On May 7, during high tide, a mud embankment on the river Barakala Ghachhi collapsed in Atapur Mazhirpada, a village in Monipur island in the Sunderbans in West Bengal. As I reached Atapur, I saw the water gush through the broken embankment. Some villagers watched helplessly as the water level receded around noon and fragments of their huts peeked out through the torrent. Others stood talking under a sunburnt palm tree which barely sheltered them from the scorching heat. “Around 63 huts were inundated in the river because of the embankment collapse,” Bidhayak Sil, Block Disaster Management Officer, said.
Two days later, the Station House Officer at Sandeshkhali block told me that the relief work is ongoing and compensation of Rs.50,000 would be provided to each affected family. The families were lodged at the Integrated Child Development Services centre in Atapur. The same day, Biswanath Das, Sub Divisional Officer, Kalinagar irrigation sub-division, explained the situation. “The area around Atapur is prone to soil erosion,” he said. “During high tide, the rate of erosion increases. This year the increase in the river level was higher than the previous year. That is why the embankment collapsed.” After cyclone Aila struck the Sunderbans in 2009, the deep channel of the river Barakala Ghachhi shifted towards the Monipur bank, he said, thus causing the area to become prone to embankment collapse.
Climatically vulnerableKnown for mangrove forests, the Sunderbans is a cluster of low-lying islands on the delta of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers in the Bay of Bengal. The Sunderbans forest is around 10,000 sq. km spreading across India and Bangladesh. Forty per cent of its area lies in India and is home to over 4.5 million people and several globally threatened wildlife species. The majority of the population of the Indian Sunderbans subsists on a single paddy crop. The rest engage in fishing, and honey and crab collection.
Monipur is among the 104 islands in the Indian Sunderbans. The Sunderbans is ecologically fragile and climatically vulnerable. Monipur exemplifies the erratic weather conditions and vulnerabilities experienced by the inhabitants of the Sunderbans due to tidal movements.
When the mud embankment collapsed at Atapur, I spent a few hours talking to the locals. Sonapal, a local, noted that approximately 6,000 people reside in the village. Most of them are illiterate — 35 per cent according to the Gram Panchayat record, said Mr. Sil. Most of the villagers do Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act-related work (road construction and embankment work) while others earn their living through fishing or paddy farming. Erratic and extreme weather conditions accelerated by climate change and few opportunities at home have resulted in temporary employment-related migration of the villagers to different Indian cities. Mr. Sil pointed out that from June to October, during rains, most families migrate to cities for daily wages.
Although there is a government school in Atapur, the critical issue, said 12-year-old Rumpa Sardar, is accessibility to the school during rains: “I mostly take the pitch road and reach the school in half an hour. However, during rains, I take the brick road which is a one-hour walk to the school.”
There is one sub-health centre in Atapur, but it is not “adequately equipped with medicines and staff,” said a local. “One may not always find a medical practitioner or a doctor,” he added. In case of emergencies, the villagers take a boat to reach the hospital in Khulna Island, Mr. Sonapal said. The journey itself takes around two hours. The critical issues for the locals include frequent river embankment collapse, lack of communication and transportation facilities, said Pramanik, an ex-member of Monipur Gram Panchayat. In Monipur, Mr. Sil said, most of the embankments are temporary and not concrete. The temporary solution, said Dhali, the Sub-Divisional Magistrate, is to lay out “bandhs of gunny bags filled with sand and soil”.
The importance of mangrovesA few years ago, the State government began the embankment reconstruction project to protect around 3,500 km of boundary at a cost of Rs.5,032 crore. Environmental experts doubt the feasibility of concrete embankments since coastal erosion is continuously reshaping the islands. Experts warn that these embankments could prove damaging to the survival of the unique flora and fauna of the Sunderbans. They believe that mangroves, which contribute towards retarding coastal erosion, are a better alternative than building expensive embankments. Mangroves also help in building and consolidating silt.
The issue of river embankments and uncertainties due to erratic weather conditions confronted by Atapur’s locals embody the lives of the people of Sunderbans. However, those who live in the blocks adjacent to the forest region or the Bay of Bengal are confronted with harsher environment-related issues vis-à-vis those who live closer to Kolkata. The 2010 World Wildlife Foundation India Report observed that since the whole of the Sunderbans is low-lying, and parts of the region are frequently submerged by the tidal ebb and flow of the ocean, changes in sea level are likely to threaten the life and property of its inhabitants. WWF India rightly observes that securing the future of the Sunderbans, its biodiversity, and inhabitants requires a long-term vision that integrates “climate adaptation and conservation strategies along with shorter term interventions such as ensuring sustainable livelihoods, access to clean and sustainable energy and effective human-wildlife conflict management”.
Meha Dixit has taught at Kashmir University and worked with Amnesty International.
