drinking the same water they live in. There is rice in the ration shop for a week longer. The task of defecation has become a planned activity, with people either going out some distance in their boats and defacating overboard, or else finding a place in the side of the now overcrowded ali. Cutting grass for the bull means a long boat ride to the nearest sapori, and then carting it back, an effort that requires almost half a day. For Umaram and his family, who don't have a boat, or any money saved up to buy tin, it is over the edge, into the water.

Government relief operations have had only a minimal effect here, with just one kilogram of rice per head distributed about ten days ago, and nothing since. In a sense one can't find fault with the government, because the situation on the island is so bad everywhere, that it is almost physically impossible to reach people with any frequency. While I was there I passed the recently elected MLA, gunman and all, travelling to survey the relief works. All the government offices are empty, and the jeeps and trucks are rushing around, seemingly very busy. Naturally the people are working overtime as well — strengthening the embankments, building their houses, but it all has a sense of too little, too late. We have decided to help with installing tubewells for drinking water, to try and stave off the almost inevitable gastroenteritis and cholera in the wake of the flood, and take a boat with medical supplies around the islands, especially the many saporis where people are marooned.

What can be done to prevent this in the future? Unfortnately, the only answer seems to be embanking Majuli, in much the same way as the rest of the cities along the Brahmaputra have been protected. The cost will be stupendous. If done well though, it will prevent this annual cycle of loss of life and property: the savings from this alone would justify the cost in less than a decade.
Secondly, spur all around would prevent further erosion of the already fast-shrinking island. Already over a thousand families have had to shift to the mainland, to scratch out a living from poor soil, as their land disappeared into the cavernous Brahmaputra. How many floods will it take till we learn that too many people have drowned?

Excerpted with permission from Sanjoy's Assam, edited by Sumita Ghosh and Published by Penguin Books India